Quotes about the soul (5690 quotes, page 26)

“I don’t deny I’m lonely. Deeply so. A king, when he doesn’t have to account to anyone for what he says and does, is inevitably very much alone. But I’m not entirely alone because I’m accompanied by a force that others can’t see. My mystical force. And the I get messages. Religious messages. I’m very, very religious. I believe in God, and I’ve always said that if God didn’t exist, it would be necessary to invent him. Oh, I feel so sorry for those poor souls who don’t have God. You can’t live without God. I’ve lived with God ever since the age of five. That is, since God gave me those visions.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

Oriana Fallaci (December 30, 1973), The Mystically Divine Shah of Iran (interview), Chicago Tribune
Interviews

God , Age , Feeling

“The Pharisees were orthodox Jews, deeply concerned with the affairs of the Church and conscientious observers of all its ceremonies. They held its chief offices, occupied the chief places at the feasts, and sat in the chief seats in the synagogues…. Who then could have been more astonished than they when, like a thunderbolt from the sky, came the simplest, clearest, most concise and yet complete statement of fundamental religious truth that has ever been uttered? In twenty-eight words Jesus stated for all time and in a manner that may be understood by everybody, the fundamental basis of Christianity—"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all mind… And Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."”

Robert Hunter (author) (1874–1942) American sociologist, author, golf course architect

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 92-93

Love , God , Truth , Time

“I was in the death struggle with self: God and Satan fought for my soul those three long hours. God conquered — now I have only one doubt left — which of the twain was God?”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

Aceldama : A Place To Bury Strangers In (1898) Preface.

Death , God

“There is in souls a sympathy with sounds;
And as the mind is pitched the ear is pleased
With melting airs or martial, brisk, or grave:
Some chord in unison with what we hear
Is touched within us, and the heart replies.
How soft the music of those village bells
Falling at intervals upon the ear
In cadence sweet!”

William Cowper The Task

Source: The Task (1785), Book VI, Winter Walk at Noon, Line 1.

Music , Heart

“Plato makes the cosmos a living being by investing the world-body with a world-soul.”

Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis (1892–1965) Dutch historian

Source: The mechanization of the world picture, 1961, p. 15

World

“Our treatment of animals is the last moral frontier, the ultimate test of our humanity, the mirror by which we can see most deeply into our own souls.”

Bernard E. Rollin (1943) American philosopher

"The Legal and Moral Bases of Animal Rights", in Ethics and Animals, edited by Harlan B. Miller and William H. Williams (Clifton, NJ: Humana Press, 1983), p. 118 https://books.google.it/books?id=JBPlBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA118.

Animals

“Prayer crowns God with the honor and glory that are due to his name, and God crowns prayer with assurance and comfort. Usually, the most praying souls are the most assured souls.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

Quotes from secondary sources, Smooth Stones Taken From Ancient Brooks, 1860

God

“If we want a love which will protect the soul from wounds we must love something other than God.”

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

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Love (1947), p. 62

Love , God

“A heart-memory is better than a mere head-memory. Better to carry away a little of the love of Christ in our souls, than if we were able to repeat every word of every sermon we ever heard.”

Francis de Sales (1567–1622) French bishop, saint, writer and Doctor of the Church j

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 373.

Love , Memory , Heart , Christ

“To consider powerful souls as if they were a useful public resource is quite foreign to our customs. In a small sense it is undemocratic, for it assumes that some people really know better in a way that must seem arbitrary to most. In a large sense it is certainly democratic, in that it makes the great man serve as a man.”

Paul Goodman book Growing Up Absurd

Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), pp. 153-154.

People , Way , Sense

“Street scriptures, for lost souls in the crossroads..”

Nas (1973) American rapper, record producer and entrepreneur

"Nas Is Like"
On Albums, I Am... (1999)

“The human soul has sojourned in lower and higher forms, migrating from one to another according to the samskaras or impressions, but it is only in the highest form as a human being that it attains to freedom.”

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

Pearls of Wisdom

Freedom

“In the dark ages before the invention of the electronic vacuum tube there were many legends of living statues and magic pictures. One of the commonest devices of sorcerers and witches was the model of an enemy which somehow embodied his soul, so that injury to the model would be reflected by suffering or death of the original… Idolatry, witchcraft and other superstitions are so deeply rooted and widespread that it is possible that even the most detached scientific activity may be psychologically equivalent to them; such activity may help to satisfy the desire for power, to assuage the fear of the unknown or to compensate for the flatness of everyday existence.”

William Grey Walter (1910–1977) American-born British neuroscientist and roboticist

Source: An imitation of life (1950), p. 42.

Death , Age , Fear , Suffering

“Let others complain that the age is wicked; my complaint is that it is paltry; for it lacks passion. Men’s thoughts are thin and flimsy like lace, they are themselves pitiable like the lacemakers. The thoughts of their hearts are too paltry to be sinful. For a worm it might be regarded as a sin to harbor such thoughts, but not for a being made in the image of God. Their lusts are dull and sluggish, their passions sleepy. They do their duty, these shopkeeping souls, but they clip the coin a trifle, like the Jews; they think that even if the Lord keeps ever so careful a set of books, they may still cheat Him a little. Out upon them! This is the reason my soul always turns back to the Old Testament and to Shakespeare. I feel that those who speak there are at least human beings; they hate, they love, they murder their enemies, and curse their descendants throughout all generations, they sin.”

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

Swenson, 1959, p. 27
1840s, Either/Or (1843)

Love , Men , God , Hate

“Let a certain saving ambition invade our souls so that, impatient of mediocrity, we pant after the highest things and (since, if we will, we can) bend all our efforts to their attainment.”
Invadat animum sacra quaedam ambitio ut mediocribus non contenti anhelemus ad summa, adque illa (quando possumus si volumus) consequenda totis viribus enitamur.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola book Oration on the Dignity of Man

10. 50; translation by A. Robert Caponigri
Variant translation by Robert Hooker:
Let a holy ambition enter into our souls; let us not be content with mediocrity, but rather strive after the highest and expend all our strength in achieving it.
Oration on the Dignity of Man (1496)

Effort

“52. To separate the body from the soul is the privilege of only of the One who has joined them together. But to separate the soul from the body lies as well in the power of the man who pursues virtue. For our Fathers gave to the meditation of death and to the flight from the body a spiritual name: anachoresis”

Evagrius Ponticus (345–399) Christian monk

withdrawal
The Praktikos

Death

“Faith is the nail which fastens the soul to Christ; and love is that grace that drives the nail to the head. Faith takes hold of Him, and love helps to keep the grip. Christ dwells in the heart by faith, and He burns in the heart by love, like a fire melting the breast. Faith casts the knot, and love draws it fast.”

