Quotes about the soul
page 18

“Nor does God whisper through the trees. His voice is not to be mistaken. When men hear it they fall to their knees and their souls are riven and they cry out to Him and there is no fear but only wildness of heart that springs from such longing…”

Cormac McCarthy book The Crossing

Source: The Crossing

Men, God, Fear, Spring

“The happiest people I have known have been those who gave themselves no concern about their own souls, but did their uttermost to mitigate the miseries of others.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) Suffragist and Women's Rights activist

Source: History of Woman Suffrage, Volumes I-III

People

“This is where you can find your soul if you dare. Where you can touch that part of you that you've never dared look at before. Do not come here and ask me to show you how to draw a face. Ask me to help you find the wind.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

Help, Parting, Drawing

“Maybe stories are just data with a soul.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

“If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.”

Donna Tartt book The Secret History

Source: The Secret History

God, Beauty, Strong

“Even when there were no more options for the body, the heart's wishes find a way out, and as with all warmth, love rises. Besides, the will to fly was in the nature of the soul, so its home had to be up above”

Jessica Bird book Lover Eternal

Source: Lover Eternal

Love, Way, Home, Nature

“What we call Life is a condition of the soul. And the soul must improve in happiness and wisdom, except by its own fault. These tears in our eyes, these faintings of the flesh, will not hinder such improvement.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) English poet, author

Life, Wisdom, Tear, Happiness

“I don't care," said Seth. "I would have done it. I would have sold my soul for you. You and me… I told you. Something's always going to keep us near each other… even if we aren't together.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Succubus Heat

“I said he kissed me. Really kissed me. It rocked me to my soul. It was brutal. It was brilliant. It was horrible. I thought I was going to die.”

Margaret Way (1900) Australian romance fiction writer

Source: Genni's Dilemma

Kiss

“Forgiveness is healing—everything is energy—thoughts create—we are all connected—what you resist persists—true love never dies—the soul’s immortality is the only true immortality”

Alyson Nöel (1965) writer

Source: Everlasting

Love, Forgiveness

“I can speak to my soul only when the two of us are off exploring deserts or cities or mountains or roads.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Source: Aleph

Mountain

“The supposedly immaterial soul, we now know, can be bisected with a knife, altered by chemicals, started or stopped by electricity, and extinguished by a sharp blow or by insufficient oxygen.”

Steven Pinker book How the Mind Works

Source: How the Mind Works

“You should be concerned about the state of your soul, not the state of your bank account.”

Jennifer Weiner (1970) American writer

Source: Little Earthquakes

“The Buddhists say if you meet somebody and your heart pounds, your hands shake, your knees go weak, that’s not the one. When you meet your ‘soul mate’ you’ll feel calm. No anxiety, no agitation.”

Monica Drake (1967) American writer

Source: Clown Girl

Feeling, Heart

“the same question arose in every soul: "For what, for whom, must I kill and be killed?"… p982”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

Question

“A vision we give to others of who and what they could become has power when it echoes what the spirit has already spoken into their souls.”

Larry Crabb (1944) American writer

“Gentleness clears the soul
Love cleans the mind
And makes it Free.”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

Love

“When you steal a people's language, you leave their soul bewildered.”

John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher

People

“And our problems will crumble apart, the soul / blow through like a wind, and here where we live
will all be clean again, with fresh bread on the table.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Source: 100 Love Sonnets

Problem

“There is no joy in the soul that has forgotten what God prizes.”

Oswald Chambers (1874–1917) British missionary

God, Joy

“Our great human adventure is the evolution of consciousness. We are in this life to enlarge the soul, liberate the spirit, and light up the brain.”

Tom Robbins book Wild Ducks Flying Backward

Source: Wild Ducks Flying Backward

Life, Light

“You are as young as you feel. If you begin to feel the warmth of your soul, there will be a youthfulness in you that no one will be able to take away from you.”

