Quotes about the soul (5690 quotes, page 36)

“Jesus himself could not perform miracles where the people had not faith beforehand, and when sensible men, the learned and rulers of those times, demanded of him a miracle which could be submitted to examination, he, instead of granting the request, began to upbraid them; so that no man of this stamp could believe in him. It was not until thirty to sixty years after the death of Jesus, that people began to write an account of the performance of these miracles, in a language which the Jews in Palestine did not understand. And this was at a time when the Jewish nation was in a state of the greatest disquietude and confusion, and when very few of those who had known Jesus were still alive. Nothing then was easier for them than to invent as many miracles as they pleased, without fear of their writings being readily understood or refuted. It had been impressed upon all converts from the beginning that it was both advantageous and soul-saving to believe, and to put the mind captive under the obedience of faith; and consequently there was as much credulity among them as there was "pia fraud" or "deception from good motives" among their teachers; and both of these, as is well known, prevailed in the highest degree in the early Christian church.”

Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) German philosopher

Source: Fragments from Reimarus: Consisting of Brief Critical Remarks on the Object of Jesus and His Disciples as Seen in the New Testament, pp. 73–74

Death , Men , People , Fear

“At first, I felt this thing coming up in myself, just really physically growing in myself and happening, but it was a jungle, so I couldn't distinguish things so much. I knew there were, in myself, the souls of millions of people who lived centuries ago - not just people but animals, plants, the elements, things, even, matter - that all of these exist in me, and I felt this. OK, this pushed and pushed and pushed. OK, that was the beginning… And through the years it became clearer and clearer, this thing; it started to separate itself. I could make it come when I had to concentrate on, let's say, a person I had to become - this thing became stronger. And took more of me. In this moment, I let it do it, because I wanted, I had to be this person. And as I was led to doing it, there was then no way back. And the more I tried to do it, the more I hated it. But there was no way back anymore; it was always going farther and farther and farther. Until one day, when I was walking through the streets of Paris, I started crying, because I could look at a man, a woman, a dog, anything, and receive it, anything, everything; there was no difference between physical and psychological. I felt like I was breaking out, breaking up, receiving everything, every moment, even things I did not see. There is no turning back from this. But this danger is the power you have. It is this same power that lets you hold an audience when you are on a stage. Then it is a concentration, the same concentration that in kung fu is used for the kick that kills or to break a table with your hand. It means that you are sure of the power and that you relinquish yourself to it”

Klaus Kinski (1926–1991) German actor

Playboy interview

Hate , People , Dogs , Way

“Each person is a wholistic being who has a material aspect and a metaphysical aspect, but who is the soul. The problems of the world are so great that they cannot be adressed by looking at just one aspect of our existence. There must be an appropriate marriage between the material, the metaphysical, and the spiritual. This is not only healthy but it is imperative for our survival.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume I: Uncovering Spiritual Truths in Psychic Phenomena (Hari-Nama Press, 1996), Chapter 3: Angels and Demigods, p. 47

Marriage , World , Problem , Personality

“[From Reginald Clinton]: I do not believe that the heart is turned from the Creator by enjoying his works. Of what avail is the sweet breath of the rose, the morning song of the lark? The pleasure they impart is not matter of necessity, and yet we delight in both. The soul of the poet is as much His gift as the fragrance of the flower, or the lay of the bird; and the page where inspired words record heroic deed, touching sorrow, or natural loveliness, is one of those pleasures for which we should be thankful. I, for my part, believe most devoutly in the Almighty mercy, when I see how much that is beautiful and gladdening has been scattered over our pilgrimage here.”

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

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Pleasure , Beauty , Flowers , Nature

“The reason all of this is so horrible," McVries said, "is because it's just trivial. You know? We've sold ourselves and traded our souls on trivialities. Olson, he was trivial. He was magnificent, too, but those things aren't mutually exclusive. He was magnificent and trivial. Either way, or both, he died like a bug under a microscope.”

Stephen King book The Long Walk

The Long Walk (1979)

Way

“…pornography is the orchestrated destruction of women's bodies and souls; rape, battery, incest, and prostitution animate it; dehumanization and sadism characterize it; it is war on women, serial assaults on dignity, identity, and human worth; it is tyranny. Each woman who has survived knows from the experience of her own life that pornography is captivity–the woman trapped in the picture used on the woman trapped wherever he's got her.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

Introduction http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/PornIntro2.html, p xxvii.
Pornography, Men Possessing Women (1979)

Life , Women , War , Animals

“I saw three manners of longing in God, and all to one end; of which we have the same in us, and by the same virtue and for the same end.
The first is, that He longeth to teach us to know Him and love Him evermore, as it is convenient and speedful to us. The second is, that He longeth to have us up to His Bliss, as souls are when they are taken out of pain into Heaven. The third is to fulfill us in bliss; and that shall be on the Last Day, fulfilled ever to last. For I saw, as it is known in our Faith, that the pain and the sorrow shall be ended to all that shall be saved. And not only we shall receive the same bliss that souls afore have had in heaven, but also we shall receive a new, which plenteously shall be flowing out of God into us and shall fulfill us; and these be the goods which He hath ordained to give us from without beginning. These goods are treasured and hid in Himself; for unto that time Creature is mighty nor worthy to receive them.”

