Quotes about the soul
page 21

“Bert is super kind, a super sweetheart, but he's pretty crazy at the same time. He's a little manic, but he definitely has a great heart and a great soul. He's just a little bit hard to hold down. Which is good. It's a great quality for a frontman.”

Bert McCracken (1982) American musician

Jeph Howard, bassist for The Used, reported in Dave Wedge (March 21, 2007) "MUSIC: The Used thrives in chaotic universe", Boston Herald.
About

Time, Heart

“My first poem was a bolt from the blue … it broke a spell of disillusion and suicidal despondence. … it filled me with soul satisfying joy.”

William Carlos Williams book The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams

The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams (1951) [W. W. Norton & Co., 1967, ISBN 978-0811202268]
General sources

Suicide, Joy

“Every artist dips his brush in his own soul and paints his own nature into his picture.”

Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) American clergyman and activist

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit (1887)

Nature, Painting

“If they are unwilling to give, they should at least lend with all readiness and alacrity, not with the prospect of receiving anything back except the principal. … In place of the interest which they determine not to accept they receive a further bonus of the fairest and most precious things that human life has to give, mercy neighborliness, charity, magnanimity, a good report and good fame. And what acquisition can rival these? Nay, even the great king will appear as the poorest of men if compared with a single virtue. For his wealth is soulless, buried deep in store-houses and recesses of the earth, but the wealth of virtue lies in the sovereign part of the soul, and the purest part of existence.”

Philo (-15–45 BC) Roman philosopher

213.
On the Virtues

Life, Men, Appearance, Parting

“Programming is the Great Game. It consumes you, body and soul. When you're caught up in it, nothing else matters. When you emerge into daylight, you might well discover that you're a hundred pounds overweight, your underwear is older than the average first grader, and judging from the number of pizza boxes lying around, it must be spring already. But you don't care, because your program runs, and the code is fast and clever and tight. You won.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

How Software Companies Die

Game, Spring, Lying, Box

“Jarrett would be easier to take if he cared half as much about children’s bodies and minds as he pretends to care about their souls.”

Octavia E. Butler book Parable of the Talents

Source: Parable of the Talents (1998), Chapter 20 (p. 391)

Children

“Already madness lifts its wing
to cover half my soul.”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987)

Madness

“As a body everyone is single, as a soul never.”

Hermann Hesse book Steppenwolf

Source: Steppenwolf (1927), p. 59

“There was something in the wild strength of this landscape, once a battlefield, that seemed to be shouting at him, a presence born of that strength whose cry his whole being recognized as familiar, caught and threw back into the wind, some youthful passage of courage and pride — the passionate, yet so nearly always hypocritical, affirmation of one’s soul perhaps, he thought, of the desire to be, to do, good, what was right.”

Malcolm Lowry book Under the Volcano

Source: Under the Volcano (1947), Ch. IV (p. 124)

Youth, Courage, Passion, Cry

“The obedience of those, purified in soul and body in the furnace of humiliation, is of infinite worth to God.”

John of St. Samson (1571–1636)

From, Light on Carmel: An Anthology from the Works of Brother John of Saint Samson, O.Carm.

God

“In this way I can speak of an American Hinduism and call myself an American and a Hindu – an American connected with the land and a Hindu connected with the spirit and soul of that land. Hinduism has helped me discover the forces of nature in which I live, their past and their future, their unique formations and their connections with the greater universe and the cosmic mind.”

David Frawley (1950) American Hindu teacher

How I Became A Hindu - My Discovery Of Vedic Dharma

Way, Nature, Universe, Past

“The awful events of September 11, 2001 declared a war we were vaguely aware of, but hadn't really comprehended how near the threat was, and how terrible were the plans of our enemies.
It's a big thing, this war.
It's a fight between a just regard for human dignity and a malevolent force that defiles an honorable religion by disputing God's love for every soul on earth. It's a fight between right and wrong, good and evil.
And should our enemies acquire for their arsenal the chemical, biological and nuclear weapons they seek, this war will become a much bigger thing.
So it is, whether we wished it or not, that we have come to the test of our generation, to our rendezvous with destiny.
And much is expected of us.
We are engaged in a hard struggle against a cruel and determined adversary.
Our enemies have made clear the danger they pose to our security and to the very essence of our culture …liberty.
Only the most deluded of us could doubt the necessity of this war.
Like all wars, this one will have its ups and downs.
But we must fight. We must.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

2000s, 2004, Speech at the Republican National Convention (2004)

Love, God, War, Religion

“The harp that once through Tara's halls
The soul of music shed,
Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls
As if that soul were fled.
So sleeps the pride of former days,
So glory's thrill is o'er;
And hearts that once beat high for praise
Now feel that pulse no more.”

