Quotes about the soul
page 15

“They have assumed the names and gestures of their enemies, but have held on to their own, secret souls; and in this there is a resistance and an overcoming, a long outwaiting.”

N. Scott Momaday book House Made of Dawn

Source: House Made of Dawn

Secret

“Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Their Eyes Were Watching God

Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Ch. 20, p. 193.
Context: Of course he wasn't dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking. The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.

Life, World, Peace, Fish

“The Soul selects her own Society —
Then — shuts the Door —
To her divine Majority —
Present no more”

Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

303: The Soul selects her own Society --
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (1960)
Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

“Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, the Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.”

Steven Pressfield (1943) United States Marine

Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

Feeling

“Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk — real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

Life, Sadness, Sex, Girl

“Can he love her? Can the soul really be satisfied with such polite affections? To love is to burn - to be on fire, like Juliet or Guinevere or Eloise…”

Emma Thompson (1959) British actress and writer

Source: The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay and Diaries: Bringing Jane Austen's Novel to Film

Love

“A life is never useless. Each soul that came down to Earth is here for a reason.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), Uselessness

Life

“It is the imagination that argues for the Divine Spark within human beings. It is literally a decent of the World's Soul into all of us.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

World, Imagination

“The serial number of a human specimen is the face, that accidental and unrepeatable combination of features. It reflects neither character nor soul, nor what we call the self. The face is only the serial number of a specimen”

Milan Kundera book Immortality

Source: Immortality

“We all have souls of different ages”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

Age

“We must never stop dreaming. Dreams provide nourishment for the soul, just as a meal does for the body.”

Paulo Coelho book The Pilgrimage

Source: The Pilgrimage

Dreams

“But the problem is to make the soul into a monster”

Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) French Decadent and Symbolist poet

Problem

“He kissed her, and their souls melted into each other in a melody older than time.”

Melissa de la Cruz Blue Bloods

Source: Blue Bloods

Kiss, Time

“Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Life, Universe

“Worry drains the mind of its power and, sooner or later, it injures the soul”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

Source: The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Fable About Fulfilling Your Dreams Reaching Your Destiny

“I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

For Mother, Love, Home, Cats

“If you have a soul of a warrior, you are a warrior. Whatever the color, the shape, the design of the shade that conceals it, the flame inside the lamp remains the same. You are that flame.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Color

“This is perhaps the most noble aim of poetry, to attach ourselves to the world around us, to turn desire into love, to embrace, finally what always evades us, what is beyond, but what is always there – the unspoken, the spirit, the soul.”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

Source: The Other Voice: Essays on Modern Poetry

Love, World

“There is something at work in my soul which I do not understand. I am practically industrious — painstaking, a workman to execute with perseverance and labour — but besides this there is a love for the marvellous, a belief in the marvellous, intertwined in all my projects, which hurries me out of the common pathways of men, even to the wild sea and unvisited regions I am about to explore.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Robert Walton in "Letter 2"
Source: Frankenstein (1818)

Love, Men, Understanding, Sea

“There's nothing wrong with you.. not even the darkest corner of that beautiful soul. ~ Hunter”

Vicki Pettersson (1972) American author

Source: City of Souls

Beauty

“Within the soul of each Vietnam veteran there is probably something that says “Bad war, good soldier.” Only now are Americans beginning to separate the war from the warrior.”

Max Cleland (1942) American politician

War

“For echo is the soul of the voice exciting itself in hollow places.”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

“I know. I was there. I saw the great void in your soul, and you saw mine.”

Sebastian Faulks book Birdsong

Source: Birdsong

“Statistics show that most mortals sell their souls for five reasons: sex, money, power, revenge, and love. In that order.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Succubus Blues

Love, Money, Sex, Revenge

“James Dean was the damaged but beautiful soul of our time.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Beauty, Time

“The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man's right to his body, or woman's right to her soul.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

Women, Men, History

“He's seeing my soul, my fears, my fragility, my inability to deal with a world which i pretend to master, but about which I know nothing”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Source: Eleven Minutes

World, Fear

“We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 7: 1966-1974

Travel

“I shall pray for your soul,' promised Nessarose.
I shall wait for your shoes,' Elphie answered.”

