Vita Sackville-West: Quotes about the soul

“You're safe; that's gone, that wild caprice,
But tell me once before I cease,
Which does your Church esteem the kinder role,
To kill the body or destroy the soul?”

Vita Sackville-West

"And so it ends" quoted in V. Sackville-West : A Critical Biography (1974) by Michael Stevens, p. 91
Context: Darling, I thought of nothing mean;
I thought of killing straight and clean.
You're safe; that's gone, that wild caprice,
But tell me once before I cease,
Which does your Church esteem the kinder role,
To kill the body or destroy the soul?

Soul

“The country habit has me by the heart,
For he's bewitched for ever who has seen,
Not with his eyes but with his vision, Spring
Flow down the woods and stipple leaves with sun,
As each man knows the life that fits him best,
The shape it makes in his soul, the tune, the tone”

Vita Sackville-West

"Winter", p. 5
The Land (1926)
Context: The country habit has me by the heart,
For he's bewitched for ever who has seen,
Not with his eyes but with his vision, Spring
Flow down the woods and stipple leaves with sun,
As each man knows the life that fits him best,
The shape it makes in his soul, the tune, the tone,
And after ranging on a tentative flight
Stoops like the merlin to the constant lure.

Life , Soul , Spring , Sun

“Of course I have no right whatsoever to write down the truth about my life involving as it naturally does the lives of so many other people, but I do so urged by a necessity of truth-telling, because there is no living soul who knows the complete truth”

Vita Sackville-West

Autobiographical sketch (23 July 1920), published in Portrait of a Marriage : Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson (1998), p. 3
Context: Of course I have no right whatsoever to write down the truth about my life involving as it naturally does the lives of so many other people, but I do so urged by a necessity of truth-telling, because there is no living soul who knows the complete truth; here, may be one who knows a section; and there, one who knows another section: but to the whole picture not one is initiated.

Life , People , Truth , Soul

“If I had only loved your flesh
And careless damned your soul to Hell,
I might have laughed and loved afresh,
And loved as lightly and as well,
And little more to tell.”

Vita Sackville-West

"Song" in The Best Poems of 1923 (1924) edited by Thomas Moult

Love , Soul , Hell

“Who could so watch, and not forget the rack
Of wills worn thin and thought become too frail,
Nor roll the centuries back —
And feel the sinews of his soul grow hale,
And know himself for Rome's inheritor?”

Vita Sackville-West

"Tuscany" in The Best Poems of 1923 (1924) edited by Thomas Moult

Feeling , Soul , Forgetting