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

The Harp That Once Through Tara's Halls, st. 1. Irish Melodies http://www.musicanet.org/robokopp/moore.html (1807–1834)

Music, Feeling, Sleep, Heart

“The business of finding a nation's soul is a long and slow one at the best and a great many prophets must be slain in the course of it. Perhaps when we have slain enough prophets future generations will begin to build their tombs.”

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) English composer

National Music (1934) p. 129.

Business, Future

“None believeth in the soul of man, but only in some man or person old and departed.”

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

The Divinity College Address (1838)

Personality

“The Muses' friend, Tea, does our fancy aid,
Repress the vapours which the head invade,
And keeps the palace of the soul serene.”

Edmund Waller (1606–1687) English poet and politician

Of Tea. Compare: "The dome of thought, the palace of the soul", Lord Byron, Childe Harold, canto ii. stanza 6.
Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham (1857)

Tea

“I've done a good deed. I gave that little twit his soul back. Wasn't that generous?”

Peter Cook (1937–1995) British architect

Bedazzled (1967)

“The image of the city and the obliterated streets of Rotterdam haunted me. When I returned to Paris, I made a draft model for a statue in clay which attempted to express the combination of confusion and horror.... to stimulate emotion in the onlooker, to exude something which captivates the spectator, which opens up to them an unsuspected pathway in their own soul.”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

Quote of Zadkine from his 'Memoirs', 1967; as cited in 'Torso of the Destroyed City' http://www.zadkine.paris.fr/en/oeuvre/torso-destroyed-city, Musée Zadkine Zadkine recounts the violence of the impressions which he felt then; the first draft for a monument to the 'Destroyed City', was broken in transport. A new version of a 'projected monument for a bombed city' was produced in 1947 1960 - 1968

“I'd shrink government in a minute, if I could shrink GM, Bank of America, and all these immoral corporations that operate by an undemocratic code, with no soul and no conscience.”

Jerry Brown (1938) American politician/lawyer and current governor of California

From an unspecified KPFA-FM radio show program.
[Peter, Waldman, Back to Earth: Jerry Brown, the Voice of New-Age Populism, Gets Down to Business, Wall Street Journal, 10 August 1999]
1999

“I have read somewhere of a sermon preached by one of these in the Cathedral of Notre Dame. This old priest, among other things, said that the soul of a beggar was as dear to God as the soul of the richest of his people, and that Jesus Christ died as much for a beggar as for a prince. One French peasant, rough with labor, cried out: “I propose three cheers for Jesus Christ.””

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

I like such things. I like to hear of them. I like to repeat them.
My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)

God, People, Reading, Christ

“Tibet is a special case. Tibet was deliberately set aside by the Empire as free and neutral territory, a Switzerland for the spirit where there is no extradition, and Alp-Himalayas to draw the soul upward, and danger rare enough to tolerate.”

Thomas Pynchon book Gravity's Rainbow

Gravity's Rainbow (1973)

Drawing

“I was taken to see the World Exhibition in Moscow [in 1880]. I found it all very boring. But when I came to a section devoted to art – there were only paintings, and this was the first time of my life [Jawlensky was 16 years old] I had seen paintings – I was so deeply affected that it was a case of Saul becoming Paul. It was the turning point of my life. Even since then art has been my ideal, my holy of holiest, that for which my entire soul and my entire self yearn.”

Alexej von Jawlensky (1864–1941) Russian painter

from: 'Lebenserinnerungen', 1938
Source: 1936 - 1941, Life Memories' (1938), p. 20

Life, World, Art, Time

“From a study of the discourses of the Buddha preserved in the Pali Canon, it will be seen that the idea of a personal deity, a creator god conceived to be eternal and omnipotent, is incompatible with the Buddha’s teachings. … Conceptions of an impersonal godhead of any description, such as world-soul, etc., are excluded by the Buddha's teachings on Anatta, non-self or unsubstantiality.”

