Quotes about the soul
page 17

“Fantasy is one of the soul's brighter porcelains.”

Source: Beach Music

“There is something magical about running; after a certain distance, it transcends the body. Then a bit further, it transcends the mind. A bit further yet, and what you have before you, laid bare, is the soul.”

Kristin Armstrong (1973) American road bicycle racer

“Funny, how one good cookie could calm the mind and even elevate a troubled soul.”

Dean Koontz book False Memory

Source: False Memory

“And you take care, too, Shahara. Remember the lies we tell ourselves to survive seldom bring peace to our souls. (Nero)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of Fire

Peace

“You have friends who actually care about you and speak the language of the inner self. You have avoided them of late. Your soul is as disheveled as your apartment, and until you can clean it up a little you don't want to invite anyone inside.”

Jay McInerney book Bright Lights, Big City

Source: Bright Lights, Big City

“She had not really a sensitive soul, but to put it in exact terms, was possessed by an uncontrollable feeling of mind”

Alessandro Baricco book Ocean Sea

Source: Ocean Sea

Feeling

“Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge book The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Source: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Sea

“I’m the god of funerals. I know every death custom in the world—how to die properly, how to prepare the body and soul for the afterlife. I live for death.”
“You must be fun at parties,” I said.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Death, God, World

“In the traditional Islamic world, the hierarchy of the arts was not based on whether they were "fine" or "industrial" or "minor". It was based upon the effect of art on the soul of the human being.”

Seyyed Hossein Nasr (1933) Iranian philosopher

Source: A Young Muslim's Guide to the Modern World

World, Art

“There is absolutely nothing wrong with returning to the house you grew up in every now and again. It's good for the soul.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: P.S. I Love You

Housing

“I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

"The Negro Speaks of Rivers," from The Weary Blues (1926)

World

“So plant your own gardens and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

Flowers, Waiting

“I carry thoughts of you like my own personal constellation. How far away you are, my dearest friend, but no farther than those fixed stars in my soul.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Love in the Afternoon

Star, Personality

“You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.”

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

Pearls of Wisdom

Faith, Teachers

“A mother's body remembers her babies-the folds of soft flesh, the softly furred scalp against her nose. Each child has it's own entreaties to body and soul.”

Barbara Kingsolver (1955) American author, poet and essayist

Baby

“War don't ennoble men, it turns 'em into dogs. It poisons the soul.”

James Jones book The Thin Red Line

Source: The Thin Red Line

Men, War, Dogs

“I don't like lies," said Bran, and I knew I'd failed to keep the pain of his revelation from my face. "Not even lies of omission. Hard truths can be dealt with, triumphed over, but lies will destroy your soul.”

Patricia Briggs book Moon Called

Source: Moon Called

Pain, Truth

“Love and the Soul (for that is what Psyche means) had sought and, after sore trials, found each other; and that union could never be broken. (Cupid and Psyche)”

Edith Hamilton book Mythology

Source: Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes

Love

“My soul will find yours.”

Jude Deveraux (1947) American writer

Source: A Knight in Shining Armor

“If something burns your soul with purpose and desire, it’s your duty to be reduced to ashes by it. Any other form of existence will be yet another dull book in the library of life.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Life, Books

“No matter our talent, we all know in the midnight of our souls that 90 percent of what we do is less than our best.”

Robert McKee (1941) American academic specialised in seminars for screenwriters

Source: Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don't have genuine souls.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

“A blind man can see what she feels for you and you for her. Your souls are not merely entwined; they are fused.”

Melina Marchetta Finnikin of the Rock

Source: Finnikin of the Rock

Feeling

“The moment love is born: the woman cannot resist the voice calling forth her terrified soul; the man cannot resist the woman whose soul thus responds to his voice.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

pg 160
Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part Four: Soul and Body

Love

“So long as my body lives, and yours -- we are one flesh," he whispered, "And when my body shall cease, my soul will still be yours. Claire -- I swear by my hope of heaven, I will not be parted from you.”

Diana Gabaldon (1952) American author

Hope, Parting

“Dreams nourish the soul just as food nourishes the body. The pleasure of the search and of adventure feeds our dreams.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Pleasure, Food, Dreams, Search

“Your soul shines through even if you haven't got mascara on”

Louise Rennison (1951–2016) British writer

Source: Are These My Basoomas I See Before Me?

“Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity and ruin.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

“A breath of Paris preserves the soul.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

“And he whose soul is flat -- the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

Source: Renascence and Other Poems

“The soul is like an uninhabited world
that comes to life only when
God lays His head
against us.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Life, God, World

“If aught must be lost, ‘twill be my honor for yours. If one must be forsaken, ‘twill be my soul for yours. Should death come anon, ‘twill be my life for yours. I am Given.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Kiss of the Highlander

Life, Death

“the body is wiser than its inhabitants. the body is the soul. the body is god’s messenger.”

Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic

God

“Honest and earnest criticism from those whose interests are most nearly touched,- criticism of writers by readers, of government by those governed, of leaders by those led, - this is the soul of democracy and the safeguard of modern society”

W.E.B. Du Bois book The Souls of Black Folk

Source: The Souls of Black Folk

Democracy

“A Half-Blood of the eldest gods, Shall reach sixteen against all odds
And see the world in endless sleep
The Hero's soul, cursed blade shall reap
A single choice shall end his days
Olympus to preserve or raze.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

God, World, Sleep

“So what if man's body evolved from the monkeys? Whether he came from monkeys or fish is unimportant. The important idea is that when the body became "human" enough, the first human soul slipped into it.”

Garth Stein The Art of Racing in the Rain

Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain

Idea, Fish

“Intuition is seeing with the soul.”

Dean Koontz (1945) American author

“It's easy to become anything you wish… so long as you're willing to forfeit your soul.”

Gene Luen Yang American Born Chinese

Source: American Born Chinese

“To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That's what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul - would you understand why that's much harder?”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

Life, World, Understanding

“The armour of falsehood is subtly wrought out of darkness, and hides a man not only from others, but from his own soul.”

E.M. Forster book A Room with a View

Source: A Room with a View

“She didn't know how to love, to give herself to someone, to out herself in someone else's keeping and take him into hers. She didn't trust anyone with her heart - or the darker places of her soul.”

Christine Feehan American writer

Source: Turbulent Sea

Love, Heart

“Our lovemaking was always risk and promise-for if he held my life in his hands when he lay with me, I held his soul, and knew it.”

Diana Gabaldon book The Fiery Cross

Source: The Fiery Cross

Life

“I am so fed up and joyless that not only have I nothing to fill my soul, I cannot even conceive of anything that could possibly satisfy it - alas, not even the bliss of heaven.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

“Missing rubs the soul raw.”

Sarah Dunant (1950) English writer, broadcaster and critic

Source: Mapping The Edge

“There are people whose souls have just withered, people who are willing to go along with anything evil - anything so as not to be suspected of disagreeing with whoever is in power.”

Vasily Grossman book Life and Fate

Source: Life and Fate

People, Evil

“The birds of night peck at the first stars
that flash like my soul when I love you.”

Pablo Neruda book Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

Source: Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

Love, Star, Bird, Night

“Don't I ever do anything else but take soulful walks down the Bayswater Road, I thought, as I walked soulfully down the Baywater Road.”

Martin Amis book The Rachel Papers

Source: The Rachel Papers

“the work of salvation, in its full sense, is (1) about whole human beings, not merely souls; (2) about the present, not simply the future; and (3) about what God does through us, not merely what God does in and for us.”

N.T. Wright (1948) Anglican bishop

God, Sense, Future

“To conform is to lose your soul”

Joshua Ferris Then We Came to the End

Source: Then We Came to the End

“People who know and love the same books as you, have the road map to your soul.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Love, People, Books

“The shelf was filled with books that were hard to read, that could devastate and remake one's soul, and that, when they were finished, had a kick like a mule.”

Mark Helprin book Winter's Tale

Source: Winter's Tale

Books, Reading

“They say the eyes are the window to the soul.”

Wendy Mass A Mango-Shaped Space

Source: A Mango-Shaped Space

“It is said, in Imardin, that the wind has a soul, and that it wails through the narrow streets because it is grieved by what it finds there.”

Trudi Canavan book The Magicians' Guild

Source: The Magicians' Guild

“I looked into his eyes, and I realized he was the same man I'd seen in my dreams. His face might be totally different, but the same soul was in there, the same intelligence and all the sadness.”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

Sadness, Dreams, Intelligence

“The big truth for men is that often we have to leave home in the first half of life before we can return home at a later stage and find our soul there.”

Richard Rohr (1943) American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest

Life, Men, Truth, Home

“Hard truths can be dealt with, triumphed over, but lies will destroy your soul.”

