“What can you ever really know of other people's souls — of their temptations, their opportunities, their struggles? One soul in the whole creation you do know: and it is the only one whose fate is placed in your hands. If there is a God, you are, in a sense, alone with Him. You cannot put Him off with speculations about your next door neighbours or memories of what you have read in books.”

— Clive Staples Lewis, book Mere Christianity

Book IV, Chapter 10, "Nice People or New Men"
Mere Christianity (1952)

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Clive Staples Lewis272

Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist 1898–1963

Paullina Simons book The Bronze Horseman

The Bronze Horseman (2001)

“I have a philosophy that when you have a commander in the field, let him know what you want done and then let him alone. I have two other philosophies. One is: Do the best you can with what you have. The other is: Do not worry about water over the dam.”

Ernest King (1878–1956) United States Navy admiral, Chief of Naval Operations

From Time magazine's interview with King, Volume XL, Number 23 (December 7, 1942), p. 32.
1940s

“Your soul doesn't care what you do for a living - and when your life is over, neither will you. Your soul cares only about what you are being while you are doing whatever you are doing.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

“God talks to you through your soul, not through your mind. And yes, you can learn to tell the difference. This is called discernment. Be judicious. Give everything the “tummy test.” Your stomach will know when something is true. Ever notice that? The tummy knows what the mind can only wonder about.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

“You know, it's quite all right to give the underdog a hand, but only one hand. Keep the other hand on your pistol - or he'll try to eat the one you gave him!”

H. Beam Piper (1904–1964) American science fiction writer

A Slave is a Slave (1962)

“Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Source: The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956

“Use your radio, but know how to distrust it—and do not let a day go by without reading and meditation if you want to save your soul, that soul which is yours and yours alone.”

Georges Duhamel (1884–1966) French writer

Source: Défense des Lettres [In Defense of Letters] (1937), p. 42

“Do not make an enemy of anyone until you know what there is between him and God! If he is good, God will not leave him to you and if he is bad, then your knowing of his badness will make you safe from him and so you do not need to make him your enemy.”

Muhammad al-Taqi (811–835) ninth of the Twelve Imams of Twelver Shi'ism

[Baqir Sharīf al-Qurashi, The life of Imam Muhammad al-Jawad, Wonderful Maxims and Arts, 2005]

“As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value to you than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself; because only through ordering what you know by comparing every truth with every other truth can you take complete possession of your knowledge and get it into your power. You can think about only what you know, so you ought to learn something; on the other hand, you can know only what you have thought about.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Vol. 2, Ch. 22, § 257 "On Thinking for Yourself" as translated in Essays and Aphorisms(1970) as translated by R. J. Hollingdale
Variant translation: Just as the largest library, badly arranged, is not so useful as a very moderate one that is well arranged, so the greatest amount of knowledge, if not elaborated by our own thoughts, is worth much less than a far smaller volume that has been abundantly and repeatedly thought over.
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims

“You can have Jesus in your spirit and have an outrageous mess in your soul, and if you don't know what that's called, it's called religion.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

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