Nyanaponika Thera (1901–1994) German Buddhist monk

“Buddhism and the God-Idea” (1962)

God, World, Idea, Study

“Christ pitied because He loved, because He saw through all the wretchedness, and darkness, and bondage of evil; that there was in every human soul a possibility of repentance, of restoration; a germ of good, which, however stifled and overlaid, yet was capable of recovery, of health, of freedom, of perfection.”

Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815–1881) English churchman, Dean of Westminster

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 58.

Love, Health, Freedom, Evil

“A soul which is truly in earnest is not above disabling the body to discourage dangerous competition.”

Henry S. Haskins (1875–1957)

Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 81

“Bless your soul, you've got you're head in the clouds,
You made a fool out of you,
And, boy, she's bringing you down,
She made your heart melt,
But you're cold to the core,
Now rumour has it she ain't got your love anymore.”

Adele (singer) (1988) British singer-songwriter

Rumour Has It, written by Adele and Ryan Tedder
Song lyrics, 21 (2011)

Love, Fools, Boy, Heart

“The soul which stops at creatures delays the course of the voyage by which it moves toward God; and by desiring to enjoy them, it proportionately deprives itself of the enjoyment of God.”

Pierre Nicole (1625–1695) French Jansenists

Essais de Morale (1753), XII, 301, in The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1927) as translated by Mary Ilford (1968), p. 118

God

“I would burn the world and use my soul for tinder to hear her laugh again.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Lews Therin Telamon
(15 October 1993)

World

“I see myself wrapped in lies, which do not seem to penetrate my soul, as if they are not really a part of me. They are like costumes.”

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

August 1932 Henry and June
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)

Parting

“How oft the word which we would gladly speak
Might be, unto some darkly groping soul,
The key to bid doubt's massive doors unroll,
The free winds' breath upon the prisoner's cheek,
Or. to the hungry heart, sweet pity's dole!
We hurry on, nor know that they are near,
As passed Evangeline the one so dear.”

Julia Abigail Fletcher Carney (1823–1908) American writer

"Soul Blindness", as quoted Our Woman Workers: Biographical Sketches of Women Eminent in the Universalist Church for Literary, Philanthropic and Christian Work (1881) by E. R. Hanson.

Heart

“By suns unsettling kist.
Out through the utmost gates of space,
Past where the gray stars drift,
To the widening Infinite, my soul
Glides on, a vessel swift,
Yet loses not her anchorage
In yonder azure rift.”

Lucy Larcom (1824–1893) American teacher, poet, author

Poems (1869), A Strip of Blue (1870)

Star, Sun, Past

“Unity is this: that a man feel himself to be gathered together with all his powers in the unity of his heart. Unity brings inward peace and restfulness of heart. Unity of heart is a bond which draws together body and soul, heart and senses, and all the outward and inward powers and encloses them in the union of love.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

Quoted in Message of the East, Vol. 15 (1926) by Cohasset Vedanta Centre, p. 212

Love, Peace, Feeling, Sense

“3082. To what Purpose shouldest thou seek great Things for thyself in the World? or having obtained them, prize them at any considerable Rate? or value thyself upon them? seeing thou knowest not, but this Night thy Soul may be required of thee, when thou shalt be divested of them all. 'Twould be as vain and unreasonable, as for a Traveler, that is to stay at his Inn but for a night, to take great Thought and Pains about furnishing and adorning his Chamber, which the next Morning he must leave to the next Comer.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727)

Pain, World, Travel, Night

“The sculptor must learn to reproduce the surface, which means all that vibrates on the surface: spirit, soul, love, passion — life. … Sculpture is thus the art of hollows and mounds, not of smoothness, or even polished planes.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

In; Victor Frisch, ‎Joseph Twadell Shipley (1939). Auguste Rodin. p. 203: About the act of creation.
1900s-1940s

Love, Life, Art, Learning

“You were beautiful and heartless…in some ways rather a bore. But you have grown up into another over-refined soul of the sort our aristocracy is so good at producing and which produces so little itself save ways to spend unconscionable amounts on castles, clothes, and complex towers to keep comfortable impossible beasts.”