Patricia Briggs book Moon Called

Source: Moon Called

Truth

“Do they sense it, these dead writers, when their books are read? Does a pinprick of light appear in their darkness? Is their soul stirred by the feather touch of another mind reading theirs? I do hope so.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

Books, Hope, Sense, Light

“Just coffee. Black—like my soul.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Simon and Clary, pg. 36
Variant: What do you want?"
"Just coffee. Black - like my soul.
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones (2007)

Coffee

“Of all the disorders in the soul, envy is the only one no one confesses to.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Envy

“There is more in every person's soul than we think.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Thinking, Personality

“People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love (2006)
Context: People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.
A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.
A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master…

love, Cute, Romantic, For Her

“The world has a soul and whoever understands that soul can also understand the language of many things.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Variant: I learned that the world has a soul, and that whoever understands that soul can also understand the language of things.
Source: The Alchemist

World, Understanding

“If you want to be surrounded by Souls, become identified with your Soul.
It takes one to know one!”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

“How about a cheer
For all those bad girls
And all the boys
That play that rock and roll?
They love it
Like you love Jesus.
It does the same thing
To their souls.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Have Love Will Travel
Lyrics, The Last DJ (2002)

Love, Girl, Boy

“It has always seemed absurd to suppose that a god would choose for his companions, during all eternity, the dear souls whose highest and only ambition is to obey.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Source: Individuality From 'The Gods and Other Lectures'

God

“I love his dear eyes in which the vulnerability and beauty of his soul can be plainly read.”

Alice Walker book The Color Purple

Source: The Color Purple

Love, Beauty, Reading

“You can’t buy time, Nick. Ever. It’s the only thing in life you can’t get most of, and it’s the one thing that will mercilessly tear you up when it’s gone. It takes no pity on no soul and no heart.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Invincible

Life, Tear, Time, Heart

“The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mold…The same reason that makes us wrangle with a neighbor creates a war betwixt princes.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 12
Essais (1595), Book II

War

“I think of myself as an intelligent, sensitive human being with the soul of a clown which always forces me to blow it at the most important moments.”

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

Intelligence, Thinking

“The ordinary acts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest.”

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

Home

“True, you're the weakest of us all, but you're still one of the five, and there is power in collecting the complete set."
He paused, then grinned. "The complete Set! That's funny! Now let's consume your energy and entomb your soul, shall we?”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

“I want to fill every part of you, breathe the air from your lungs and leave my handprints on your soul. I want to give you more pleasure than you can bear.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Devil in Winter

Pleasure, Parting

“We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all.”

Kazuo Ishiguro book Never Let Me Go

Source: Never Let Me Go

Art

“I loved all the boys with soft sad eyes, and lost souls.”

Grace Coddington (1941) former model and the creative director of American Vogue magazine

Source: Grace: A Memoir

Love, Sadness, Boy

“The thinnest slice would be teeming with memories of a love so strong it turned you inside out and left you gasping, and would be an identical match to a slice stored in the heart of a soul mate.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Love, Strong, Memory, Heart

“The distant soul can shake the distant friend's soul and make the longing felt, over untold miles.”

John Masefield (1878–1967) English poet and writer

Distant

“He’s a restless soul, always looking for another chance to drive,’ Nico said. ‘The last few years, he’s been my driver whenever I need one.’
‘You have a zombie chauffeur,’ Leila said.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Chance

“Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain —
To thy high requiem become a sod.”

John Keats Ode to a Nightingale

Stanza 6
Poems (1820), Ode to a Nightingale
Source: Complete Poems and Selected Letters

Love, Death, Pain, Art

“'Music opens your soul, makes you ready.'
- 'Ready for what?'
- He smiles big. 'Exactly.”

Libba Bray Going Bovine

Source: Going Bovine

Smile, Music

“Once you believe in yourself
and see your soul as divine and precious,
you'll automatically be converted
to a being who can create miracles.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

“Argue not concerning God,…re-examine all that you have been told at church or school or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your soul…”

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

God, Books, School

“The cleanest souls are the easiest to soil.”

Jasper Fforde book The Eyre Affair

Source: The Eyre Affair

“The first thing which I can record concerning myself is, that I was born. These are wonderful words. This life, to which neither time nor eternity can bring diminution - this everlasting living soul, began. My mind loses itself in these depths.”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

Life, Time

“Madness, mayhem, erotic vandalism, devastation of innumerable souls - while we scream and perish, History licks a finger and turns the page.”

Thomas Ligotti (1953) American horror author

History, Madness

“Why should we think upon things that are lovely Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Love, Life, Thinking

“Old pain doesn't completely die. Time may soothe it, stoke over it until it looks like it has healed, but it never dies properly. It stays with you, it lives in the cracks of your soul, waiting for moments when you feel true pain”

Dorothy Koomson (1971) British writer

Source: Goodnight, Beautiful

Pain, Feeling, Time, Waiting

“To die for lack of love is horrible. The asphyxia of the soul.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Love

“It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him; and that not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Catherine Earnshaw (Ch. IX).
Wuthering Heights (1847)
Context: I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy. That will do to explain my secret, as well as the other. I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low I shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him; and that not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.

Love

“You're mine, mo duinne… Mine alone, now and forever… Aye, I mean to use ye hard, my Sassenach… I want to own you, to posses you, body and soul." pge 319”

Diana Gabaldon book Outlander

Source: Outlander

“Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Source: Letters of John Keats

Depressing, Pain, World, School