Quotes about the soul (5690 quotes, page 25)

“Here's a thought for every man who's tried to understand what's in his hands
Bound with all the weight of all the words he tried to say / Chained to all the places that he never wished to stay / As he faced the sun, he cast no shadow.
As they took his soul they stole his pride”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

Cast No Shadow
(What's the Story) Morning Glory? (1995)

Understanding , Sun

“Everybody's got soul. It's a matter of what condition it's in.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

Shades of the World (1985)

“A living man must have a living God, or his soul will perish in the midst of earthly plenty, and will thirst and die whilst the water of earthly delights is running all around him. We are made to need persons not things.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 390.

God , Water , Personality

“Friendship! mysterious cement of the soul!
Sweetener of life! and solder of society!”

Robert Blair The Grave

Part I, line 88.
The Grave (1743)

For Friend , Life , Friendship

“I do not have the courage to force myself to search out beautiful prayers in books. There are so many of them it really gives me a headache! and each prayer is more beautiful than the others. I cannot recite them all and not knowing which to choose, I do like children who do not know how to read, I say very simply to God what I wish to say, without composing beautiful sentences, and He always understands me. For me, prayer is an aspiration of the heart, it is a simple glance directed to heaven, it is a cry of gratitude and love in the midst of trial as well as joy; finally, it is something great, supernatural, which expands my soul and unites me to Jesus.”

Thérèse of Lisieux (1873–1897) French Discalced Carmelite nun

The words in italics were underlined by Thérèse.
Source: Story of a Soul (1897), Ch. XI: Those Whom You Have Given Me, 1896–1897 As translated by Fr. John Clarke http://www.ewtn.com/therese/readings/readng6.htm (1976), p. 242.

Love , God , Children , Books

“If the artist only reproduces superficial features as photography does, if he copies the lineaments of a face exactly, without reference to character, he deserves no admiration. The resemblance which he ought to obtain is that of the soul; that alone matters; it is that which the sculptor or painter should seek beneath the mask of features.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Art, 1912, Ch. VII. Of Yesterday and of to-day, p. 121

“If I married him,
I would not dare to call my soul my own,
Which so he had bought and paid for: every thought
And every heart-beat down there in the bill,–
Not one found honestly deductible
From any use that pleased him!”

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

Bk. II, l. 785-790.
Aurora Leigh http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/barrett/aurora/aurora.html (1857)

Heart

“The soul wills and yet does not will:
Its will belongs to Another.
It has eyes only for this beauty;
It no longer seeks to possess, as was its wont --
It lacks the strength to possess such sweetness.
The base of this highest of peaks
Is founded on nichil [nothing],
Shaped nothingness, made one with the Lord.”

Jacopone da Todi (1236–1306) Italian Franciscan mystic

The Lauds

Beauty

“In the part of the night where it's quietest, around three or four o'clock, I started wondering where this black man's soul had disappeared to as it left his body. His thoughts, impressions, memories, whatever: the background noise we all have in our head that stops us from forgetting we're alive. It had to go somewhere: it couldn't just vaporize—it must have gushed, trickled or dripped onto some surface, stained it somehow. Everything must leave some kind of mark.”

Tom McCarthy (writer) book Déjà vu

Source: Remainder (2005), Ch. 11.

Memory , Parting , Night , Forgetting

“The worst thing is to feel that as a photographer I'm benefiting from someone else's tragedy. This idea haunts me. It's something I have to reckon with every day, because I know that if I ever allow genuine compassion to be overtaken by personal ambition, I will have sold my soul. The only way I can justify my role is to have respect for the other person's predicament. The extent to which I do that is the extent to which I become accepted by the other and to that extent I can accept myself.”

James Nachtwey (1948) American photographer

War Photographer, documentary, 2001

Way , Feeling , Idea , Personality

“That soul-destroying, meaningless, mechanical, monotonous, moronic work is an insult to human nature which must necessarily and inevitably produce either escapism or aggression, and that no amount of “bread and circuses” can compensate for the damage done—these are facts which are neither denied nor acknowledged but are met with an unbreakable conspiracy of silence—because to deny them would be too obviously absurd and to acknowledge them would condemn the central preoccupation of modern society.”

E. F. Schumacher (1911–1977) British economist

Source: Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered (1973), p. 35.

Nature , Silence

“Chopin’s biography remains obscure. He withheld himself all his life, in diametrical contrast to the openness and accessibility of his contemporary Franz Liszt. Chopin always conveyed the impression of a suffering soul, not to say a martyr, almost as if this was to nourish or even underpin his inspiration. Striving for crystalline perfection, he never ventured outside his own domain. You know, the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard is said to have given, as a child, “martyr” as his chosen career. Chopin must have shared this cult of the ‘Pater dolorosus.’”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings about Chopin and Schumann

Life , Suffering , Perfection

“You do not need to seek freedom in a different land, for it exists with your own body, heart, mind, and soul.”

