Quotes about the soul

page 16

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

—In Esquire, 1967”

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

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

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

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

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

“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”

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

“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”

“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.”

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

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

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

“I am the soul in limbo.”

“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…”

“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?”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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?”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Love is touching souls.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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”

“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.”

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

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

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

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“It's not that I don't suffer, it's that I know the unimportance of suffering. I know that pain is to be fought and thrown aside, not to be accepted as part of one's soul and as a permanent scar across one's view of existence.”

“I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”

“God, as a loving Father, will stretch our souls at times. The soul is like a violin string: it makes music only when it is stretched…. God will tutor us by trying us because He loves us, not because of indifference!”

“They will come back, come back again,
As long as the red earth rolls.
He never wasted a leaf or a tree.
Do you think he would squander souls?”

“Science without conscience is the soul's perdition.”

“Some things are just so sad that only your soul can do the crying for you..”

“As a general rule, I preferred not to have my soul reaped.”

“Words his soul danced to.”

“May the strength of Ares and wisdom of Athena see you through. (Eros)
And may Hades roast your hoary soul. (Julian)”

“Only themselves understand themselves and the like of themselves,
As souls only understand souls.”

“God does not know whether a skin is black or white, He sees only souls.”

“You're a man who has suffered and wants revenge,' she said. 'Your heart is dead, your soul is in darkness. The devil by your side is smiling because you are playing the game he invented.”

“There isn't a soul on the planet who doesn't crave your approval.”

“Do you think there's such a thing as a ghost who masquerades as a person? Do you believe that there are people whose bodies are still alive here on earth but whose souls are already in hell?”

“It was such an unexpected and genuine smile that if I only had a soul I'm sure I would have felt quite guilty.”

“People weren't firecrackers who burst into the night sky with brilliance and glory, and a moment later faded away to nothing. Our souls had to be more lasting than that.”

“And suddenly solitude fell across his heart like a dusty reflection. He closed his eyes. The dark doors within him opened and he entered. The next performance in the theater of Grenouille's soul was beginning.”

“No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness, and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.”

“I was not a lovable child, and I'd grown into a deeply unlovable adult. Draw a picture of my soul, and it'd be a scribble with fangs.”

“Mysteries of attraction could not always be explained through logic. Sometimes the fractures in two separate souls became the very hinges that held them together.”

“He can touch your soul. And there is a difference between having your heart break and having your soul shatter.”