Thomas Erskine (1788–1870) Scottish theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 229.

Love , Faith , Help , Heart

“It was a beautiful embodied thought,
A dream of the fine painter, one of those
That pass by moonlight o'er the soul, and flit
'Mid the dim shades of twilight, when the eye
Grows tearful with its ecstasy.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(1st June 1822) Poetic Sketches. Second Series - Sketch the Fifth. Mr. Martin’s Picture of Clytie
8th June 1822) The Deserter see The Improvisatrice (1824
The London Literary Gazette, 1821-1822

Beauty , Dreams , Tear

“They had no vision amazing
Of the goodly house they are raising;
They had no divine foreshowing
Of the land to which they are going:
But on one man's soul it hath broken,
A light that doth not depart;
And his look, or a word he hath spoken,
Wrought flame in another man's heart.”

Arthur O'Shaughnessy Ode

Music and Moonlight (1874), Ode

Light , Heart , Housing

“Possess your soul with patience.”

John Dryden book The Hind and the Panther

Pt. III, line 839.
The Hind and the Panther (1687)

Patience

“What physic, what chirurgery, what wealth, favor, authority can relieve, bear out, assuage, or expel a troubled conscience? A quiet mind cureth all them, but all they cannot comfort a distressed soul: who can put to silence the voice of desperation?”

Robert Burton book The Anatomy of Melancholy

Section 4, member 2, subsection 4, Symptoms of Despair, Fear, Sorrow, Suspicion, Anxiety, Horror of Conscience, Fearful Dreams and Visions.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part III

Silence , Wealth

“You take souls for vegetables…. The gardener can decide what will become of his carrots but no one can choose the good of others for them.”

Jean Paul Sartre Dirty Hands

Heinrich, Act 5, sc. 3
Dirty Hands (1948)

“It's all about soul.
It's all about faith and a deeper devotion.
It's all about soul.
'Cause under the love is a stronger emotion.
She's got to be strong
'Cause so many things getting out of control
Should drive her away.
So why does she stay?
It's all about soul.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

All About Soul.
Song lyrics, River of Dreams (1993)

Love , Faith , Strong

“What need is there of long journeying on the land or voyaging on the seas to seek and search for virtue, whose roots have been set by their Maker ever so near us, as the wise legislator of the Jews also says, “in thy mouth, in thy heart and in thy hand,” thereby indicating in a figure, words, thoughts and actions? All these, indeed, need the cultivator’s skill. Those who prefer idleness to labor, not only prevent the growths but also wither and destroy the roots. But those who consider inaction mischievous and are willing to labor, do as the husbandman does with fine young shoots. By constant care they rear the virtues into stems rising up to heaven, saplings ever blooming and immortal, bearing and never ceasing to bear the fruits of happiness, or as some hold, not so much bearing as being in themselves that happiness. These Moses often calls by the compound name of wholefruits. In the case of growths which spring from the earth, neither are the trees the fruit nor the fruit the trees, but in the soul’s plantation the saplings of wisdom, of justice, of temperance, have their whole being transformed completely into fruits.”

Philo (-15–45 BC) Roman philosopher

68-71.
Every Good Man is Free

Wisdom , Justice , Search , Spring

“Heroic numberer of languages,
A conspicuous sea-shoal of goodly increase.
A number that God will watch with extreme love.
In heaven, in earth, at the end,
In straits, in expanse, in form,
In body, in soul, in habit,
Prudence far from the presence of kings.
I adore thee, Ruler of the land of peace.
Let my soul be in a condition of life;
For ever in court;
A servant of heaven, he will not refuse me.”

Taliesin (534–599) Welsh bard

Book of Taliesin (c. 1275?), The Elegy of the Thousand Sons

Love , Life , God , Peace

“Well he knew she was one of those women who, giving themselves, give wholly, reckoning not the cost; love of body and of soul, strength of arm in the daily task, the unmeasured devotion of a spirit that does not waver. So precious the gift appeared to him that he dared not ask it.”

Louis Hémon book Maria Chapdelaine

Source: Maria Chapdelaine (1913), Ch. 5, p. 76

Love , Women , Appearance

“That spirit I have faith will prevail. America is not going to abandon its principles or desert its ideals. The foundation on which they are built will remain firm. I believe that the principle which your organization represents is their main support. It seems to me perfectly plain that the authority of law, the right to equality, liberty and property, under American institutions, have for their foundation reverence for God. If we could imagine that to be swept away, these institutions of our American government could not long survive. But that reverence will not fail. It will abide. Unnumbered organizations of which your own is one exist for its promotion. In the inevitable longing of the human soul to do right is the secure guarantee of our American institutions. By maintaining a society to promote reverence for the Holy Name you are performing both a pious and a patriotic service.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Authority and Religious Liberty (1924)

God , Faith , Law , Imagination

“[To work is to pray. ] By the Puritan moralist the ancient maxim is repeated with a new and intenser significance. The labor which he idealizes is not simply a requirement imposed by nature, or a punishment for the sin of Adam. It is itself a kind of ascetic discipline, more rigorous than that demanded of any order of mendicants—a discipline imposed by the will of God, and to be undergone, not in solitude, but in the punctual discharge of secular duties. It is not merely an economic means, to be laid aside when physical needs have been satisfied. It is a spiritual end, for in it alone can the soul find health, and it must be continued as an ethical duty long after it has ceased to be a material necessity.”