Gregory Maguire book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Shoe, Waiting

“The voice of the sea speaks to the soul.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

Sea

“What I needed with all my starved and silent soul was just that particular way of shouting back at the world.”

Iris Murdoch book The Sea, the Sea

Source: The Sea, the Sea

World, Way

“I attempted briefly to consecrate myself in the public library, believing every crack in my soul could be chinked with a book.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

Books

“Love is as strong as death, as hard as Hell. Death separates the soul from the body, but love separates all things from the soul.”

Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) German theologian

Love, Death, Hell, Strong

“A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

love, Tear, Personality

“But I still has enough longing for that concept that I didn't want to dispel it completely. Meaning: I didn't want to tell Lily that I felt we'd all been duped by Plato and the idea of a soul mate. Just in case it turned out that she was mine.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Idea

“To be able under all circumstances to practice five things constitutes perfect virtue; these five things are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness and kindness.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Perfection, Sincerity

“Donde termina el arco iris,
en tu alma o en el horizonte?

Where does the rainbow end,
in your soul or on the horizon?”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Source: The Book of Questions

“You have bewitched me body and soul, and I love, I love, I love you. And wish from this day forth never to be parted from you.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

For Him, Love, Parting

“And he thinks that if his soul had a form, this is what it would be. A baby sleeping in his arms.”

Neal Shusterman book Unwind

Source: Unwind

Thinking, Sleep, Baby

“I've come to believe errors, especially written errors, are often the only markers left by a solitary life: to sacrifice them is to lose the angles of personality, the riddle of a soul. In this case a very old soul. A very old riddle.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

Life, Error, Personality

“It may help us, in those times of trouble, to remember that love is not only about relationship, it is also an affair of the soul.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Source: Care of the Soul: Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life

Love, Time, Help

“My advice is, do not try to inhabit another's soul. You have your own.”

Jim Harrison (1937–2016) American novelist, poet, essayist

Source: Songs of Unreason

“mother says that two souls are sometimes created together and--and in love before they're born.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Love

“What deity in the realms of dementia, what rabid god decocted out of the smoking lobes of hydrophobia could have devised a keeping place for souls so poor as is this flesh. This mawky worm-bent tabernacle.”

Cormac McCarthy book Suttree

page 130
Source: Suttree (1979)
Context: Put away these frozenjawed primates and their annals of ways beset and ultimate dark. What deity in the realms of dementia, what rabid god decocted out of the smoking lobes of hydrophobia could have devised a keeping place for souls so poor as in this flesh. This mawky wormbent tabernacle.

God

“Re-examine all you have been told. Dismiss what insults your soul.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

“Walk neither faster nor slower than your own soul. Because it is your soul that will teach you the usefulness of each step you take.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra

“Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Life, Sense, Reading

“The very reason for nature's existence is for the education of the soul.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Source: Karma Yoga: the Yoga of Action

Education, Nature

“One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Variant: There may be a great fire in our soul, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke.

Way

“Love is the one thing in this world that you should never have to go through alone… For unreciprocated love is the most soul crushing experience you will ever go through.”

Ben Mitchell (1978) New Zealand actor

Love, World

“This first glance of a soul which does not yet know itself is like dawn in the heavens; it is the awakening of something radiant and unknown.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“Most lead lives at worst so painful, at best so monotonous, poor and limited that the urge to escape, the longing to transcend themselves if only for a few moments, is and has always been one of the principle appetites of the soul.”

Aldous Huxley book The Doors of Perception

Source: The Doors of Perception

Pain

“It doesn’t change what we are to each other. It’s like there’s always been a piece of my soul missing, and it’s inside you, Clary.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Change

“The human being is a most curious creature. He thinks he has got one
soul, and he has got dozens.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

Thinking

“I have inside me the winds, the deserts, the oceans, the stars, and everything created in the universe. We were all made by the same hand, and we have the same soul.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Star, Universe

“Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Source: The Bob Dylan Scrapbook: 1956-1966

Death, Money, Forgiveness, Question

“There's my baby!" I cried, quite carried away, "There's my poochiekins!"
…
"Sadie," My dad said firmly, "Please do not refer to the devourer of souls as 'poochiekins'.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Baby

“You suck, surprising no one!!!! If bad was a boot, you'd fit it!!!! You're a stupid poo-poo head! I had sexual relations with your mother! Your mother was not that good in bed! You, sir, are a wretched soul! I am rubber, you are glue!”

