Quotes about the soul
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“I'm your soul.”

Ilchi Lee (1950) South Korean businessman

Bird of the Soul

“You can’t change the music of your soul.

—In Esquire, 1967”

Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) film, stage, and television actress

Music, Change

“The reading of a fine book is an uninterrupted dialogue in which the book speaks and our soul replies.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Friendship

Books, Reading

“The artist must possess the courageous soul that dares and defies”

Kate Chopin (1850–1904) American author

Source: The Awakening and Selected Stories

Courage

“They never opened the door which leads to the soul.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

“The soul always knows what to do to heal itself. The challenge is to silence the mind”

Caroline Myss (1952) author from the United States

Silence

“I have only one rule in acting--trust the director, and give him heart and soul.”

Ava Gardner (1922–1990) American actress

Heart

“You are the untold story. You are the impassioned truth wanting to scream its existence, to be forever trapped by a strong hand clapped firmly over the mouth of my soul.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: Solipsist

Truth, Strong

“The emerging woman… will be strong-minded, strong-hearted, strong-souled, and strong-bodied… strength and beauty must go together.”

Louisa May Alcott book An Old-Fashioned Girl

Source: An Old-Fashioned Girl

Beauty, Strong, Heart

“The gospel is not a doctrine of the tongue, but of life. It cannot be grasped by reason and memory only, but it is fully understood when it possesses the whole soul and penetrates to the inner recesses of the heart.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Source: Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life

Life, Memory, Heart

“I don’t love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Source: 100 Love Sonnets

Love

“This life's dim windows of the soul
Distorts the heavens from pole to pole
And leads you to believe a lie
When you see with, not through, the eye.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

1810s, The Everlasting Gospel (c. 1818)

Life, Lie

“Dreams are illustrations… from the book your soul is writing about you.”

Marsha Norman (1947) American playwright, screenwriter and novelist

Source: The Fortune Teller

Books, Dreams

“Let my body dwell in poverty, and my hands be as the hands of the toiler; but let my soul be as a temple of remembrance where the treasures of knowledge enter and the inner sanctuary is hope.”

George Eliot book Daniel Deronda

Source: Daniel Deronda

Hope, Knowledge

“Poets knew that isolation in nature, far from people and things man-made, was good for the soul, and he'd always identified with poets.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

People, Nature

“And then their voices stopped and their souls stood still and they ceased being who they had been. Because who they were had always been determined by him.”

Melina Marchetta book On the Jellicoe Road

Source: On the Jellicoe Road

“He's satisfied with himself. If you have a soul you can't be satisfied.”

Graham Greene (1904–1991) English writer, playwright and literary critic

Source: Doctor Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party

“One does not need the size of a dragon to have the soul of a dragon.”

Robin Hobb book Ship of Destiny

Source: Ship of Destiny

“Remember Jesus of Nazareth, staggering on broken feet out of the tomb toward the Resurrection, bearing on his body the proud insignia of the defeat which is victory, the magnificent defeat of the human soul at the hands of God.”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian

Source: The Magnificent Defeat

God, Victory

“The whole course of human history may depend on a change of heart in a single, solitary, even humble individual. For it is within the soul of the individual that the battle between good and evil is waged and ultimately won or lost.”

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

History, Evil, Change, Heart

“Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.”

Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) American folklorist, novelist, short story writer

love, Cute, Powerful, Romantic

“I allowed myself to forget how totally I had fallen in love with Lestat's iridescent eyes, that I'd sold my soul for a many-colored and luminescent thing, thinking that a highly reflective surface conveyed the power to walk on water.”

Anne Rice book Interview with the Vampire

Source: Interview with the Vampire

Love, Color, Thinking, Water

“We are still masters of our fate.
We are still captains of our souls.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Source: The Crisis

Fate

“But certain souls cohere. It's rare but possible. But it takes two powerful wills to make it so.”

Ann Brashares book My Name is Memory

Source: My Name Is Memory

“Teach me to treat all that comes to me with peace of soul and with firm conviction that Your will governs all.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Peace

“The opportunity to love a dog and to treat it with kindness is an opportunity for a lost and selfish heart to be redeemed. They are powerless and innocent, and it is how we treat the humblest among us that surely determines the fate of our souls”

Dean Koontz book The Darkest Evening of the Year

Source: The Darkest Evening of the Year

Love, Fate, Dogs, Heart

“In order to approach a creation as sublime as the Bhagavad-Gita with full understanding it is necessary to attune our soul to it.”

Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) Austrian esotericist

Understanding

“Rape is a crime against sleep and memory; it's after image imprints itself like an irreversible negative from the camera obscure of dreams. Though their bodies would heal, their souls had sustained a damage beyond compensation”

Pat Conroy book The Prince of Tides

Source: The Prince of Tides

Dreams, Sleep, Memory

“There is one friend in the life of each of us who seems not a separate person, however dear and beloved, but an expansion, an interpretation, of one's self, the very meaning of one's soul.”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

Friendship, For Friend, For Bestfriend, Life

“My soul found ease and rest in the companionship of books.”