R. H. Tawney (1880–1962) English philosopher

Laborare est orare.
Part IV, Ch. 3
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926)

God , Health , Nature , Solitude

“Well before James Joyce, Conrad was forging a vocabulary for the contemporary soul. This book grants us another opportunity to brood over a notable literary martyrdom.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

review in the London Independent newspaper of Joseph Conrad: A Biography by Jeffrey Meyers
People, Joseph Conrad

Books

“Element had an existence from the time he [God] had. The pure principles of element are principles which can never be destroyed; they may be organized and re-organized, but not destroyed. They had no beginning, and can have no end.... [T]he mind of man — the immortal spirit. Where did it come from? All learned men and doctors of divinity say that God created it in the beginning; but it is not so: the very idea lessens man in my estimation. I do not believe the doctrine; I know better. Hear it, all ye ends of the world; for God has told me so... We say that God himself is a self-existent being. Who told you so? It is correct enough; but how did it get into your heads? Who told you that man did not exist in like manner upon the same principles? Man does exist upon the same principles. God made a tabernacle and put a spirit into it, and it became a living soul.... The mind or the intelligence which man possesses is [co-eternal] with God himself. I know that my testimony is true... Is it logical to say that the intelligence of spirits is immortal, and yet that it had a beginning? The intelligence of spirits had no beginning, neither will it have an end. That is good logic. That which has a beginning may have an end. There never was a time when there were not spirits; for they are [co-eternal] with our Father in heaven.... I take my ring from my finger and liken it unto the mind of man—the immortal part, because it has no beginning. Suppose you cut it in two; then it has a beginning and an end; but join it again, and it continues one eternal round. So with the spirit of man. As the Lord liveth, if it had a beginning, it will have an end. All the fools and learned and wise men from the beginning of creation, who say that the spirit of man had a beginning, prove that it must have an end; and if that doctrine is true, then the doctrine of annihilation would be true. But if I am right, I might with boldness proclaim from the house-tops that God never had the power to create the spirit of man at all. God himself could not create himself.”

Joseph Smith, Jr. book History of the Church

History of the Church, 6:308-309 (7 April 1844)
1840s, King Follett discourse (1844)

Men , God , World , Fools

“In our constant struggle to believe we are likely to overlook the simple fact that a bit of healthy disbelief is sometimes as needful as faith to the welfare of our souls. I would go further and say that we would do well to cultivate a reverent skepticism. It will keep us out of a thousand bogs and quagmires where others who lack it sometimes find themselves. It is no sin to doubt some things, but it may be fatal to believe everything. Faith is at the root of all true worship, and without faith it is impossible to please God. Through unbelief Israel failed to inherit the promises. “By grace are ye saved through faith.” “The just shall live by faith.” Such verses as these come trooping to our memories, and we wince just a little at the suggestion that unbelief may also be a good and useful thing. … Faith never means gullibility. The man who believes everything is as far from God as the man who refuses to believe anything. Faith engages the person and promises of God and rests upon them with perfect assurance. Whatever has behind it the character and word of the living God is accepted by faith as the last and final truth from which there must never be any appeal. Faith never asks questions when it has been established that God has spoken. 'Yea, let God be true, but every man a liar' (Rom. 3:4). Thus faith honors God by counting Him righteous and accepts His testimony against the very evidence of its own senses. That is faith, and of such we can never have too much. Credulity, on the other hand, never honors God, for it shows as great a readiness to believe anybody as to believe God Himself. The credulous person will accept anything as long as it is unusual, and the more unusual it is the more ardently he will believe. Any testimony will be swallowed with a straight face if it only has about it some element of the eerie, the preternatural, the unearthly.”

Aiden Wilson Tozer (1897–1963) American missionary

Source: The Root of the Righteous (1955), Chapter 34.

God , Truth , Faith , Question

“Break free, my soul, good manners are thy tomb!”

Thomas Sturge Moore (1870–1944) British playwright, poet and artist

"Reason Enough", line 18; from The Sea is Kind (London: Grant Richards, 1914) p. 75.

“She had a kind of genius for picking the wrong man. She always looked for poetry and passion and sensitivity, the whole romantic kitchen, whereas I lived by a simpler diet, prose and pudding. I don’t expect attractive men to have attractive souls.”

John Fowles book Daniel Martin

Daniel Martin (1977)

Men , Passion

“An immensely tall, angular figure … His gown hung round him in long folds like the wings of a bat, and his wig was perched slightly askew over a lantern jawed face with a blue chin, soulful spaniel-brown eyes and a turned-down mouth like a slit. But for his garb, you would have said that he was a dyspeptic undertaker in a town where nobody ever died.”

Gerald Durrell (1925–1995) naturalist, zookeeper, conservationist, author and television presenter

Rosie Is My Relative (1968)

“Prayer is decisive element of victory. Wars are won by those who have managed to attract from elsewhere, from the skies, the mysterious forces of the invisible world and to secure their support. These mysterious forces are the souls of the dead, the souls of our ancestors, who once were, like us, linked to our clods, to our furrows, who died for the defense of this land and are still linked today to it by the memory of their lives and by us, their sons, their grandsons, their great grandsons. But, above the souls of the dead, there is God. Once these forces are attracted, they are of considerable power, they defend us, they give us courage, will, all the elements necessary to victory and which make us win. They bring in panic and terror among the enemies, paralyse their activity. In the last analysis, victories do not depend only on material preparation, on the material forces of the belligerents, but on their power to secure the support of spiritual forces. The fairness and the morality of actions and the fervent, insistent call for them in the form of rite and collective prayer attract such forces.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Religion

God , War , World , Courage

“The price of empire is America's soul, and that price is too high.”

J. William Fulbright (1905–1995) American politician

"The Price of Empire" speech, to the meeting of the American Bar Association in Hawaii (August 1967), in Haynes Bonner Johnson and Bernard M. Gwertzman, Fulbright: The Dissenter (1968), p. 305.

“What is man but a little soul holding up a corpse?”

Malcolm Lowry book Under the Volcano

Source: Under the Volcano (1947), Ch. X (p. 287)

“The difference between a great soul and an ordinary man is this: the latter weeps while leaving this body, whereas the former laughs. Death seems to him a mere play.”

Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna

[Swami Tapasyananda, Swami Nikhilananda, Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother; Life and Conversations, 253]

Death

“Accustom your soul after (it has conceived all that is great of ) divinity, to conceive something great of itself.”

Quintus Sextius Roman philosopher

Sentences of Sextus

“Money is running their lives, and they refuse to tell the truth about that. Money is in control of their emotions and hence their souls.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki (1947) American finance author , investor

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

Money , Truth

“3036. As he that doth not eat when he should, may have no Stomach when he is weak, but presently vomits up his Food again; so if thou studiest not the Art of Patience, and preparest not thy mind before-hand, and takest not in Grounds of Consolation, till thou art in Troubles, and hast need of great Comfort, thou wilt find thy Soul very impatient of Remedies, and 'twill be irksome to thee but even to read such Things as should quiet thee.”