John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher

Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Youth, Feeling

“Two people who are true friends are like two bodies with one soul”

Chaim Potok (1929–2002) American rabbi

People

“I think you have to know who you are. Get to know the monster that lives in your soul. Dive deep into your soul and explore it. I don’t want to renounce my dark side. The truth has always held an enormous interest for me.”

Tori Amos (1963) American singer

Truth, Thinking

“Valor is strength, not of legs and arms, but of heart and soul; it consists not in the worth of our horse or our weapons, but in our own.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Source: Cannibales

Heart, Horse

“Regarding the fitness craze: America has lost its soul; now it's trying to save its body.”

George Carlin book Brain Droppings

Source: Brain Droppings

“Gideon was an untamed animal behind closed doors, a lover who bared me to the soul every time he made love to me.”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: Entwined with You

Love, Lovers, Time, Animals

“Here was a torture that Greek inventors of the Feast and the Stone had omitted from their Hades: the Blanket of Self-Deception. A lovely warm blanket as far as it covered the soul in torment, but it never quite covered everything.”

Jonathan Franzen book The Corrections

Source: The Corrections

Love

“Stop being so fruitlessly busy and. Use your. Reach out into the unknown and dream of how you can enlarge your experience and improve your mind and your soul and your world.”

Mary Balogh (1944) Welsh-Canadian novelist

World, Dreams, Business

“The music in his laughter had a way of rounding off the missing notes in her soul.”

Gloria Naylor (1950–2016) American writer

Source: Linden Hills

Music, Way, Laughter

“I dreamt a limitless book,
A book unbound,
Its leaves scattered in fantastic abundance
On every line there was a new horizon drawn,
New heavens supposed;
New states, new souls.”

Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist

Books

“Kindness is the light that dissolves all walls between souls, families, and nations.”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

Relationship, Family, Light

“I don't deserve a soul, yet I still have one. I know because it hurts.”

Douglas Coupland The Gum Thief

Source: The Gum Thief

Hurt

“There are certain mortal moments and minutes that matter. Certain hingepoints in the history of each human. Some seconds are so decisive they shrink the soul, while others are spent, so as to stretch the soul.”

Neal A. Maxwell (1926–2004) Mormon leader

History, Decision

“To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

“Choose rather to be strong in soul than in body.”

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher

"Pythagorean Ethical Sentences From Stobæus" (1904)
Choose rather to be strong of soul than strong of body.
As quoted in Florilegium, I.22, as translated in Dictionary of Quotations (1906) by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p. 396
Florilegium

Powerful, Strong

“A sense of wrongness, of fraught unease, as if long nails scraped the surface of the moon, raising the hackles of the soul.”

China Miéville book Perdido Street Station

Source: Perdido Street Station

Sense

“No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere…”

Emily Brontë (1818–1848) English novelist and poet

No Coward Soul Is Mine (1846)
Context: No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heaven's glories shine,
And Faith shines equal, arming me from Fear.
Context: p>No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heaven's glories shine,
And Faith shines equal, arming me from Fear.O God within my breast,
Almighty, ever-present Deity!
Life — that in me has rest,
As I — undying Life — have power in Thee!Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts: unutterably vain;
Worthless as withered weeds,
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main...</p

World

“I'd sell my soul to have you. In my whole life, you'll always be what I wanted most."

~ Hardy Cates”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Sugar Daddy

Life

“Enjoy your life. No curse hangs over you, nor did it ever. No devil chases after your soul. Sing and dance and be merry.”

Christopher Pike book Sati

Source: Sati

Life, Singing, Dance

“A lie is an affront to the soul, as well as an insult to the intelligence of the person to whom one lies.”

Judith McNaught (1944) American writer

Source: Something Wonderful

Lie, Intelligence, Personality

“When God wants to make a mushroom, he does it overnight, but when He wants to make a giant oak, He takes a hundred years. Great souls are grown through struggles and storms and seasons of suffering. Be patient with the process.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

God, Suffering, Season

“Writing is a process, a journey into memory and the soul.”