Pat Conroy (1945–2016) American novelist

Books

“As smoking is to the lungs, so is resentment to the soul; even one puff is bad for you.”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

“Education isn't just about feeding the brain. Art and music feed the heart and soul.”

Julie Garwood (1946) American writer

Education, Art, Music, Heart

“I am the soul in limbo.”

André Breton book Nadja

Source: Nadja

“They did not know what we can now sense as we contemplate the course of history: that change begins in the soul before it shows in our lives…”

Franz Kafka book The Great Wall of China

Source: The Great Wall of China

History, Sense, Change

“Yet who can say how our souls have been stamped by witnessing such a cruel drama? All souls are hostages to their human envelopes, but souls must decay and suffer at such indignity, don't you agree?”

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

Suffering

“The devil has put a penalty on all things we enjoy in life. Either we suffer in our health, or we suffer in our soul, or we get fat.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Attributed in Einstein: The Life and Times by Ronald W. Clark (1971), p. 737. The only source given in the end notes is "personal information". Einstein is said to have made this comment when a box of candy was being passed around after dinner, and he said that his doctor wouldn't let him eat it. The book also says that 'A friend asked him why it was the devil and not God who had imposed the penalty. "What's the difference?" he answered. "One has a plus in front, the other a minus."'.
Attributed in posthumous publications

Life, Health, Penalty, Suffering

“Mahoney: "Thirty-seven seconds. Great, well done; now we wait."

Mr. Magorium: "No, we breathe, we pulse, we regenerate. our hearts beat, our minds create, our souls ingest. Thirty-seven seconds well used is a lifetime.”

Suzanne Weyn book Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

Source: Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

Waiting, Heart

“The sun is nice but it lights things up so much that you can't see very far… The night time is better. It stretches your soul to the stars.”

Fynn (1919–1999) British writer

Source: Mister God, This is Anna

Star, Light, Time, Sun

“I need to write about love. I need to think and think and write about love-otherwise, my soul won’t survive.”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Source: Eleven Minutes

Love, Thinking

“The only constant in the soul of man is inconstancy; anything and everything else can pass out of fashion--even something as utilitarian as a hill stuffed full of corpses.”

Scott Lynch The Lies of Locke Lamora

Source: The Lies of Locke Lamora

Fashion

“Your welcome means more to me, Ivy Alisha Tamwood, than a thousand souls. Watching Rachel work is a wonder of one catastrophe after another.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

“There's a rebel lying deep in my soul. Anytime anybody tells me the trend is such and such, I go the opposite direction. I hate the idea of trends. I hate imitation; I have a reverence for individuality.”

Clint Eastwood (1930) actor and director from the United States

Source: Wild Open Spaces: Why We Love Westerns

Hate, Lying, Idea

“It takes a huge effort to free yourself from memory, but when you succeed, you start to realize that you’re capable of far more than you imagined. You live in this vast body called the Universe, which contains all the solutions and all the problems. Visit your soul; don’t visit your past. The Universe goes through many mutations and carries the past with it. We call each of those mutations a ‘life,’ but just as the cells in your body change and yet you remain the same, so time does not pass, it merely changes.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Aleph (2011)

Life, Imagination, Problem, Effort

“Blake said that the body was the soul's prison unless the five senses are fully developed and open. He considered the senses the 'windows of the soul.' When sex involves all the senses intensely, it can be like a mystical experience.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

Sex, Sense

“Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

“If they tell you that she died of sleeping pills you must know that she died of a wasting grief, of a slow bleeding at the soul.”

Clifford Odets (1906–1963) Playwright, screenwriter, director, actor

Depressing, Sleep

“Doesn't it seem to you," asked Madame Bovary, "that the mind moves more freely in the presence of that boundless expanse, that the sight of it elevates the soul and gives rise to thoughts of the infinite and the ideal?”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

“I believe in the immortality of the soul because I have within me immortal longings.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Source: To Love This Life: Quotations By Helen Keller

“I can't go back because I lost all my Soul Reaper powers! - Rukia
You lost your powers? What are they, socks? - Ichigo”

Tite Kubo (1977) Japanese manga artist

Source: Bleach, Volume 01

“In my view, I am often immensely rich, not in money, but (although just now perhaps not all the time) rich because I have found my metier, something I can devote myself to heart and soul and that gives inspiration and meaning to my life.”

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

Life, Money, Time, Heart

“She doesn't speak, and I say nothing more. We just stare at each other, letting the tears roll down our cheeks. That's what tears are for, after all. A way for the soul to bleed.”