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

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727)

Food , Art , Reading , Patience

“There's a little pond, in a small town in Poland, where they used to dump the ashes. The pond is still gray, even half a century later. I've heard it said that the holocaust had no survivors, that even those who managed to remain technically alive were so irreparably damaged, that their spirit, their soul, the person that they were supposed to be, was gone forever. I'd like to think that's not true. But if it is, then no one on Earth survived this war.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

World War Z

War , Thinking , Personality

“Ye are the children of God, the sharers of immortal bliss, holy and perfect beings. Ye divinities on earth - sinners! It is a sin to call man so; it is a standing libel on human nature. Come up, lions! and shake off the delusion that you are sheep; you are souls immortal, spirits free, blest and eternal.”

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

Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Calcutta, 1985, Vol I. p. 11. Quoted from Goel, S. R. (1996). History of Hindu-Christian encounters, AD 304 to 1996. Chapter 13 ISBN 9788185990354

God , Children , Nature , Perfection

“At the heart of our universe, each soul exists for God, in our Lord.”

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881–1955) French philosopher and Jesuit priest

The Divinisation of Our Activities, p. 56
The Divine Milieu (1960)

God , Universe , Heart

“.. on the banks of a very picturesque mountain stream that pours out its crystalline water in four or five waterfalls into the Dussel brook... Oh, in this cave, at this crystal flood, I often felt myself so well! Sensations frequently welled up in my bosom at this blessed place that ennoble the soul and make pour out joyful tombs; [they] give the heart impressions that neither greatness or honor can steal from us. An indomitable longing came to me, to learn more and more about these enchanting shades of beautiful and holy nature, and to transfer them on the canvas with my brush.”

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

(original Dutch, citaat van B.C. Koekkoek:) ..aan den oever van eenen hoogst schilderachtigen bergstroom die zijn kristallijnen vocht door vier of vijf watervalletjes in de Dusselbeek uitstort.. .Oh, in deze grot, bij dezen kristallen vloed, gevoelde ik mij dikwijls zo wel! Gewaarwordingen, die den ziel veredelen, vreugdentranen uit het oog doen vloeijen, het hart indrukken geven, die grootheid noch eer ons kunnen ontvreemden, welden vaak in dit zalige oord in mijn boezem op. Een ontembare zucht greep mij aan, om die tooverachtige schakeringen der schoone en heilige natuur meer en meer te leren kennen, en die door mijn penseel op het doek over te brengen.
he frequently visited this location along the Düssel stream, as Koekoek's quote illustrates
Source: Herinneringen aan en Mededeelingen van…' (1841), p. 37-38

Beauty , Mountain , Nature , Learning

“Prayer oneth the soul to God. For though the soul be ever like to God in kind and substance, restored by grace, it is often unlike in condition, by sin on man’s part. Then is prayer a witness that the soul willeth as God willeth; and it comforteth the conscience and enableth man to grace. And thus He teacheth us to pray, and mightily to trust that we shall have it. For He beholdeth us in love and would make us partners of His good deed, and therefore He stirreth us to pray for that which it pleaseth him to do. For which prayer and good will, that we have of His gift, He will reward us and give us endless meed.”

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

The Fourteenth Revelation, Chapter 43

Love , God , Parting

“Christianity is ever-present, with its wonderful parable of the prodigal son, to urge us to counsels of forbearance and forgiveness. Jesus was full of love for souls of women wounded by the passions of men, and He loved to bind their wounds, drawing from those same wounds the balm which would heal them. Thus he said to Mary Magdalene: "Your sins, which are many, shall be forgiven, because you loved much?" a sublime pardon which was to awaken a sublime faith.
Why should we judge more strictly than Christ? Why, clinging stubbornly to the opinions of the world which waxes hard so that we shall think it strong, why should we too turn away souls that bleed from wounds oozing with the evil of their past, like infected blood from a sick body, as they wait only for a friendly hand to bind them up and restore them to a convalescent heart?”

Alexandre Dumas, fils (1824–1895) French writer and dramatist, son of the homonym writer and dramatist

Le christianisme est là avec sa merveilleuse parabole de l'enfant prodigue pour nous conseiller l'indulgence et le pardon. Jésus était plein d'amour pour ces âmes blessées par les passions des hommes, et dont il aimait à panser les plaies en tirant le baume qui devait les guérir des plaies elles-mêmes. Ainsi, il disait à Madeleine : - "il te sera beaucoup remis parce que tu as beaucoup aimé", sublime pardon qui devait éveiller une foi sublime. Pourquoi nous ferions-nous plus rigides que le Christ ?
Pourquoi, nous en tenant obstinément aux opinions de ce monde qui se fait dur pour qu'on le croie fort, rejetterions-nous avec lui des âmes saignantes souvent de blessures par où, comme le mauvais sang d'un malade, s'épanche le mal de leur passé, et n'attendant qu'une main amie qui les panse et leur rende la convalescence du coeur ?
La Dame aux Camélias, English translation by David Coward; Oxford University Press, Sep 18, 1986.

Love , Women , Men , World

“Power always sincerely, conscientiously, de très bon foi, believes itself right. Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views, beyond the comprehension of the weak.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Letter to Thomas Jefferson (2 February 1816)
1810s

Thinking , Sincerity

“At Posada, Calugareni, on the Olt, jiu and. Cerna rivers, at Turda; in the mountains of the unhappy and forgotten Moti of Vidra, all the way to Huedin and Alba-Iulia (the torture place of Horia and his brothers-in-arms), there are everywhere testimonies of battles and tombs of heroes. All over the Carpathians, from the Oltenian mountains at Dragoslavele and at Predeal, from Oituz to Vatra Dornei, on peaks and in valley bottoms, everywhere Romanian blood flowed like rivers. In the middle of the night, in difficult times for our people, we hear the call of the Romanian soil urging us to battle. I ask and I expect an answer: By what right do the Jews wish to take this land from us? On what historical argument do they base their pretensions and particularly the audacity with which they defy us Romanians, here in our own land? We are bound to this land by millions of tombs and millions of unseen threads that only our soul feels, and woe to those who shall try to snatch us from it.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Jewish Problem

People , Way , Feeling , Mountain

“Our minds are susceptible to the influence of external voices, telling us what we require to be satisfied, voices that may drown our the faint sounds emitted from our souls, and distract us from the careful, arduous task of accurately naming our priorities.”

Alain de Botton book Status Anxiety

Source: Status Anxiety (2004), Chapter 5 (pt.6 29:50) [Paraphrasing Rousseau]

“All birth means separation from the All, the confinement within limitation, the separation from God, the pangs of being born ever anew. The return into the All, the dissolution of painful individuation, the reunion with God means the expansion of the soul until it is able once more to embrace the All.”