B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014) Indian yoga teacher and scholar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, P.xxii

Freedom , Heart

“Entering a cell, penetrating deep as a flying saucer to find a new galaxy would be an honorable task for a new scientist interested more in the inner state of the soul than in outer space.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Inner Space http://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poem/21400/Inner_Space
From the poems written in English

Flying

“There was no God in his heart, he knew; his ideas were still in riot; there was ever the pain of memory; the regret for his lost youth — yet the waters of disillusion had left a deposit on his soul, responsibility and a love of life, the faint stirring of old ambitions and unrealized dreams.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Quoted, This Side of Paradise (1920)

Love , Life , God , Pain

“States of soul rightly expressed, as the poet expresses them in moments of pure inspiration, retain forever the power of creating like states. It is this that makes genuine literature a vital force.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 172

Literature

“Wealth and poverty do not lie in a person's estate, but in their souls.”

Antisthenes (-444–-365 BC) Greek philosopher

iv. 34
From Symposium by Xenophon

Lie , Personality , Wealth

“I was raised Vegan since birth. … I remember watching undercover investigation videos and reading the pamphlets that were mailed to the house when we were kids—I felt deeply for the animals at an early age. I remember how the other parents of my childhood friends would either get upset or interested when their kids would come home after sleepovers at my house—I felt it was my duty to show my friends what was happening to animals. … Veganism is the ultimate form of compassion. … I never considered my being Vegan was for health reasons—it was always for the love and respect I had for animals. And because of that love and respect I have for non-human animals my compassion flows over to all living beings, of all types. … I am encouraged by compassionate souls and the love I see in the eyes of those I've committed my life to stand up for.”

Seba Johnson (1973) Olympic skier

"Interview with Seba Johnson: Vegan Olympic Ski Racer" http://www.vivalavegan.net/articles/561-interview-with-seba-johnson-vegan-olympic-ski-racer.html, Viva La Vegan! (August 2013).

Love , Life , Health , Age

“The man who in this world can keep the whiteness of his soul is not likely to lose it in any other.”

Alexander Smith (1829–1867) Scottish poet and essayist

Dreamthorp: Essays written in the Country (1863).

World

“Every moment marked
With apparitions of your soul.
I'm ever swiftly moving
Trying to escape this desire.”

Sarah McLachlan (1968) Canadian musician, singer, and songwriter

Do What You Have to Do
Song lyrics, Surfacing (1997)

“Fate gave, what Chance shall not control,
His sad lucidity of soul.”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

Source: Resignation (1849), l. 197

Fate , Sadness , Chance

“Oh, rejoice, the Cleansing of my lips… rejoice, Salvation of my soul!
I still have a thousand half-loves… oh, my God!
I want to shoot myself just thinking about it!
And you think I don't mean what I say?”

Aaron Weiss

Seven Sisters.
Catch For Us The Foxes (2004)

Love , God , Thinking

“Liberalism has merely cleared a field in which every soul and every corporate interest may fight with every other for domination. Whoever is victorious in this struggle will make an end of liberalism; and the new order, which will deem itself saved, will have to defend itself in the following age against a new crop of rebels.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

"The Irony of Liberalism"
Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (1922)

Age , Victory , Fight

“"Well lad, this is what you have chosen. Are you pleased with yourself?"
“ I am alive," said Bane.
“ And eight men are dead," said Landis. “ Eight souls cast out of the world. More mothers to grieve, more children to know sorrow. Is this a life you want for yourself?”
“ No it is not," Bane told him. “ But we do what we must.”
“ Not true! We do what we choose. And we face the consequences."”

David Gemmell book Midnight Falcon

Source: Rigante series, Midnight Falcon, Ch. 5

Life , Men , Children , World

“As Love 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.”

Tobias Smollett (1721–1771) 18th-century poet and author from Scotland

Edward Young, The Brothers (1753), Act V, scene i.
Misattributed

Love , Pain , Feeling

“Yoga is not a religion. It is a science, science of well-being, science of youthfulness, science of integrating body, mind and soul.”

Amit Ray (1960) Indian author

Yoga and Vipassana: An Integrated Lifestyle (2012) https://books.google.co.in/books?id=sBsG9V1oVdMC,

Youth , Religion , Science

“What frightful tableaux might present themselves, if one could paint the ideas found in the souls of those who surround the deathbeds? And money is always the mobilizer of the intrigues elaborated, the plans formulated, the conspiracies woven!”

Honoré de Balzac book Gobseck

Quels effroyables tableaux ne présenteraient pas les âmes de ceux qui environnent les lits funèbres, si l'on pouvait en peindre les idées? Et toujours la fortune est le mobile des intrigues qui s'élaborent, des plans qui se forment, des trames qui s'ourdissent!
p. 72, 1921 édition https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31158007362832;view=1up;seq=108
Gobseck (1830)

Money , Idea , Painting

“Temperance is to the body what religion is to the soul, the foundation and source of health and strength and peace.”