Isabel Allende (1942) Chilean writer

Memory

“English is so hierarchical. In Cree, we don't have animate-inanimate comparisons between things. Animals have souls that are equal to ours. Rocks have souls, trees have souls. Trees are 'who,' not 'what.”

Tomson Highway (1951) Canadian and Cree writer

Tree, Animals

“… freedom being the sauce best beloved by the boyish soul.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

Freedom

“We should read to give our souls a chance to luxuriate.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Chance, Reading

“It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainment.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Help

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Life, Star, Birth, Sleep

“To make great art, you had to expose your soul, and some things should be left safely in the dark.”

Patricia Briggs book Hunting Ground

Source: Hunting Ground

Art

“Reason is our soul's left hand, Faith her right,
By these we reach divinity”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

Faith

“the man in black travels with your soul in his pocket.”

Stephen King book The Gunslinger

Source: The Gunslinger

Travel

“The soul was not cured,
it was as full as a clothes closet
of dresses that did not fit.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Clothes

“She can't help it,' he said. 'She's got the soul of a poet and the emotional makeup of a junkyard dog.”

Stephen King book Under the Dome

Source: Under the Dome

Dogs, Help

“Variety is the soul of pleasure.”

Aphra Behn The Rover

The Rover, Part II, Act I (1681).

Pleasure

“Body and soul, let's all go / transformed into arrows! / Piercing the air / body and soul, let's go / with no turning back.”

Ko Un (1933) korean poet

“We will never be happy until we make God the source of our fulfillment and the answer to our longings. He is the only one who should have power over our souls.”

Stormie Omartian (1942) American writer

Source: The Power of a Praying Woman

God, Happiness

“Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

World, Learning, Water, Heart

“Memories aren't stored in the heart or the head or even the soul, if you ask me, but in the spaces between any given two people.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Vanishing Acts

People, Memory, Heart

“The torture of a bad conscience is the hell of a living soul.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Hell

“The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

Men

“Oh Lion in a peculiar guise,
Sharp Roman road to Paradise,
Come eat me up, I'll pay thy toll
With all my flesh, and keep my soul.”

Stevie Smith (1902–1971) poet, novelist, illustrator, performer

Source: Selected Poems

“Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990)

“For the sake of one soul. For one loved one. For one life." I called power into my blasting rod, and its tip glowed incandescent white. "The way I see it, there's nothing else worth fighting a war for.”

Jim Butcher book Grave Peril

Source: Grave Peril

Love, Life, War, Way

“A genuine odyssey is not about piling up experiences. It is a deeply felt, risky, unpredictable tour of the soul.”

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

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

“Don't you think it would be wonderful to get rid of everything and everybody and just go some place where you don't know a soul?”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Thinking

“All things are inconstant except the faith in the soul, which changes all things and fills their inconstancy with light, but though I seem to be driven out of my country as a misbeliever I have found no man yet with a faith like mine.”

James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish novelist and poet

Letter to Augusta Gregory (22 November 1902), from James Joyce by Richard Ellmann (1959) [Oxford University Press, 1983 edition, <small> ISBN 0-195-03381-7</small>] (p. 107)

Faith, Light, Change, Country

“Lies and secrets, Tessa, they are like a cancer in the soul. They eat away what is good and leave only destruction behind.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Secret

“But just make someone who has fallen in love listen to his stomach rumble, and the unity of body and soul, that lyrical illusion of the age of science, instantly fades away.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Love, Age, Science

“Melancholy held me hostage, and the bees built a hive of sadness in my soul.”

Laurie Halse Anderson book Chains

Source: Chains

Sadness, Bee

“The eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul.”

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

25 May 1843
1820s, Journals (1822–1863)
Variant: The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.

“I don't think there is such a thing as
an intelligent mega-rich
person.