Hermann Hesse book Steppenwolf

Source: Steppenwolf (1927), p. 73

God , Pain , Birth

“Sudden and near the trumpet's notes out-spread,
And soon his eyes could see the metal flower,
Shining upturned, out on the morning pour
Its incense audible; could see a train
From out the street slow-winding on the plain
With lyres and cymbals, flutes and psalteries,
While men, youths, maids, in concert sang to these
With various throat, or in succession poured,
Or in full volume mingled. But one word
Ruled each recurrent rise and answering fall,
As when the multitudes adoring call
On some great name divine, their common soul,
The common need, love, joy, that knits them in one whole.
The word was "Jubal!"… "Jubal" filled the air,
And seemed to ride aloft, a spirit there,
Creator of the choir, the full-fraught strain
That grateful rolled itself to him again.
The aged man adust upon the bank
— Whom no eye saw — at first with rapture drank
The bliss of music, then, with swelling heart,
Felt, this was his own being's greater part,
The universal joy once born in him.”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

The Legend of Jubal (1869)

Love , Men , Youth , Age

“The disciples surrounded with cheap marvels and wonders the lonely figure of that serene Soul, simple and austere in his yellow robes, walking with bared feet and bowed head towards Benares.”

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India

His views on why the role of Buddhism diminished in India
Eminent Indians (1947)

“Anything which may take possession of one’s soul shares its sublimity with all other things, and is for this reason at the same time something ordinary. Without such a dialectic clarification of our consciousness all adoration is idol worship.”

Joseph Dietzgen (1828–1888) german philosopher

Letter 3
Letters on Logic: Especially Democratic-Proletarian Logic (1906)

Time

“It has become clear from the rumblings and soul-searching in the field of competitive strategy that a revolution is brewing. Managers and strategy researchers are discovering that existing models of strategy are nearly obsolete in the intensity of today's fast-paced competition. Some have called for a more dynamic approach, even questioning the sustainability of competitive advantage in this new environment. But so far, this revolution-waiting-to-happen has had no leader. Now it has.”

Richard D’Aveni (1953) American economist

Foreword
Hypercompetitive rivalries, 1994

Search , Question , Waiting

“You do believe it,' he said. 'You do believe everything. We all believe everything, even when we deny everything. The denyers believe. The unbelievers believe. Don't you feel in your heart that these contradictions do not really contradict: that there is a cosmos that contains them all? The soul goes round upon a wheel of stars and all things return; perhaps Strake and I have striven in many shapes, beast against beast and bird against bird, and perhaps we shall strive for ever. But since we seek and need each other, even that eternal hatred is an eternal love. Good and evil go round in a wheel that is one thing and not many. Do you not realize in your heart, do you not believe behind all your beliefs, that there is but one reality and we are its shadows; and that all things are but aspects of one thing: a centre where men melt into Man and Man into God?”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

'No,' said Father Brown.
The Dagger with Wings (1926)

Love , Men , God , Feeling

“I believe every lie that I ever told
Paid for every heart that I ever stoll I paid my cause and I didn't fold
Well, it ain't that hard when you got soul (This is my world)
Somewhere I heard that life is a test
I been though the worst but still I give my best yeah”

Aloe Blacc (1979) American soul singer, rapper and musician

The Man.
Song lyrics

Life , Lie , World , Heart

“Parents, I urge you to make the Bible the sweetest, the dearest book to your children; not by compelling them to read so many chapters each day, which will have the effect of making them hate the Bible, but by reading its pages with them, and by your tender parental love, so showing them the beauty of its wondrous incidents, from the story of Adam and Eve to the story of Bethlehem and Calvary, that no book in the home will be so dear to your children as the Bible; and thus you will be strengthening their minds with the sublimest truths, storing their hearts with the purest love, and sinking deep in their souls solid principles of righteousness, whose divine stones no waves of temptation can ever move.”

Abbott Eliot Kittredge (1834–1912) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 39.

Love , Hate , Children , Truth

“I do not mind if I lose my soul for all eternity. If the kind of God exists Who would damn me for not working out a deal with Him, then that is unfortunate. I should not care to spend eternity in the company of such a person.”

Mary McCarthy book Memories of a Catholic Girlhood

"To the Reader"
Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (1957)

God , Personality

“There was no room in him for curiosity; The capacity for observation had long since starved on the aridness of his soul.”

Tanith Lee book The Storm Lord

Source: The Storm Lord (1976), Chapter 22 (p. 303)

“Illness is essentially discomfort, and it is not easy for anybody to be comfortable all the time… in his body, in his work, in his house, or in his soul.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills (1952)

Time , Housing

“Highly ought we to rejoice that God dwelleth in our soul, and much more highly ought we to rejoice that our soul dwelleth in God. Our soul is made to be God’s dwelling-place; and the dwelling-place of the soul is God, Which is unmade. And high understanding it is, inwardly to see and know that God, which is our Maker, dwelleth in our soul; and an higher understanding it is, inwardly to see and to know that our soul, that is made, dwelleth in God’s Substance: of which Substance, God, we are that we are.
And I saw no difference between God and our Substance: but as it were all God; and yet mine understanding took that our Substance is in God: that is to say, that God is God, and our Substance is a creature in God.”

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

Summations, Chapter 54

God , Understanding

“Heat of passion makes our souls to chap, and the devil creeps in at the crannies.”

Thomas Fuller (1608–1661) English churchman and historian

Of Anger.
The Holy State and the Profane State (1642)

Passion

“My God! I have often regretted that I was born! I have often wished to fall back even into nothingness, rather than advance through so many falsehoods, so many sufferings, and so many successive losses, towards that loss of ourselves which we call death! Still, even in those moments of terrible faintheartedness, when despair overmasters reason, and when man forgets that life is a task imposed upon him to finish, I have always said to myself: "There are some things which I would regret not to have tasted — a mother's milk, a father's love, that relationship of heart and soul between brothers, household affections, joys, and even cares!" Our family is evidently our second self, more than self, existing before self, and surviving self with the better part of self. It is the image of the holy and loving unity of beings revealed by the small group of creatures who hold to one another, and made visible by feeling!”

Alphonse de Lamartine (1790–1869) French writer, poet, and politician

Book I, Note II, p. 19
Les confidences (1849)

Love , Life , Death , God

“Human virtue, if we went down to the roots of it, is not so rare. The materials of human virtue are everywhere abundant as the light of the sun: raw materials,—O woe, and loss, and scandal thrice and threefold, that they so seldom are elaborated, and built into a result! that they lie yet unelaborated, and stagnant in the souls of wide-spread dreary millions, fermenting, festering; and issue at last as energetic vice instead of strong practical virtue!”