Tryon Edwards (1809–1894) American theologian

Source: A Dictionary of Thoughts, 1891, p. 567.

Health , Peace , Religion

“We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the poor heathen! all for the glory of God and the good of souls! The slave auctioneer's bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave-trade go hand in hand.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Appendix
1840s, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845)

Women , Men , God , Religion

“My Brother starv'd between two Walls,
His Children's Cry my Soul appalls;”

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

Ibid, stanza 5
1810s, Miscellaneous poems and fragments from the Nonesuch edition

Children , Cry

“And, O! there lives within my heart
A hope long nursed by me,
(And should its cheering ray depart
How dark my soul would be)

That as in Adam all have died
In Christ shall all men live
And ever round his throne abide
Eternal praise to give;

That even the wicked shall at last
Be fitted for the skies
And when their dreadful doom is past
To life and light arise.”

Anne Brontë book Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell

Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846), A Word to the Calvinists (1843)

Life , Men , Hope , Light

“Religion has never befriended the cause of humaneness. Its monstrous doctrine of eternal punishment and the torture of the damned underlies much of the barbarity with which man has treated man; and the deep division imagined by the Church between the human being, with his immortal soul, and the soulless "beasts", has been responsible for an incalculable sum of cruelty.”

Henry Stephens Salt (1851–1939) British activist

Seventy Years Among Savages (1921).

Religion , Imagination

“Humiliate the reason and distort the soul…”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book The Idiot

The Idiot (1868–9)

“p>…[E]ach moment of joy but prompts the more
That madness buried at the base of dreamy souls,
That sadness in the dark citadel of the heart,
And in sorrowful eyes, images of innocence from the past.
All the Past is but an endless string of days,
All the Future is but a series of graves not yet fulfilled…
In the summer sun, fresh leaves begin to change in hue,
Weaving the autumn whose arrival is imminent—as in our lives
The green days follow in fading succession,
Weaving the shroud that covers our souls.”

Chế Lan Viên (1920–1989) Vietnamese writer

"The Graves", as quoted in Understanding Vietnam by Neil Jamieson (University of California Press, 1995), pp. 163–164

Sadness , Autumn , Change , Success

“These lovely lamps, these windows of the soul.”

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas (1544–1590) French writer

First Week, Sixth Day. Compare: "Ere I let fall the windows of mine eyes", William Shakespeare, Richard III, act v. sc. 3.
La Semaine; ou, Création du monde (1578)

Love

“I entreat you to devote one solemn hour of thought to a crucified Saviour — a Saviour expiring in the bitterest agony. Think of the cross, the nails, the open wounds, the anguish of His soul. Think how the Son of God became a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, that you might live forever. Think as you lie down upon your bed to rest, how your Saviour was lifted up from the earth to die. Think amid your plans and anticipations of future gaiety, what the redemption of your soul has cost, and how the dying Saviour would wish you to act. His wounds plead that you will live for better things.”

Albert Barnes (1798–1870) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 72.

God , Lie , Thinking , Future

“Again, your being is never annihilated, but continues to develop its own existence in other ways. A portion of you has lived many lives upon this planet, but the "you" that you know is freshly here, and will never again encounter space and time in precisely the same way. The same applies to each life lived either before or after. Biologically you rest upon a heritage, however, and psychically the same applies. The soul, or this greater personage, does not simply send out an old self in new clothes time and time again, but each time a new, freshly-minted self that then develops and goes its own way. That self rides firmly, however, in the great flight of experience, and feels within itself all of those other fully unique versions that also fling their way into existence.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 724, p. 492
The “Unknown” Reality: Volume Two, (1979)

Life , Way , Feeling , Time

“It is God’s will that I see myself as much bound to Him in love as if He had done for me all that He hath done; and thus should every soul think inwardly of its Lover. That is to say, the Charity of God maketh in us such a unity that, when it is truly seen, no man can part himself from other.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Fifteenth Revelation, Chapter 65

Love , God , Lovers , Thinking

“The Church has consistently taught that justice and charity are the foundations of peace. It may be right to think of “charity as the soul and justice as the substance of international peace.””

Kurien Kunnumpuram (1931–2018) Indian theologian

Kunnumpuram, K. (ed) (2007) World Peace: An Impossible Dream? , Mumbai: St Pauls
On Peace

Peace , Justice , Thinking

“The desired goal of the soul is to attain the selfless Divine love of Radha Krishn who are eternally related to you.”

Jagadguru Kripaluji Maharaj (1922–2013) spiritual leader

Saraswati, S. 2001. The true history and the relfigion of India: a concise encyclopedia of authentic hinduism. Motilal Banarsidass.