For who with a fine mind can look
out upon this world and
hoard

what can nourish
a thousand
souls.”

Kabir (1440–1518) Indian mystic poet

World, Intelligence, Thinking, Personality

“Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.”

James Joyce book A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Source: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Life, Reality, Time

“A good book is the purest essence of a human soul.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Books

“Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never Is, but always To be blest.
The soul, uneasy, and confin'd from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.”

Alexander Pope An Essay on Man

Source: An Essay on Man

Life, Hope, Home, Spring

“God know that a mother need fortitude and courage and tolerance and flexibility and patience and firmness and nearly every other brave aspect of the human soul.”

Phyllis McGinley (1905–1978) writer and poet

God, Courage, Patience

“My soul has learned what it came to learn, and all the other things are just things. We can't have everything we want. Sometimes, we simply have to believe.”

Garth Stein The Art of Racing in the Rain

Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain

Learning

“Many men spend their lives living in the wrong corner of their souls, mainly out of fear of what they might find on the other side.”

Sally Gardner (1954) British children's writer and illustrator

Men, Fear

“Love is not about conquest. The truth is a man can only find true love when he surrenders to it. When he opens his heart to the partner of his soul and says: "Here it is! The very essence of me! It is yours to nurture or destroy.”

David Gemmell (1948–2006) British author of heroic fantasy

Source: Lord of the Silver Bow

Love, Truth, Heart

“I traveled the globe as always, handing souls to the conveyor belt of eternity.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Travel

“Some people feel love in their hearts, Julie. Some of us feel it all way into our souls. We're the ones who can't forget.”

Judith McNaught (1944) American writer

Source: Paradise

Love, People, Way, Feeling

“We must meet hate with love. We must meet physical force with soul force.”

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

1950s, Give Us the Ballot (1957)
Context: We must meet hate with love. We must meet physical force with soul force. There is still a voice crying out through the vista of time, saying: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you." Then, and only then, can you matriculate into the university of eternal life. That same voice cries out in terms lifted to cosmic proportions: "He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword." And history is replete with the bleached bones of nations that failed to follow this command. We must follow nonviolence and love.

Love, Hate

“That's because no one is born with anger. And when we die, the soul is freed from it. But now, here, in order to move on, you must understand why you felt what you did, and why you no longer feel it.”

Mitch Albom book The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Source: The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Feeling, Understanding, Anger

“That's what living in their world is-a big lie. An illusion where everyone looks the other way and pretends that nothing unpleasant exists at all, no goblins of the dark, no ghosts of the soul.”

Libba Bray (1964) American teen writer

Lie, World, Way

“Put your soul in the palm of my hand for me to look at, like a crystal jewel. I'll sketch it in words…”

Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972) Japanese author, Nobel Prize winner

“I am your hope, your guide - your soul.”

Ilchi Lee (1950) South Korean businessman

Bird of the Soul

Hope

“In the end, we should simply imagine a joke; a long joke that's being continually retold in an accent too thick and too strange to ever be completely understood. Life is that joke. The soul is its punchline.”

Tom Robbins Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates

Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates (2000)

Life, Imagination

“He struggled with himself, too. I saw it -- I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself.”

Joseph Conrad book Heart of Darkness

Source: Heart of Darkness

Fear, Faith

“Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions.”

Agatha Christie And Then There Were None

The ABC Murders (1936)
Source: And Then There Were None

“Perhaps some of us have to go through dark and devious ways before we can find the river of peace or the highroad to the soul's destination.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Source: The Hero With a Thousand Faces

Peace, Way

“Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul's weather to all who can read it.”

Martha Graham (1894–1991) American dancer and choreographer

I Am A Dancer (1952)
Context: The body is shaped, disciplined, honoured, and in time, trusted. The movement becomes clean, precise, eloquent, truthful. Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul's weather to all who can read it. This might be called the law of the dancer's life — the law which governs the outer aspects.

Reading, Weather