Samuel R. Delany book Tales of Nevèrÿon

Source: Tales of Nevèrÿon (1979), Chapter 5, “The Tale of Dragons and Dreamers” Section 1 (p. 214; ellipsis in the original)

Beauty, Way, Clothes

“The best antidote against evils of all kinds, against the evil thoughts that haunt the soul, against the needless perplexities which distract the conscience, is to keep hold of the good we have. Impure thoughts will not stand against pure words and prayers and deeds. Little doubts will not avail against great certainties. Fix your affections on things above, and then you will less and less be troubled by the cares, the temptations, the troubles of things on earth.”

Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815–1881) English churchman, Dean of Westminster

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 214.

Evil

“Lately I've been lookin' through the windows of my soul
And I can see there's not much left to hold
Just an empty space surrounded by the pieces of
A badly broken heart that's forgotten how to love.”

Toby Keith (1961) American country music singer and actor

A Woman's Touch, written with Wayne Perry.
Song lyrics, Blue Moon (1996)

Love, Heart

“Within the Veil was he born, said I; and there within shall he live, — a Negro and a Negro's son. Holding in that little head — ah, bitterly! — the unbowed pride of a hunted race, clinging with that tiny dimpled hand — ah, wearily! — to a hope not hopeless but unhopeful, and seeing with those bright wondering eyes that peer into my soul a land whose freedom is to us a mockery and whose liberty is a lie.”

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

Source: The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ch. XI: Of the Passing of the First-Born

Lie, Hope, Freedom

“Absence! is not the soul torn by it
From more than light, or life, or breath?
'Tis Lethe's gloom, but not its quiet,—
The pain without the peace of death!”

Thomas Campbell (1777–1844) British writer

"Absence", The poetical works of Thomas Campbell (1837)

Life, Death, Pain, Peace

“People used to try to hijack quantum mechanics and its inherent mystery to cast a cloud around determinism, in the hope that free will could survive modern physics. But that never worked very well. Since when does random chance equal free will? The only salvation for volition is a soul and faith and you’re not allowed to ask me about that.”

Janna Levin (1967) American theoretical cosmologist

How the Universe Got its Spots (2002)

People, Faith, Hope, Chance

“I say, 'I should like to die', but that's not true at all, I should like to get younger.... youth and old age are similar in more ways than one, and they are the two moments in life when one can feel one's own soul which would be a proof that it exists.”

Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) painter from France

quote in Berthe's notebook, after the death of her husband Eugène Manet, 1892; cited in Berthe Morisot, ed. Delafond and Genet-Bondeville, 1997, p. 70
1881 - 1895

Life, Youth, Age, Way

“She put up with all our noise in the bedroom, because we started off with a little studio in our bedroom. And our room was right next to her and pops’ bedroom, so they couldn’t stand the noise because we made a lot of racket and we had other rappers coming in all the time, and they put up with that. And plus, she listened to a lot of soul music when we was growing up so that influenced us. And in church. She tried to make us go to church but we just didn’t tend to stick with it.”

Lord Infamous (1975–2013) American rapper

Interview whit Lord Infamous - RIP - March 2009 https://medium.com/@daveyboysmith/interview-with-lord-infamous-rip-march-30th-2009-94dbfc2f0d9b

Music, Time

“He used to define justice as "a virtue of the soul distributing that which each person deserved."”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Aristotle, 9.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 5: The Peripatetics

Justice, Personality

“It is not when he is working in the office but when he is lying idly on the sand that his soul utters, "Life is beautiful."”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), Ch. I : The Awakening, p. 2

Life, Beauty, Lying

“Through the gloomy clouds break / Blue sky, sunshine, / On the heights and in the valley / Sing the lark and the nightingale
God, I thank you that I live / Not forever in this world / Strengthen me that my soul rise / Upward toward your firmament.”

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) Swedish painter

some poetry lines of Friedrich, c. 1802-05; as cited by C. D. Eberlein in C. D. Friedrich Bekenntnisse, p 57; as quoted & translated by Linda Siegel in Caspar David Friedrich and the Age of German Romanticism, Boston Branden Press Publishers, 1978, p. 48
1794 - 1840

God, World, Singing

“The heart and soul of the Christian life is learning to hear God's voice and then developing the courage to do what he asks us to do.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

Life, God, Courage, Learning

“If the object of all human investigation were but to produce in cognition a reflection of the world as it exists, of what value would be all its labor and pains, which could result only in vain repetition, in an imitation within the soul of that which exists without it?”

Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) German mathematician and physical scientist

As quoted in Carl Friedrich Gauss: Titan of Science (1955) by Guy Waldo Dunnington. p. 365

Pain, World

“Immeasurable pain!
My dreaming soul last night was king again.
As in past days
I wandered through the Palace of Delight,
And in my dream
Down grassy garden-ways
Glided my chariot, smoother than a summer stream;
There was moonlight,
The trees were blossoming,
And a faint wind softened the air of night,
For it was spring.”

Li Yu (Southern Tang) (937–978) ruler of the Southern Tang Kingdom in ancient China

《望江南》 ("Immeasurable Pain"), as translated by Arthur Waley in The Temple (1923), p. 144

Pain, Dreams, Way, Spring

“Too much chicken soup for the soul is not a good thing. Working men eat meat and potatoes.”

Donald Miller (1971) American writer

Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance (2000, Harvest House Publishers)

Men

“Henry of Essex's religion was the Inner Light or Moral Conscience of his own soul; such as is vouchsafed still to all souls of men;—which Inner Light shone here 'through such intellectual and other media' as there were; producing 'Phantasms,' Kircherean Visual-Spectra, according to circumstances! It is so with all men. The clearer my Inner Light may shine, through the less turbid media; the fewer Phantasms it may produce,—the gladder surely shall I be, and not the sorrier! Hast thou reflected, O serious reader, Advanced- Liberal or other, that the one end, essence, use of all religion past, present and to come, was this only: To keep that same Moral Conscience or Inner Light of ours alive and shining.”

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

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Men, Religion, Light, Past

“But what a voice! It was like the voice of a soul that had once lived in an Aeolian harp.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Middlemarch (1871)

“The world has too many automobiles and televisions. Now the standard is there should be one car and TV for every person. This is not healthy for the environment or our souls.”

Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000) Philosopher

"A hundred years of thinking about God" (1998)

World, Cars, Personality

“O fortunate one, thy vow hath become successful. The lord of the celestials hath been gratified, and is willing to give thee a son such as thou desirest, of superhuman achievements and great fame. He will be the oppressor of all enemies and possessed of great wisdom. Endued with a great soul, in splendour equal unto the Sun, invincible in battles, and of great achievements, he will also be extremely handsome. O thou of fair hips and sweet smiles, the lord of the celestials hath become gracious to thee. Invoking him, bring thou forth a child who will be the very home of all Kshatriya virtues.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Pandu to Kunti
The Mahabharata/Book 1: Adi Parva/Section CXXIII

Wisdom, Smile, Home, Success

“The uncounscious actions of a pure soul are even more strange than the vice's schemes.”

Raymond Radiguet (1903–1923) French writer

Les manoeuvres inconscientes d'une âme pure sont encore plus singulières que les combinaisons du vice
Raymond Radiguet: Le bal du comte d'Orgel. Paris 1924. P. 1.

“The windows of my soul are made of one way glass
Don't bother looking into my eyes
If there's something you want to know - just ask.”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

Willing to Fight
Song lyrics

Way

“Even there, in the mines, underground, I may find a human heart in another convict and murderer by my side, and I may make friends with him, for even there one may live and love and suffer. One may thaw and revive a frozen heart in that convict, one may wait upon him for years, and at last bring up from the dark depths a lofty soul, a feeling, suffering creature; one may bring forth an angel, create a hero! There are so many of them, hundreds of them, and we are to blame for them.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) Russian author

The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)

Love, Angels, Feeling, Suffering

“A frame of adamant, a soul of fire,
No dangers fright him, and no labors tire.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Source: Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), Line 193

“The cruel man is of misanthropic temperament, and is a man of moods, oscillating from quiet brooding to sudden explosions. If a man like this does not fight this unhappy provision of his soul during his youth, under no circumstances could he avoid becoming furious - and foolish. There are those who would leave it up to God, but to ensure justice on the earth, and not fob it off to the Divinity, it is mandatory that people know both virtue and its benefits, since the virtues lead to unity among them, not the war of all against all. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to conserve them, and show that crime can only return misfortunes and destruction, including of the criminal himself. Who is the last victim of his crimes.”