Love

“Roger: Umm…last two cds… Bouncing Souls Gold Album and I bought System of a Down Steal This Album…”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

“Slavery, that was a kind of alchemy for such White folk, or so they reckoned. They calculated a way of turning each bead of a Black man’s sweat into gold and each moan of despair from a Black woman’s throat into the sweet clear sound of a silver coin ringing on the money-changer’s table. There was buying and selling of souls in that place. Yet there was nary a one of them who understood the whole price they paid for owning other folk.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Prentice Alvin (1989), Chapter 1.

Money , Way , Despair

“I du believe with all my soul
In the gret Press's freedom,
To pint the people to the goal
An' in the traces lead 'em.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

No. 6, st. 7
The Biglow Papers (1848–1866), Series I (1848)

People , Freedom

“The first great work that men are to attend in this world is the eternal safety and security of their souls; the next great work is to know, to be assured, that it shall go well with their souls forever.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

A Cabinet of Jewels

Men , World

“Consent in virtue knit your hearts so fast,
That still the knot, in spite of death, does last;
For as your tears, and sorrow-wounded soul,
Prove well that on your part this bond is whole,
So all we know of what they do above,
Is that they happy are, and that they love.
Let dark oblivion, and the hollow grave,
Content themselves our frailer thoughts to have;
Well-chosen love is never taught to die,
But with our nobler part invades the sky.
Then grieve no more that one so heavenly shaped
The crooked hand of trembling age escaped;
Rather, since we beheld her not decay,
But that she vanish'd so entire away,
Her wondrous beauty, and her goodness, merit
We should suppose that some propitious spirit
In that celestial form frequented here,
And is not dead, but ceases to appear.”

Edmund Waller (1606–1687) English poet and politician

Upon the Death of My Lady Rich (1664).
Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham (1857)

Love , Death , Age , Beauty

“Above the vulgar flight of common souls.”

Arthur Murphy (1727–1805) Irish writer

Zenobia (1768), Act v.

“Seething over inwardly
With fierce indignation,
In my bitterness of soul,
Hear my declaration.
I am of one element,
Levity my matter,
Like enough a withered leaf
For the winds to scatter.”
Estuans intrinsecus ira vehementi in amaritudine loquar meę menti: factus de materia levis elementi similes sum folio de quo ludunt venti.

Archpoet (1130–1165) 12th century poet

Estuans intrinsecus
ira vehementi
in amaritudine
loquar meę menti:
factus de materia
levis elementi
similes sum folio
de quo ludunt venti.
Source: "Confession", Line 1

“Gandhi arrived in South Africa in 1893 at the age of 23. Within a week he collided head on with racism. His immediate response was to flee the country that so degraded people of color, but then his inner resilience overpowered him with a sense of mission, and he stayed to redeem the dignity of the racially exploited, to pave the way for the liberation of the colonized the world over and to develop a blueprint for a new social order.
He left 21 years later, a near maha atma (great soul). There is no doubt in my mind that by the time he was violently removed from our world, he had transited into that state.
He was no ordinary leader. There are those who believe he was divinely inspired, and it is difficult not to believe with them. He dared to exhort nonviolence in a time when the violence of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had exploded on us; he exhorted morality when science, technology and the capitalist order had made it redundant; he replaced self-interest with group interest without minimizing the importance of self. In fact, the interdependence of the social and the personal is at the heart of his philosophy. He seeks the simultaneous and interactive development of the moral person and the moral society.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

2000s, The Sacred Warrior (2000)

People , Age , World , Color

“It is all work and forgotten work, this peopled, clothed, articulate-speaking, high-towered, wide-acred World. The hands of forgotten brave men have made it a World for us; they,— honour to them; they, in spite of the idle and the dastard. This English Land, here and now, is the summary of what was found of wise, and noble, and accordant with God's Truth, in all the generations of English Men. Our English Speech is speakable because there were Hero-Poets of our blood and lineage; speakable in proportion to the number of these. This Land of England has its conquerors, possessors, which change from epoch to epoch, from day to day; but its real conquerors, creators, and eternal proprietors are these following, and their representatives if you can find them: All the Heroic Souls that ever were in England, each in their degree; all the men that ever cut a thistle, drained a puddle out of England, contrived a wise scheme in England, did or said a true and valiant thing in England.”

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

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Men , God , People , Truth

“Not a single thing do I remember from the first trip but this: the sense of the place, the savor of the genie-soul of the place which every place has or else is not a place…there it is as big as life, the genie-soul of the place which, wherever you go, you must meet and master first thing or be met and mastered.”