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

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

Lie , Light , Strong , Loss

“Someone has a great fire in his soul and nobody ever comes to warm themselves at it, and passers-by see nothing but a little smoke at the top of the chimney and then go on their way.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in his Letter (no. 155), June 1880; published in the online version of http://www.vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let155/letter.html "Vincent van Gogh – The Letters; The Complete Illustrated and Annotated Edition"]. Retrieved 29 July 2014
Variants: One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way. // There may be a great fire in our hearts, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke.
1880s, 1880

Way

“As long as our souls remain strong, that is all that matters; as long as they don't decline. Because with the fall of certain souls in this world, the world itself will collapse. These are the pillars which support it. They are few, but enough.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book Report to Greco

"My Friend Poet. Mount Athos.", Ch. 19, p. 215
Report to Greco (1965)

World , Support , Strong

“The light of love flows out of my soul, but it can go nowhere because it’s blocked by pain. I could inhale and exhale every morning for the rest of my life, but that wouldn’t solve anything.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Aleph (2011)

Love , Life , Pain , Light

“There is nothing left to us but to see how we may be approved of Him, and how we may roll the weight of our weak souls in well-doing upon Him, who is God omnipotent.”

Samuel Rutherford (1600–1661) Scottish Reformed theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 274.

God

“Love is like some fresh spring, that leaves its cresses, its gravel bed and flowers to become first a stream and then a river, changing its aspect and its nature as it flows to plunge itself in some boundless ocean, where restricted natures only find monotony, but where great souls are engulfed in endless contemplation.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

L'amour est une source naïve, partie de son lit de cresson, de fleurs, de gravier, qui rivière, qui fleuve, change de nature et d'aspect à chaque flot, et se jette dans un incommensurable océan où les esprits incomplets voient la monotonie, où les grandes âmes s'abîment en de perpétuelles contemplations.
The Wild Ass’s Skin (1831), Part II: A Woman Without a Heart

Love , Spring , Flowers , Nature

“How difficult, how extremely difficult for the soul to sever itself from its body the world: from mountains, seas, cities, people. The soul is an octopus and these are its tentacles. … No force anywhere on earth is as imperialistic as the human soul. It occupies and is occupied in turn, but it always considers its empire too narrow. Suffocating, it desires to conquer the world in order to breathe freely.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book Report to Greco

"My Friend The Poet. Mount Athos.", Ch. 19, p. 188
Report to Greco (1965)

People , World , Mountain , Sea

“You would not easily guess
All the modes of distress
Which torture the tenants of earth;
And the various evils,
Which like so many devils,
Attend the poor souls from their birth.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

"Verses On A Cat" (1800), St. 2, as published in Life of Shelley (1858) by Thomas Jefferson Hogg, p. 21

Birth , Evil

“Students have powerful images of what a perfect body is and pursue it incessantly. But deprived of literary guidance, they no longer have any image of a perfect soul, and hence do not long to have one.”

Allan Bloom book The Closing of the American Mind

Source: The Closing of the American Mind (1987), p. 67.

Perfection

“"Hair loss and retrieval" (Translation of "Pérdida y recuperación del pelo")

To combat pragmatism and the horrible tendency to achieve useful purposes, my elder cousin proposes the procedure of pulling out a nice hair from the head, knotting it in the middle and droping it gently down the hole in the sink. If the hair gets caught in the grid that usually fills in these holes, it will just take to open the tap a little to lose sight of it.

Without wasting an instant, must start the hair recovery task. The first operation is reduced to dismantling the siphon from the sink to see if the hair has become hooked in any of the rugosities of the drain. If it is not found, it is necessary to expose the section of pipe that goes from the siphon to the main drainage pipe. It is certain that in this part will appear many hairs and we will have to count on the help of the rest of the family to examine them one by one in search of the knot. If it does not appear, the interesting problem of breaking the pipe down to the ground floor will arise, but this means a greater effort, because for eight or ten years we will have to work in a ministry or trading house to collect enough money to buy the four departments located under the one of my elder cousin, all that with the extraordinary disadvantage of what while working during those eight or ten years, the distressing feeling that the hair is no longer in the pipes anymore can not be avoided and that only by a remote chance remains hooked on some rusty spout of the drain.

The day will come when we can break the pipes of all the departments, and for months to come we will live surrounded by basins and other containers full of wet hairs, as well as of assistants and beggars whom we will generously pay to search, assort, and bring us the possible hairs in order to achieve the desired certainty. If the hair does not appear, we will enter in a much more vague and complicated stage, because the next section takes us to the city's main sewers. After buying a special outfit, we will learn to slip through the sewers at late night hours, armed with a powerful flashlight and an oxygen mask, and explore the smaller and larger galleries, assisted if possible by individuals of the underworld, with whom we will have established a relationship and to whom we will have to give much of the money that we earn in a ministry or a trading house.

Very often we will have the impression of having reached the end of the task, because we will find (or they will bring us) similar hairs of the one we seek; but since it is not known of any case where a hair has a knot in the middle without human hand intervention, we will almost always end up with the knot in question being a mere thickening of the caliber of the hair (although we do not know of any similar case) or a deposit of some silicate or any oxide produced by a long stay against a wet surface. It is probable that we will advance in this way through various sections of major and minor pipes, until we reach that place where no one will decide to penetrate: the main drain heading in the direction of the river, the torrential meeting of detritus in which no money, no boat, no bribe will allow us to continue the search.

But before that, and perhaps much earlier, for example a few centimeters from the mouth of the sink, at the height of the apartment on the second floor, or in the first underground pipe, we may happen to find the hair. It is enough to think of the joy that this would cause us, in the astonished calculation of the efforts saved by pure good luck, to choose, to demand practically a similar task, that every conscious teacher should advise to its students from the earliest childhood, instead of drying their souls with the rule of cross-multiplication or the sorrows of Cancha Rayada.”

Julio Cortázar (1914–1984) Argentinian writer

Historias de Cronopios y de Famas (1962)

Money , Family , Way , Feeling

“I cannot believe that there is any being in this universe who has created a human soul for eternal pain. I would rather that every god would destroy himself; I would rather that we all should go to eternal chaos, to black and starless night, than that just one soul should suffer eternal agony.”