Frederick II of Prussia book Anti-Machiavel

Source: Anti-Machiavel, Chapter VIII

God, War, People, Youth

“The riches of the soul are stored up in its memory. this is the test of character, not whether a man follows the daily fashion, but whether the past is alive in his present.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

"The Holy Dimension", p. 333
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)

Fashion, Memory, Past

“In all this world, I pray thee, who
Is virtuous, heroic, true?
Firm in his vows, of grateful mind,
To every creature good and kind?
Alone most fair to all men’s eyes?
Devoid of envy, firm, and sage,
Whose tranquil soul ne'er yields to rage?
Whom, when his warrior wrath is high,
Do Gods embattled fear and fly?
Whose noble might and gentle skill
The triple world can guard from ill? Who is the best of princes, he
Who loves his people’s good to see.”

Vālmīki Legendary Indian poet, author of the Ramayana

Source: King of Siam Rama I The-Ramayana https://books.google.co.in/books?id=OvqbCHa3zWkC&pg=PA19, Islamic Books, 1967, p. 19.

Love, Men, God, People

“As Love alone can exquisitely bless,
Love only feels the marvellous of pain;
Opens new veins of torture in the soul,
And wakes the nerve where agonies are born.”

Edward Young (1683–1765) English poet

The Brothers (1753), Act V, scene i.

Love, Pain, Feeling

“First and foremost I am a drummer. After that, I'm other things…. But I didn't play drums to make money. I played drums because I loved them…. My soul is that of a drummer…. It came to where I had to make a decision — I was going to be a drummer. Everything else goes now. I play drums. It was a conscious moment in my life when I said the rest of things were getting in the way. I didn't do it to be come rich and famous, I did it because it was the love of my life.”

Ringo Starr (1940) British musician, former member of the Beatles

As quoted in The Big Beat: Conversations with Rock's Great Drummers (1984) by Max Weinberg and Robert Santelli

Love, Life, Money, Way

“If I made laws for Shakers or a school, I should gazette every Saturday all the words they were wont to use in reporting religious experience, as “spiritual life,” “God,” “soul,” “cross,” etc., and if they could not find new ones next week, they might remain silent.”

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

June 15, 1844
1820s, Journals (1822–1863)

Life, God, School, Law

“Knowledge never injures the soul. It only purges that which encrusts and saps the soul.”

Robert Silverberg book A Time of Changes

Source: A Time of Changes (1971), Chapter 31 (p. 110)

Knowledge

“Picasso.... the master.... being a master: 'I don't search, I find' [a famous quote of Picasso, where he criticize the 'searching' artists].. the master, the mastery.... Producing, producing... He [Picasso! ] only knows how to work, can’t do anything else. What lost souls!... The great risk is producing for its own sake. You must never force things. You just have to wait.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

31 October 1966; p. 59
1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

Quotes, Search, Waiting

“It is the magician's bargain: give up our soul, get power in return. But once our souls, that is, ourselves, have been given up, the power thus conferred will not belong to us. We shall in fact be the slaves and puppets of that to which we have given our souls.”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Abolition of Man

The Abolition of Man (1943)

“The very system of education which was deemed essential for forging bonds of unbroken alliance with the British power succeeded in unleashing revolutionary ideas and thoughts, which ultimately helped to throw off the yoke of alien rule in India. If we take a dispassionate view of what happened during the last one century, we must acknowledge that this has been an era in which good has been mixed with evil. The contact between the Indian mind and western thought and civilisation did not enslave the soul of India. In every domain of thought, in arts and architecture, in science, in history, philosophy and letters, in social services and in religious thought, great Indians gave their best, maintaining their stamp of originality as well as imbibing and assimilating fruits of western skill and knowledge. Though the number of Indians affected by such spread of knowledge was comparatively small, many of them assumed a much needed political leadership and became the instruments of agitation and mass movements, leading ultimately to the political liberation of their country. The cultural Renaissance preceded and created the silent Revolution.”

Syama Prasad Mookerjee (1901–1953) Indian politician

Speech delivered at Delhi University Convocation on 13th December 1952.

Education, Art, History, Idea

“Edwin Fischer was, on the concert platform, a short, leonine, resilient figure, whose every fiber seemed to vibrate with elemental musical power. Wildness and gentleness were never far from each other in his piano-playing, and demonic outbursts would magically give way to inner peace. It was as little trouble to him (as Alfred Polgar once said of an actor) to lose himself as to find himself.
His playing of slow movements was full of an unselfconsciousness beside which the music-making of others, famous names included, seemed academic or insincere. With Fischer, one was in more immediate contact with the music: there was no curtain before the soul when he communicated with the audience. One other musician, Furtwangler, conveyed to the same degree this sensation of music not being played, but rather happening by itself.”