Walker Percy book The Moviegoer

4.3
The Moviegoer (1961)

Life , Sense

“Language should be pure, noble and graceful, as the body should be so: for both are vestures of the Soul.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 127

“Something new is wanted. A new novel, perhaps. Something the ten-percenters don't have their hooks into yet. Those soul-fuckers should all be killed.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Letter to William J. Kennedy (12 July 1967), p. 630
1990s, The Proud Highway : The Fear and Loathing Letters Volume I (1997)

“If I let you, you would make me destroy myself. But in order to survive you, I must first survive myself. I can sink no further and I cannot forgive you. There's no choice but to confront you, to engage you, to erase you. I've gone to great lengths to expand my threshold of pain. I will use my mistakes against you. There's no other choice. Shameless now. Nameless now. Nothing now. No one now. But my soul must be iron cause my fear is naked. I'm naked and fearless - and my fear is naked!”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Bottom from the album Undertow by the band TOOL

Pain , Fear , Forgiveness

“No matter how far the understanding of the soul is able to stretch itself, that is nothing in comparison to what it experiences when it is lifted beyond itself and placed in the bosom of God. Then the soul understands, finds its delight, and rests in the divine goodness; it cannot bring back any report of this, because it is completely beyond what the intelligence can conceive, and beyond words; but in this state the soul swims.”

Angela of Foligno (1248–1309) Italian saint

Source: The Memorial and Instructions, p. 208

God , Intelligence , Understanding

“As night the life-inclining stars best shows,
So lives obscure the starriest souls disclose.”

George Chapman (1559–1634) English dramatist, poet, and translator

Epilogue to Translations; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Life , Star , Night

“I held my breath, for to me there is nothing more awe-inspiring than when a man discovers to you the nakedness of his soul.”

W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British playwright, novelist, short story writer

"The pool", p. 140
Short Stories, Collected short stories 1

“Behold, we live through all things,—famine, thirst,
Bereavement, pain; all grief and misery,
All woe and sorrow; life inflicts its worst
On soul and body,—but we can not die,
Though we be sick and tired and faint and worn,—
Lo, all things can be borne!”

Elizabeth Chase Allen (1832–1911) American author, journalist, poet

Endurance, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Life , Pain

“The Old Testament is a chronicle of horrors, describing an egocentric collection of supernatural beings who were always doing rotten things to gentle souls like Job.”

John A. Keel (1930–2009) American writer

Attributed

“Prayer is the soul's sincere desire,
Uttered or unexpressed,—
The motion of a hidden fire
That trembles in the breast.”

James Montgomery (1771–1854) British editor, hymn writer, and poet

What is Prayer?
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Sincerity

“I believe in God who made of one blood all races that dwell on earth. I believe that all men, black and brown and white, are brothers, varying through Time and Opportunity, in form and gift and feature, but differing in no essential particular, and alike in soul and in the possibility of infinite development.”

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American sociologist, historian, activist and writer

Source: The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois (2003), p. 132

Men , God , Time

“Nothing is more common than energy in money-making, quite independent of any higher object than its accumulation. A man who devotes himself to this pursuit, body and soul, can scarcely fail to become rich. Very little brains will do; spend less than you earn; add guinea to guinea; scrape and save; and the pile of gold will gradually rise.”

Samuel Smiles (1812–1904) Scottish author

Source: Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct (1859), Ch. X : Money — Its Use and Abuse

Money

“I did not attend the services, because it seems to me, as Pythagoras says, the body is the tomb of the soul and that by being born a person has already begun to die.”

Philip K. Dick book Confessions of a Crap Artist

Confessions of a Crap Artist (1959)

Personality

“Worship of society and popular opinion is idolatry. The soul has no sex, no country, no place, no time.”

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

Pearls of Wisdom

Sex , Time , Country

“I am convinced, Yorick, continued my father, half reading and half discoursing, that there is a Northwest Passage to the intellectual world; and that the soul of man has shorter ways of going to work, in furnishing itself with knowledge and instruction, than we generally take with it.”

Laurence Sterne book The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Book V, Ch. 42.
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1760-1767)

World , Way , Knowledge , Reading

“You know well enough what I mean by youth and age;—something in the soul, which has no more to do with the color of the hair than the vein of gold in a rock has to do with the grass a thousand feet above it.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

Youth , Age , Color , Grass

“The more one is obsessed with God, the less one is innocent. Nobody bothered about him in paradise. The fall brought about this divine torture. It's not possible to be conscious of divinity without guilt. Thus God is rarely to be found in an innocent soul.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Tears and Saints (1937)

God

“It saddens me that the game has sold its soul to television. What we see now is a televisual game, and it cannot bear the weight of its publicity.”

Stuart Hall (1929–2014) sociologist and cultural theorist

Telegraph.co.uk http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/2317798/Stuart-Hall-enjoying-time-of-his-life.html (28 July 2007).