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

What Must We Do To Be Saved? (1880) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38801/38801-h/38801-h.htm Section X, "The Evangelical Alliance."

God , Pain , Suffering , Universe

“Ye will not pray; ye will not shun temptation; ye will not renounce known sin; ye will not fight against evil habits! Are ye stronger than God? Can ye contend with the Eternal One? Have ye the nerve which shall not tremble, and the flesh which shall not quiver, and the soul which shall not quail, when the sheet of fire is round the globe, and thousand times ten thousand angels line the sky, and call to judgment?”

Henry Melvill (1798–1871) British academic

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 340.

God , Angels , Evil , Time

“What was it that made this human love so much more desirable to me than the love of my own kind? Was it because it was exclusive and capricious? The souls offered love and acceptance to all. Did I crave a greater challenge? This love was tricky; it had no hard-and-fast rules — it might be given for free, as with Jamie, or earned through time and hard work, as with Ian, or completely and heartbreakingly unattainable, as with Jared.
Or was it simply better somehow? Because these humans could hate with so much fury, was the other end of the spectrum that they could love with more heart and zeal and fire?”

Stephenie Meyer book The Host

Wanderer, p. 472
The Host (2008)

Love , Hate , Time , Heart

“Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made and forgot to put a soul into.”

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

Life Thoughts (1858)

God , Flowers

“In every country the intellectual class is the most influential class. This is the class which can foresee, advise and lead. In no country does the mass of the people live the life for intelligent thought and action. It is largely imitative and follows the intellectual class. There is no exaggeration in saying that the entire destination of the country depends upon its intellectual class. If the intellectual class is honest and independent, it can be trusted to take the initiative and give a proper lead when a crisis arises. It is true that the intellect by itself is no virtue. It is only a means and the use of a means depends upon the ends which an intellectual person pursues. An intellectual man can be a good man but he may easily be a rogue. Similarly an intellectual class may be a band of high-souled persons, ready to help, ready to emancipate erring humanity or it may easily be a gang of crooks or a body of advocates of narrow clique from which it draws its support.”

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) Father of republic India, champion of human rights, father of India's Constitution, polymath, revolutionary…

Speech delivered to the Bombay Presidency Mahar Conference (31 May 1936) http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00ambedkar/txt_ambedkar_salvation.html

Life , People , Intelligence , Support

“For the gods approve
The depth, and not the tumult, of the soul.”

William Wordsworth Laodamia

Stanza 13.
Laodamia (1814)

God

“If we are generous enough, we can stretch our souls everywhere and everywhen else. If we succeed in doing so, we shall discover that our present embraces the past and the future and that the whole world is our province.”

George Sarton (1884–1956) American historian of science

Preface.
A History of Science Vol.2 Hellenistic Science and Culture in the Last Three Centuries B.C. (1959)

World , Past , Future

“Stand near me and you get sick. Why? It reminds you that you’re an animal too, because you get a full dose of me. So we go round and round in our endless feedback. You hate me because you learn things about your own soul by getting near me. And I hate you because you must draw back from me. What I am, you see, is a plague carrier, and the plague I carry is the truth. My message is that it’s a lucky thing for humanity that we’re shut up each in his own skull. Because if we had even a little drop of telepathy, even the blurry nonverbal thing I’ve got, we’d be unable to stand each other. Human society would be impossible.”

Robert Silverberg book The Man in the Maze

Source: The Man in the Maze (1969), Chapter 8 (p. 120)

Hate , Truth , Learning , Animals

“Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Jove fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

First lines of Butler's translation of The Iliad (1898)

Men , Dogs , Singing , Anger

“True solitude is in the soul. The soul has as its desert and homeland God Himself, the father and teacher of all souls”

John of St. Samson (1571–1636)

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

God , Solitude , Teachers

“I know you are asking today, "How long will it take?" Somebody's asking, "How long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred throne?" Somebody's asking, "When will wounded justice, lying prostrate on the streets of Selma and Birmingham and communities all over the South, be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men?" Somebody's asking, "When will the radiant star of hope be plunged against the nocturnal bosom of this lonely night, plucked from weary souls with chains of fear and the manacles of death? How long will justice be crucified, and truth bear it?" I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because "truth crushed to earth will rise again." How long? Not long, because "no lie can live forever."”

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

How long? Not long, because "you shall reap what you sow."
1960s, How Long, Not Long (1965)

Death , Wisdom , Men , Children

“When we free ourselves from physical disabilities, emotional disturbances, and mental distractions, we open the gates to our 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. 22-23

“The thought of being under absolute compulsion, the plaything of another, is unendurable for a human being. Hence, if every way of escape from the constraint is taken from him, there is nothing left for him to do but to persuade himself that he does the things he is forced to do willingly, that is to say, to substitute devotion for obedience. … It is by this twist that slavery debases the soul: this devotion is in fact based on a lie, since the reasons for it cannot bear investigation. … Moreover, the master is deceived too by the fallacy of devotion.”

Simone Weil book Gravity and Grace

Source: Gravity and Grace (1947), p. 142 (1972 edition)

Lie , Way

“I did all my real growing up in France, which I was almost not allowed to do at home. They liked my voice, they found me sexy, they didn't know anything about my childhood. In England, you’d come on to a bright cheerful song, do a bit of comedy, finish on a big ballad and wear a sparkly dress. That was about it. Suddenly I saw people like Aznavour and Piaf, songs coming from your heart, your soul, your guts, your sex, whatever, songs about everything, life and death, love and hate, wow! I realised you can use all of you when you perform.”

Petula Clark (1932) British actress and singer

Calgary Herald, 14 Feb 2013

Love , Life , Death , Hate

“The scientific fact of clairvoyance, telepathy, soul-flight, psychometry, and prophecy are well established by incontrovertible evidence yet to mention them in certain circles is to ostracize yourself.”

Benjamin Fish Austin (1850–1933) Nineteenth-century Canadian educator/Methodist Minister/Spiritualist

Sermon (1899)

“The Myth is the Myth of the Blood, which, under the sign of the Swastika, released the World Revolution. It is the Awakening of the Soul of the Race, which, after a period of long slumber, victoriously put an End to Racial Chaos.”

Alfred Rosenberg book The Myth of the Twentieth Century

Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts ("The Myth of the Twentieth Century") - 1930 (in front of the actual text, not by Rosenberg himself)
Misattributed

World , Victory

“Tell me, ye that strive in vain to cramp and dwarf the soul,
Wherefore should it cease to be, and when shall essence die?”