Alfred Brendel (1931) Austrian pianist, poet, and author

As cited in: Ruth Hanna Sachs, ‎D. E. Heap, ‎Joyce Light (2005). White Rose History, Volume II (Academic Version). p. 366

Peace, Music, Way, Communication

“There is a power in the soul, quite separate from the intellect, which sweeps away or recognizes the marvelous, by which God is felt. Faith stands serenely far above the reach of the atheism of science. It does not rest on the wonderful, but on the eternal wisdom and goodness of God. The revelation of the Son was to proclaim a Father, not a mystery. No science can sweep away the everlasting love which the heart feds, and which the intellect does not even pretend to judge or recognize.”

Frederick William Robertson (1816–1853) British writer and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 220.

Love, Wisdom, God, Faith

“Armon Jarles, there is only the cosmos and the electronic entities that constitute it, without soul or purpose, save so far as neuronic minds impose purpose upon it.
“Armon Jarles, the Hierarchy embodies the highest form of such purpose.
“Armon Jarles, the supernatural and the idealized have one trait in common. They are not. There is only reality.”

Fritz Leiber book Gather, Darkness!

Source: Gather, Darkness! (1950), Chapter 10 (p. 105)

Reality

“I arrived at as an undergraduate with two driving passions: a consuming interest for a politics of justice grounded in a Christian theology and acting, as a ‘revelation of the treasures of the human soul’ not as a form of exhibitionism. My search for justice grew out of the pain I experienced when I saw the ridicule my malformed brother elicited. I became aware of the evil that is prejudice, a form of injustice. My urge to redress this prejudice took a more social dimension during my years as a boarder at St Dominic’s Convent, where the great Barbara Hogan matriculated a year later than me though I only got acquainted with her at Wits.”

Angelique Rockas South African actress and founder of Internationalist Theatre, London

The South African Interview (August 8, 2011)

Pain, Justice, Search, Passion

“I take the liberty of asserting that there is one valid reason, and only one, for either punishing a man or rewarding him in this world; one reason, which ancient piety could well define: That you may do the will and commandment of God with regard to him; that you may do justice to him. This is your one true aim in respect of him; aim thitherward, with all your heart and all your strength and all your soul, thitherward, and not elsewhither at all! This aim is true, and will carry you to all earthly heights and benefits, and beyond the stars and Heavens. All other aims are purblind, illegitimate, untrue; and will never carry you beyond the shop-counter, nay very soon will prove themselves incapable of maintaining you even there. Find out what the Law of God is with regard to a man; make that your human law, or I say it will be ill with you, and not well!”

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

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Model Prisons (March 1, 1850)

God, World, Justice, Law

“I have touched filth.

Only with the finger tip I touched it,

inquisitive of the taste of it.

But it creeps.

It has spread over my body a slime,

and into my soul a stupor (…)”

Olaf Stapledon book Last Men in London

Last Men in London (1932)

“The difference between the Jewish soul, in all its independence, inner desires, longings, character and standing, and the soul of all the Gentiles, on all of their levels, is greater and deeper than the difference between the soul of a man and the soul of an animal, for the difference in the latter case is one of quantity, while the difference in the first case is one of essential quality.”

Abraham Isaac Kook book Orot

Orot Yisrael, Ch. 5, article 10, p. 156; as quoted in "The Distinction between Jews and Gentiles in Torah" by Rabbi David Bar Chaim http://www.daatemet.org.il/articles/article.cfm?article_id=119&lang=en Variant: The dissimilarity between the Jewish soul, in all its independence, inner desires, longings, character and standing vis-à-vis the soul of all the Gentiles — on all of their levels — is greater and deeper than the difference between the soul of a man and the soul of an animal, for the difference in the latter case is one of quantity, while the difference in the first case is one of essential quality As quoted in "A British Synagogue Bans a Famous Hassidic Text!" (February 2010) by Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel http://rabbimichaelsamuel.com/2010/02/2744/#_ftn1. Orot

Animals