Game

“In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
Through the valley of fear
To a river so deep.
And I've been searching for something
Taken out of my soul
Something I would never lose
Something somebody stole.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

The River of Dreams.
Song lyrics, River of Dreams (1993)

Fear , Search , Sleep , Night

“What is an Epigram? a dwarfish whole,
Its body brevity, and wit its soul.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

"What is an Epigram?" http://books.google.com/books?id=xUggAAAAMAAJ&q=%22What+is+an+Epigram+A+dwarfish+whole+Its+body+brevity+and+wit+its+soul%22&pg=PA253#v=onepage, The Morning Post, ( 23 September 1802 http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000175/18020923/007/0003)

“Make compassion the cotton, contentment the thread, modesty the knot and truth the twist.
This is the sacred thread of the soul; if you have it, then go ahead and put it on me.”

Nanak (1469–1539) Founder of Sikhism

Raag Aasaa 471:5383-4

Truth

“A man watches a bird flying, and wishes to fly himself, but he cannot, because he has no wings. Even so the will is present with a man to be pure, and blameless, and without spot, and to have no wickedness in him, but to be always with God; but he has not the power. To fly into the air of God and the liberty of the Holy Ghost may be his wish, but unless wings are given him, he cannot. Let us then beseech God to bestow upon us the wings of a dove, even of the Holy Ghost, that we may fly to Him and be at rest, and that He would separate and make to cease from our souls and bodies, that evil wind, which is the sin that dwelleth in the members of our souls and bodies. None but He can do it.”

Macarius of Egypt (300–391) Egyptian Christian monk and hermit

Homily 2. Fifty Spiritual Homilies of Saint Macarius the Egyptian, trans. Arthur J. Mason.
Disputed

God , Bird , Evil , Flying

“He who has ever been confronted with the ultimate and has realized that sun and stars and souls do not ramble in a vacuum will keep his heart in readiness for the hour when the world is entranced, awaits a soul to breathe in the mystery that all things exhale in their craving for salvation. For things are not mute. The stillness is full of demands. Out of the world comes a behest to instill into the air a rapturous song for God, to incarnate in the stones a message of humble beauty, and to instill a prayer for goodness in the hearts of all children.”

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

"The Holy Dimension", p. 330
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)

God , Children , World , Beauty

“Live with that faith that your body and your soul do not belong to you. Then God will share the suffering that comes to you. Place your trust in God all the time; in every moment say, “O God, this is Your property, Your duty.” One who was born as a man and has lived as a man will exist in this state. For whatever happens he will say with contentment and gratitude, “All praise belongs to God, al-hamdu lillah.” For what might come in the next moment, he will say, “It is Your responsibility, O Allah, tawakkul-‘alallah,” and praise Him.”

Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (1900–1986) Sri Lankan Sufi leader

God , Faith , Suffering , Time

“Because of the distrust that has grown from our experience, we are very careful whom we welcome. We are selective in our companions, we look suspiciously those who sit beside us in a bar and start talking to us: “is he crazy? What’s he up to?” we wonder. The city becomes a desert. With groups of friends who are nobody else’s friends. As Emily Dickinson, the reclusive poet, once wrote: “The soul selects its own society, then shuts the door.””

Michael Elmore-Meegan (1959) British humanitarian

All shall be well (2014)

“Have you ever been at sea in a dense fog, when it seemed as if a tangible white darkness shut you in, and the great ship, tense and anxious, groped her way toward the shore with plummet and sounding-line, and you waited with beating heart for something to happen? I was like that ship before my education began, only I was without compass or sounding-line, and had no way of knowing how near the harbour was. "Light! give me light!"”

Helen Keller book The Story of My Life

was the wordless cry of my soul, and the light of love shone on me in that very hour.
Source: The Story of My Life (1903), Ch. 4

Love , Education , Way , Light

“My soul is full of whispered song,—
My blindness is my sight;
The shadows that I feared so long
Are full of life and light.”

Alice Cary (1820–1871) American writer

"Dying Hymn", in Ballads, Lyrics, and Hymns (1866) p. 326.

Life , Fear , Light

“Bodies have men as their masters, souls their vices and passions.”

Philo (-15–45 BC) Roman philosopher

17.
Every Good Man is Free

Men , Passion

“I would be a drudge now, among the tents, and I would kneel before the warriors, and run from them when they shouted at me. I would be a woman, as women were reckoned in this place, a half-souled, witless animal, created to bear and pleasure men: an afterthought of the god.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Three, Part I “Snake’s Road”, Chapter 2 (p. 323)
The Birthgrave (1975)

Women , Men , God , Pleasure

“My friends, the apples that I love for their delightful red, yellow, mauve and green clothing cease to be apples for me when I see them against this or that background, in such or such surroundings... And they resound in my sight like a music, reproducing this or that mood of my soul, this or that fleeting contact with the soul of things... To reproduce the things which exist without being, to reveal them to other people, by passing them through my sympathetic understanding, by revealing them in the passion I feel for hem, that is the goal of my artistic existence. To me apples, trees, human faces are not more than hints as to what else I should seen in them: the life of colour, comprehended by a passionate lover.”