Bryan Lee O'Malley (1979) Artist

Source: Scott Pilgrim, Volume 2: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Stupidity

“Daimons, vampires, ghouls, whatever you want to call them. They suck your blood and your soul and leave you with nothing. Kind of like lawyers. (Selena)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon Night Embrace

Source: Night Embrace

“When two souls are as one, they stay together on the Wheel. I was born into this world to love you, and I will love you in the next life, and the one after that." ~Jem Carstairs”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Love, Life, World

“A man without a mustache is a man without a soul.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

“The soul knows no greater anguish than to take a breath that begins with love and ends with grief.”

Steven Erikson book Toll the Hounds

Source: Toll the Hounds

Love

“After a while the middle-aged person who lives in her head begins to talk to her soul, the kid.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Joe Jones

Age, Personality

“Petting, scratching, and cuddling a dog could be as soothing to the mind and heart as deep meditation and almost as good for the soul as prayer.”

Dean Koontz book False Memory

Source: False Memory

Dogs, Heart

“We are all eaters of souls.”

Dan Simmons book The Terror

Source: The Terror

“You are not the last dream of my soul.

You are the first dream, the only dream I ever was unable to stop myself from dreaming. You are the first dream of my soul, and from that dream I hope will come all other dreams, a lifetime’s worth.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Dreams, Hope

“Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and—since there is no other metaphor—also the soul.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Literature

“Miraculously, smoke curled out of his own mouth, his nose, his ears, his eyes, as if his soul had been extinguished within his lungs at the very moment the sweet pumpkin gave up its incensed ghost.”

Ray Bradbury book The Halloween Tree

Source: The Halloween Tree

“Music is an agreeable harmony for the honor of God and the permissible delights of the soul.”

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) German late baroque era composer

God, Music

“Our body remains alive, yet sooner or later our soul will receive a mortal blow. The perfect crime--for we don't know who murdered our joy, what their motives were, or where the guilty parties are to be found.”

Paulo Coelho book The Witch of Portobello

Source: The Witch of Portobello

Motivation, Joy, Perfection

“The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Source: Walden and Other Writings

Behavior, Parting

“Whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it's because that desire originated in the soul of the universe. It's your mission on earth.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Universe

“There is no shame in loving: it is the sign of a generous heart, and pain the price of an open soul.”

Alison Croggon (1962) contemporary Australian poet, playwright and fantasy novelist

Source: The Naming

Love, Pain, Heart

“How can you hear your soul if everyone is talking?”

Mary Doria Russell Children of God

Source: Children of God

“A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.”

Aldous Huxley book Point Counter Point

Variant: A bad book is as much of a labour to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.
Source: Point Counter Point

Books, Sincerity

“I'm very disturbed to find out that the leader of the Townies has a soul and I'm beginning to develop a bit of a crush on him.”

Melina Marchetta book On the Jellicoe Road

Source: On the Jellicoe Road

“Modern mass culture, aimed at the "consumer", the civilisation of prosthetics, is crippling people's souls, setting up barriers between man and the crucial questions of his existence, his consciousness of himself as a spiritual being.”

Andrei Tarkovsky book Sculpting in Time

Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 42

People, Question

“You damn your own soul better than I ever could.”

Leslie Marmon Silko book Ceremony

Source: Ceremony

“Even across the dark, even across the loss, even across the emptiness, soul will speak to soul”

Catherine Fisher (1957) Welsh children's writer

Source: The Dark City

Loss

“When you loved me I gave you the whole sun and stars to play with. I gave you eternity in a single moment, strength of the mountains in one clasp of your arms, and the volume of all the seas in one impulse of your soul.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Love, Mountain, Star, Sun

“Never work just for money or for power. They won't save your soul or help you sleep at night.”