Martin Farquhar Tupper (1810–1889) English writer and poet

Of Immortality.
Proverbial Philosophy (1838-1849)

“It is unbearable to consider that at this very moment that we are gathered together in this hall on this festive occasion, hundreds and thousands of prisoners of conscience are suffering from undernourishment, as the result of year-long hunger, and of an almost total lack of proteins and vitamins in their daily food, of a shortage of medicines (there is a ban on the sending of vitamins and medicines to internees), and of over-exertion. They shiver with cold, damp, and exhaustion in ill-lit dungeons, where they are forced to wage a ceaseless struggle for their human dignity and their conviction against the "indoctrination machine", in fact against the very destruction of their souls.”

Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989) Soviet nuclear physicist and human rights activist

Nobel Peace Prize Speech (1975)

Hunger , Food , Suffering

“Wert thou to open the heart of a single soul by helping him to embrace the Cause of Him Whom God shall make manifest, thine inmost being would be filled with the inspirations of that august Name. It devolveth upon you, therefore, to perform this task in the Days of Resurrection, inasmuch as most people are helpless, and wert thou to open their hearts and dispel their doubts, they would gain admittance into the Faith of God.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

XVII, 15
The Kitáb-I-Asmá

God , People , Faith , Help

“What humiliation, what disgrace for us all, that it should be necessary for one man to exhort other men not to be inhuman and irrational towards their fellow-creatures! Do they recognise, then, no mind, no soul in them — have they not feeling, pleasure in existence, do they not suffer pain? Do their voices of joy and sorrow indeed fail to speak to the human heart and conscience — so that they can murder the jubilant lark, in the first joy of his spring-time, who ought to warm their hearts with sympathy, from delight in bloodshed or for their ‘sport,’ or with a horrible insensibility and recklessness only to practise their aim in shooting! Is there no soul manifest in the eyes of the living or dying animal — no expression of suffering in the eye of a deer or stag hunted to death — nothing which accuses them of murder before the avenging Eternal Justice? …. Are the souls of all other animals but man mortal, or are they essential in their organisation? Does the world-idea (Welt-Idee) pertain to them also — the soul of nature — a particle of the Divine Spirit? I know not; but I feel, and every reasonable man feels like me, it is in miserable, intolerable contradiction with our human nature, with our conscience, with our reason, with all our talk of humanity, destiny, nobility; it is in frightful (himmelschreinder) contradiction with our poetry and philosophy, with our nature and with our (pretended) love of nature, with our religion, with our teachings about benevolent design — that we bring into existence merely to kill, to maintain our own life by the destruction of other life. …. It is a frightful wrong that other species are tortured, worried, flayed, and devoured by us, in spite of the fact that we are not obliged to this by necessity; while in sinning against the defenceless and helpless, just claimants as they are upon our reasonable conscience and upon our compassion, we succeed only in brutalising ourselves. This, besides, is quite certain, that man has no real pity and compassion for his own species, so long as he is pitiless towards other races of beings.”

Bogumil Goltz (1801–1870) German humorist and satirist

Das Menschendasein in seinen weltewigen Zügen und Zeichen (1850); as quoted in The Ethics of Diet: A Catena of Authorities Deprecatory of the Practice of Flesh-eating https://archive.org/stream/ethicsofdietcate00will/ethicsofdietcate00will#page/n3/mode/2up by Howard Williams (London: F. Pitman, 1883), pp. 287-286.

Love , Life , Death , Men

“As he went through the half-darkness of the lamp-lit streets, deserted almost entirely at this hour, he brooded over his hard luck. What chance had he ever been given? Raught, for that matter, like many another in case like his, was far from grasping fully how bad his luck had been, how little the chance that life had offered. Neglect and harshness had marked him in infancy; there had been nothing at any time to tell against the effect of them. But in all of the past that he remembered and could understand there had been more than enough to be stored up as matter for savage resentment, for the soul-sick criminal's conviction that he owes the world no more than such repayment as he can make in its own coin.”

Edmund Clerihew Bentley book Trent's Own Case

Source: Trent's Own Case (1936), Chapter XVII: "Fine Body of Men"

Life , World , Understanding , Chance

“Earth's biggest country 's gut her soul,
An' risen up earth's greatest nation.”

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

No. 7.
The Biglow Papers (1848–1866), Series II (1866)

Country

“What can you ever really know of other people's souls — of their temptations, their opportunities, their struggles? One soul in the whole creation you do know: and it is the only one whose fate is placed in your hands. If there is a God, you are, in a sense, alone with Him. You cannot put Him off with speculations about your next door neighbours or memories of what you have read in books.”

Clive Staples Lewis book Mere Christianity

Book IV, Chapter 10, "Nice People or New Men"
Mere Christianity (1952)

God , Fate , People , Books

“A world of such individual minds is by the final implications of this proof the world of primary causes, and every member of it, secure above the vicissitudes of Time and Space and Force, is possessed of a supertemporal or eternal reality, and is therefore not liable to any lethal influence from any other source. Itself a primary cause, it can neither destroy another primary cause nor be destroyed by any. The objector who would open the eternal permanence of the soul to doubt, then, must assail the proofs of a priori knowledge; for so long as these remain free from suspicion, there can be no real question as to what they finally imply. The concomitance of our two streams of experience, the timed stream and the spaced stream, raised from a merely historical into a necessary concomitance by the argument that refers it to the active unity of each soul as its ground, becomes the steadfast sign and visible pledge of the imperishable self-resource of the individual spirit.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Human Immortality: its Positive Argument, p.307-8

World , Question , Knowledge , Reality

“I have retained a belief that it is the popular sporty kids at school who grow up to have the least interesting lives, and the unhappy young souls who develop into the most extraordinary adults. Whoever heard of a creative genius being understood as a child and well loved by his class mates? Who like to imagine an artist who emerged into adulthood content with his lot? And, conversely, how satisfying to hear that almost without exception, the untroubled, popular kids at school have ended up blandly as accountants, solicitors or ‘in IT’. Hold on, misfits, your day will come.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Books, Confessions of a Conjuror (2010)

Love , School , Imagination , Adulthood

“We can never have too much preparation and training. We must be a strong competitor. We must adhere staunchly to the basic principle that anything less than full equality is not enough. If we compromise on that principle our soul is dead.”

Ralph Bunche (1904–1971) American diplomat

Unsourced

Strong , Training , Dead

Quotes about the soul page 26

Quotes about the soul
page 26