Alexej von Jawlensky (1864–1941) Russian painter

Quote of Jawlensky, c. 1903; as cited by de:Wolf-Dieter Dube, in Expressionism; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 115
1900 - 1935

Love , Life , People , Music

“Is there no Latin word for Tea? Upon my soul, if I had known that I would have left the vulgar stuff alone.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

"On Tea", On Nothing and Kindred Subjects (1908)

Tea

“Those boys over yonder—those comrades of ours—and how I love them! Aye, they are my younger brothers; their very names throb in my heart, thrill in my veins, and surge in my soul. I am proud of them; they are there for us; and we are here for them. Their lips, though temporarily mute, are more eloquent than ever before; and their voice, though silent, is heard around the world.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

About Thomas Mooney and Warren K Billings.
The Canton, Ohio Speech, Anti-War Speech (1918)

Love , World , Boy , Heart

“Pythagoras said that medicine is the most godlike of arts. But if the most godlike, it should tend to the soul as well as the body, or else a living thing must be unhealthy, being diseased in its higher part.”

Apollonius of Tyana (15–100) Ancient Greek philosopher

to Crito, Epp. Apoll. 23
Letters

Disease , Art , Parting

“All truth is eternal. Truth is nobody’s property; no race, no individual can lay any exclusive claim to it. Truth is the nature of all souls.”

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

Pearls of Wisdom

Truth , Nature

“There is also an old proverb, that they who pay much attention to the body generally neglect the soul.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Page 90.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)

“Erring soul of man — if thou wast indeed forced to err, it shall surely be accounted to thee for good on that great day when the Mighty One shall descend in the clouds to judge the living dead and the dead who are yet alive!”

Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet

Makrina, in Emperor and Galilean (1873), Final lines.

Dead

“Zend-Avesta, a truly life giving word creating new life in knowledge as in faith! …As Fechner in his Nanna sought to show that plants have souls, so the point of departure of his contemplations in the Zend-Avesta is the doctrine that the stars have souls. The method he employs is not that of the abstraction of general laws by induction and the application and testing of these in the explanation of nature, it is analogy. He compares the earth with our own organism, which we know to be endowed with a soul. He searches out not merely in a one-sided way the similarities, but does equal justice to the dissimilarities, too, and so arrives at the conclusion that all the former show the earth to be a being with a soul, and that all the latter indicate that it is a being with a soul far higher than our own.”

Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) German mathematician

Gesammelte Mathematische Werke (1876)

Life , Faith , Justice , Law

“The pursuit of perfection in art must always be a noble duty to the artist, but... Here [at the Drachenfels ] he feels, more than in any other place, too vividly his inability... Stop it, painter! Just please yourself with the impression it makes on your soul; try, if you can, to keep this impression pure, it will teach you how to create …”

Barend Cornelis Koekkoek (1803–1862) painter from the Northern Netherlands

(original Dutch, citaat van B.C. Koekkoek:) Het streven naar volmaaktheid in den kunst moet den kunstenaar steeds een edelen pligt zijn, maar hier.. .Hier [bij de Drachenfels] gevoelt hij, meer dan op eenige andere plek, te levendig zijn onvermogen.. .Laat af, schilder! Vergenoeg u met den indruk dien het op uwe ziel maak; tracht, zo ge kunt, dezen rein te bewaren, het zal u leren scheppen..
Source: Herinneringen aan en Mededeelingen van…' (1841), p. 121

Art , Feeling , Perfection

“Prayer opens the heart to God, and it is the means by which the soul, though empty, is filled by God.”

John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician

This has similarly been attributed to Buchan, but is actually a misrendering of a sentence from the first paragraph of John Bunyan, Discourse on Prayer. Bunyan's original sentence reads: "It is the opener of the heart of God, and a means by which the soul, though empty, is filled."
Misattributed

God , Heart

“The life we have at this present is the gift of God, "in whom we live, move, and are:" and therefore is he called Jehovah. For the which life as we should be thankful, so we may not in any wise use it after our own fantasy, but to the end for the which it is given and lent us; that is, to the setting forth of God's praise and glory, by repentance, conversion, and obedience to his good will and holy laws: whereunto his long-suffering doth, as it were, even draw us, if our hearts by impenitency were not hardened. And there fore our life in the scripture is called a "walking:" for that as the body daily draweth more and more near his end, that is the earth, even so our soul draweth daily more and more near the death, that is salvation or damnation, heaven or hell.”