Cody McFadyen (1968) Cody McFadyen

Source: Shadow Man

Way, Tear

“Now take my hand and hold it tight.
I will not fail you here tonight,
For failing you, I fail myself
And place my soul upon a shelf
In Hell's library without light.
I will not fail you here tonight.”

Dean Koontz (1945) American author

Source: The Book Of Counted Sorrows

Hell, Light

“I never had intimate friends, and the few who came close are in New York. By which I mean they're dead, because that's where I suppose condemned souls go in order not to endure the truth of their past lives.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Source: Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Truth, Past, Dead

“Love is touching souls.”

Joni Mitchell (1943) Canadian musician

Love

“Laughter opens your heart and soothes your soul. No one should ever take life so seriously that they forget to laugh at themselves.”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

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

Life, Laughter, Heart, Forgetting

“And in this passion for understanding her soul lay close to his; she had him all to herself. But he must be made abstract first.”

D.H. Lawrence book Sons and Lovers

Source: Sons and Lovers

Understanding, Passion

“Was it fair to say I didn't know the full state of my soul?”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

“But if you believe yourself worthy of the thing you fought so hard to get, then you become an instrument of God, you help the Soul of the World, and you understand why you are here.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

God, World, Understanding, Help

“Sometimes, as much as writing saves one’s own life, you cannot imagine how it will save another’s. This is another reason why it is important to do the work, over and over again. It is food, the kind a soul needs.”

Lilith Saintcrow (1976) American writer

Life, Food, Imagination

“Misogyny… is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and woman who is confronted with it.”

Joss Whedon (1964) American director, writer, and producer for television and film

Life, Parting

“The wealth of a soul is measured by how much it can feel… its poverty by how little.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Invincible

Feeling, Wealth

“Give me love, give me peace on earth,
Give me light, give me life, keep me free from birth,
Give me hope, help me cope, with this heavy load,
Trying to, touch and reach you with, heart and soul.”

George Harrison (1943–2001) British musician, former member of the Beatles

Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth) (1973)
Lyrics

Love, Life, Peace, Hope

“How odd to watch a mortal kindle / Then to dwindle day by day / Knowing their bright souls are tinder / And the wind will have its way”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

Way

“One day the absurdity of the almost universal human belief in the slavery of other animals will be palpable. We shall then have discovered our souls and become worthier of sharing this planet with them.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Universe, Animals

“Begin to see yourself as a soul with a body rather than a body with a soul.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

“Tonight I gave you my soul, and I am dead." - Christine, from Gaston Leroux's: The Phantom of the Opera.”

Gaston Leroux book The Phantom of the Opera

Source: The Phantom of the Opera

Dead

“Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned. May not one lost soul be permitted to abstain?”

George Bernard Shaw Man and Superman

Source: Man and Superman

Music, Hell

“Men are the devils of the earth, and the animals are its tormented souls.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Source: Essays and Aphorisms

Men, Animals

“That is beautiful which is produced by the inner need, which springs from the soul.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Source: Concerning the Spiritual in Art

Beauty, Spring

“There is in certain living souls a quality of loneliness unspeakable, so great it must be shared as company is shared by lesser beings. Such a loneliness is mine; so know by this that in immensity there is one lonelier than you.”

Theodore Sturgeon book E Pluribus Unicorn

Source: E Pluribus Unicorn

Loneliness

“Canned food is a perversion,' Ignatius said. 'I suspect that it is ultimately very damaging to the soul.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces

Food

“You ask why I make my home in the mountain forest,
and I smile, and am silent,
and even my soul remains quiet:
it lives in the other world
which no one owns.
The peach trees blossom,
The water flows.”

Li Bai (701–762) Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty poetry period

World, Smile, Home, Mountain

“Friendship is something in the soul. It is a thing one feels. It is not a return for something.”

Graham Greene book The Heart of the Matter

Source: The Heart of the Matter

Friendship, Feeling

“Books have souls. Or so romantics like me tend to think.”

Douglas Rushkoff (1961) writer, American media theorist

Books, Thinking

“With few words I shall make thee understand my soul.”

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet

Understanding

“I dance for no reason, for reasons you can't dance,
Call me an activist of intellectualized circumstance
You can't learn my steps until you unlearn your thoughts Spirit, soul, can't be store-bought.”

Saul Williams (1972) American singer, musician, poet, writer, and actor

Learning, Dance

“I love being reminded that existence itself is all about the tangling of souls.”

Carolyn Mackler (1973) American writer

Source: Tangled

Love

“I have forced myself to begin writing when I've been utterly exhausted, when I've felt my soul as thin as a playing card…and somehow the activity of writing changes everything.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

Change

“Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"The Sick Chamber," The New Monthly Magazine (August 1830), reprinted in Essays of William Hazlitt, selected and edited by Frank Carr (London, 1889)
Source: Essays of William Hazlitt: Selected and Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Frank Carr

Secret, Books