Marian Wright Edelman (1939) American children's rights activist

Money, Sleep, Help, Night

“The dream is the liberation of the spirit from the pressure of external nature, a detachment of the soul from the fetters of matter.”

Sigmund Freud book The Interpretation of Dreams

Source: The Interpretation of Dreams

Dreams, Nature

“It was a kiss to level mountains and shake stars from the sky. It was a kiss to make angels faint and demons weep… a passionate, demanding, soul-searing kiss that nearly knocked the earth off its axis.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Tempt Me at Twilight

Angels, Mountain, Star, Kiss

“Hope knows that if great trials are avoided great deeds remain undone and the possibility of growth into greatness of soul is aborted.”

Brennan Manning (1934–2013) writer, American Roman Catholic priest and United States Marine

Source: Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging

Hope

“He longed for the deep as she longed for the night sky and for white lilies floating on water -- although she still tried to convince herself that love alone could feed her soul.”

Cornelia Funke Reckless

Source: Reckless

Love, Water, Night

“I left her there crying as I walked toward the gate. A piece of my soul had died when Dimitri had fallen. Turning my back on her now, I felt another piece die as well. Soon there wouldn't be anything left inside me.”

Richelle Mead Shadow Kiss

Source: Shadow Kiss

Cry

“I want to be as idle as I can, so that my soul may have time to grow.”

Elizabeth von Arnim (1866–1941) Australian writer

Source: The Solitary Summer

Time

“According to Plato, we don't learn anything. Our soul has lived so many lives that we know everything. Teachers and education can only remind us of what we already know.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Diary

Source: Diary

Education, Learning, Teachers

“Because the world isn’t divided into the special and the ordinary. Everyone has the potential to be extraordinary. As long as you have a soul and free will, you can be anything, do anything, choose anything”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Variant: Because the world isn’t divided into the special and the ordinary. Everyone has the potential to be extraordinary. As long as you have a soul and free will, you can be anything, do anything, choose anything.
Source: City of Heavenly Fire

World

“He died that day because his body had served its purpose. His soul had done what it came to do, learned what it came to learn, and then was free to leave.”

Garth Stein The Art of Racing in the Rain

Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain

Learning

“Most of the upper management of I. S. were undead. I always thought it was because the job was easier if you didn't have a soul.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Dead Witch Walking

“Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O my soul, I loved you then!”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Source: Howl and Other Poems

Love

“Mama used to say, you have to know someone a thousand days before you can glimpse her soul.”

Shannon Hale book Book of a Thousand Days

Source: Book of a Thousand Days

“The kiss…. was not meant to seduce, it was meant to mark a woman's soul.

Chloe”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: The Dark Highlander

Kiss

“I'll never fall in love again… it's like having two souls at the same time.”

Gabriel García Márquez book The General in His Labyrinth

Source: The General in His Labyrinth

Love, Time

“Nah. I got it. Just try not to stake Jean-Luc again if you meet up with him. (Acheron)
I can’t help it. All you fanged people look alike in the dark. (Tabitha)
Yeah. I know what you mean. All you soul-full people look alike to us, too. (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Seize the Night

People, Help

“But the Silent Brothers have tried everything to separate Jace from the heavenly fire, and they can't do it. It's in his soul. So what's their plan, hitting Sebastian over the head with Jace until he passes out?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

"Brother Zachariah said pretty much the same thing. Maybe with less sarcasm."
Clary Fray and Jace Herondale, pg. 100-101
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Heavenly Fire (2014)

“A prayer couched in the words of the soul, is far more powerful than any ritual.”

Paulo Coelho book Brida

Source: Brida

“I had been afraid of the awful presence of the river, which was the soul of the river, but through her [Ultima] I learned that my spirit shared in the spirit of all things.”

Rudolfo Anaya book Bless Me, Ultima

Source: Bless Me, Ultima

Learning

“I thought about the relentless thought-processing, soul-devouring machine that is my brain, and wondered how on earth I was ever going to master it. Then I remembered that line from Jaws and couldn't help smiling: 'We're gonna need a bigger boat.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Smile, Help

Quotes about the soul page 15

Quotes about the soul
page 15