John Bradford (1510–1555) English Protestant Reformer and martyr

To the Christian Reader, John Bradford Wisheth the True Knowledge and Peace of Jesus Christ, Our Alone and Omnisufficient Saviour. http://www.godrules.net/library/bradford/07bradford5.htm
Sermon on Repentence

Life , Death , God , Law

“Arise then, O invincible Prince, bring help against the attacks of the lost spirits to the people of God, and give them the victory. They venerate thee as their protector and Patron; in thee holy Church glories as her defense against the malicious power of hell; to thee has God entrusted the souls of men to be established in heavenly beatitude. Oh, pray to the God of peace that He may put Satan under our feet, so far conquered that he may no longer be able to hold men in captivity and harm the Church. Offer our prayers in the sight of the Most High, so that they may quickly conciliate the mercies of the Lord; and beating down the dragon, the ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, do thou again make him captive in the abyss, that he may no longer seduce the nations.”

Pope Leo XIII (1810–1903) 256th Pope of the Catholic Church

Prayer to Saint Michael (1888)

Men , God , People , Peace

“God is both with form and without form. Butter still in milk can be said to be without form, and when it is churned out, with form. In the same way, the divine Light which is self-existent in all being is God without physique, whereas the Satguru of the time, or the realised soul, is God with the physique. Submergence of the mind into the divine light; obedience and service to Satguru together with supreme love for Him; consecration of body, mind and all activities to Him; together with a great anguish for the slightest forgetfulness of Him, constitute sublime devotion. Hence perpetual peace, eternal bliss and salvation within the lifetime are ensured. There is absolutely no other way to achieve them. This is universally substantiated".
Yogiraj Param Sant Satgurudev Shri Hans Ji Maharaj, Prem Nagar, India, June 1961, quoted in the Bantam paperback: "Who is Guru Maharaj Ji?”

Hans Ji Maharaj (1900–1966) Indian guru

pp 283-4.

Love , God , Peace , Way

“The method for practicing this ardent love is short and easy. Its subject is constant and loving aspiration. But to be perfect, aspiration must be practice so eagerly and continually that it becomes as easy as breathing. It has a number of degrees, all of which can be reduced to four. The first consists in offering oneself and all created things to God. As far as possible, this should be done in an abstract manner. The second degree consists in making requests of the divine Spouse, asking him for his gifts in him and for his own sake. The third degree consists in being resigned and completely conformed to him. This conformity is very lofty and perfect, and is characterized by a great love. Moreover, the soul also desires it for creatures who are capable of such exalted love. The fourth degree is that of unitive love which unites the soul to God. Here the souls yearns for him and pursues him with acts of love until he opens his loving and super essential bosom to it. Here it feast upon his immense beauty in great abundance and intoxication, eating and drinking at the table of the Blessed. But since this does not last very long, the soul soon returns to itself to feed upon its former spiritual fare. From this it derives renewed strength, until God again receives it into his bosom with the same effect.”

John of St. Samson (1571–1636)

From Prayer, Aspiration, and Contemplation

Love , God , Beauty , Drink

“I’m bothered by all these talent shows because it keeps people who are professional out of work, and these poor souls that are going on there are not getting paid, and people like Rupert Murdoch are making lots of money that they shouldn’t be.”

Helen Reddy (1941) Australian actress

On talent shows such as American Idol and The Voice
Chicago Tribune interview (March 2013)

Money , People

“Why, if the Soul can fling the Dust aside,
And naked on the Air of Heaven ride,
Were't not a Shame — were't not a Shame for him
In this clay carcase crippled to abide?”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)

“It seems to me that any cult has to have the following characteristics: One, a dictatorial leader, often called charismatic, who has total and unlimited control over his group. Two, followers who have abdicated the right to say no, the right to pass judgment, the right to protest, who have sold their souls for the security of slavery. Three, possibly the most dangerous doctrine known to our civilization, that the end justifies the means; therefore, any thing from the Moonies' heavenly deception to the violence of Synanon to the theft of government documents by Scientology, to the brutality of the Children of God, all the way to the murder-suicide of Jonestown, all is permitted because the ends justify the means and there is no one there to tell them no. Four, unlimited funds. The Unification Church with its some $50 million brought in each year by its mobile fund raising teams is duplicated by the Hare Krishnas dressing as Santa Claus or the Children of God sending out their women as fishers of men. Five, the instilling of fear, hatred, and suspicion of everyone outside the camp, of the entire outside world in order to keep the victims in line. You put them all together gentlemen -- You have a prescription for violence, for death, for destruction. It is a formula that fits the Nazi Youth Movement as accurately as it describes the Unification Church. Or the People's Temple.”

Maurice Davis (1921–1993) American rabbi

Ibid., February 5, 1979.

Death , Women , Men , God

“My favourite musician happens to be the same as Shakespeare's: John Dowland. His songs are sorrowful but heal the soul by their sweetness and courage.”

John Dowland (1563–1626) English Renaissance composer, lutenist, and singer

Robert Graves, letter to Idries Shah, September 6, 1968; published in Between Moon and Moon: Selected Letters of Robert Graves 1946-1972, (1984), p. 272.
Criticism

Courage