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

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 75

Love , God , Pain , Faith

“As the great words of freedom and fulfillment are pronounced by campaigning leaders and politicians, on the screens and radios and stages, they turn into meaningless sounds which obtain meaning only in the context of propaganda, business, discipline, and relaxation. This assimilation of the ideal with reality testifies to the extent to which the ideal has been surpassed. It is brought down from the sublimated realm of the soul or the spirit or the inner man, and translated into operational terms and problems. Here are the progressive elements of mass culture. The perversion is indicative of the fact that advanced industrial society is confronted with the possibility of a materialization of ideals. The capabilities of this society are progressively reducing the sublimated realm in which the condition of man was represented, idealized, and indicted. Higher culture becomes part of the material culture. In this transformation, it loses the greater part of its truth.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 57-58

Truth , Business , Problem , Reality

“From the day the President announced my nomination as the Attorney General of the United States three months ago, I have thought often about how to best prepare to meet the awesome responsibilities of this office. Outside these walls, the cries of those powerless souls who are injured, disenfranchised or otherwise aggrieved may indeed be faint. But those same pleas for help echo powerfully within the Department of Justice. Every day, like a steady drumbeat we are asked to provide an answer to a problem, to secure a remedy, to be a champion — and every day this Department responds as it has done so time and time again throughout the history of our beloved America.”

Alberto Gonzales (1955) 80th United States Attorney General

Remarks at his installation as Attorney General http://www.usdoj.gov/ag/speeches/2005/02142005_aggonzales.htm (February 14, 2005).

Justice , History , Problem , Time

“While this nation is guilty of the enslavement of three millions of innocent men and women, it is as idle to think of having a sound and lasting peace, as it is to think there is no God to take cognizance of the affairs of men. There can be no peace to the wicked while slavery continues in the land. It will be condemned; and while it is condemned there will be agitation. Nature must cease to be nature; men must become monsters; humanity must be transformed; Christianity must be exterminated; all ideas of justice and the laws of eternal goodness must be utterly blotted out from the human soul—ere a system so foul and infernal can escape condemnation, or this guilty republic can have a sound, enduring peace.”

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

The Nature of Slavery. Extract from a Lecture on Slavery, at Rochester, December 1, 1850
1850s, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855)

Women , Men , God , Peace

“I am standing on the threshold of another trembling world. May God have mercy on my soul.”

Bobby Sands (1954–1981) Irish volunteer of the Provisional Irish Republican Army

Diary entry http://larkspirit.com/hungerstrikes/diary.html, (1 March 1981), the first day of his hunger strike, in Skylark Sing your Lonely Song : An Anthology of the Writings of Bobby Sands (1991).
Other writings

God , World

“Also God shewed that sin shall be no shame to man, but worship. For right as to every sin is answering a pain by truth, right so for every sin, to the same soul is given a bliss by love: right as diverse sins are punished with diverse pains according as they be grievous, right so shall they be rewarded with diverse joys in Heaven according as they have been painful and sorrowful to the soul in earth. For the soul that shall come to Heaven is precious to God, and the place so worshipful that the goodness of God suffereth never that soul to sin that shall come there without that the which sin shall be rewarded; and it is made known without end, and blissfully restored by overpassing worship.”

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

The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 38

Love , God , Pain , Truth

“After death the sensation is either pleasant or there is none at all. But this should be thought on from our youth up, so that we may be indifferent to death, and without this thought no one can be in a tranquil state of mind. For it is certain that we must die, and, for aught we know, this very day. Therefore, since death threatens every hour, how can he who fears it have any steadfastness of soul?”
Post mortem quidem sensus aut optandus aut nullus est. Sed hoc meditatum ab adulescentia debet esse mortem ut neglegamus, sine qua meditatione tranquillo animo esse nemo potest. Moriendum enim certe est, et incertum an hoc ipso die. Mortem igitur omnibus horis impendentem timens qui poterit animo consistere?

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

section 74 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2007.01.0039%3Asection%3D74
Cato Maior de Senectute – On Old Age (44 BC)

Death , Youth , Fear , Indifference

“You needn't tell me that a man who doesn't love oysters and asparagus and good wines has got a soul, or a stomach either. He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.”

Saki The Chronicles of Clovis

"The Match-Maker"
The Chronicles of Clovis (1911)

Love , Wine

“The impurity of the mind is greed, and the impurity of the tongue is falsehood. The impurity of the eyes is to gaze upon the beauty of another man's wife, and his wealth. The impurity of the ears is to listen to the slander of others. O Nanak, the mortal's soul goes, bound and gagged to the city of Death. All impurity comes from doubt and attachment to duality. Birth and death are subject to the Command of the Lord's Will; through His Will we come and go.”

Nanak (1469–1539) Founder of Sikhism

Asa di Var

Death , Beauty , Birth , Wealth

“Sow the seeds of life — humbleness, pure-heartedness, love; and in the long eternity which lies before the soul, every minutest grain will come up again with an increase of thirty, sixty, or a hundred fold.”

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

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 211.

Love , Life

“Rejoice in Christ Jesus, for in Him you are complete. His righteousness is over you, His strong arm is around you; and he who puts his soul in Christ's keeping shall never perish nor come into condemnation. This is a safe place to rest in. "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?"”

James Hamilton (1814–1867) Scottish minister and a prolific author of religious tracts

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 92.

Love , Strong , Christ

“See this is my opinion: we all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand. But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls. We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put on the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to act our age. Told to grow up, for God's sake. And you know why we were told that? Because the people doing the telling were afraid of our wildness and youth, and because the magic we knew made them ashamed and sad of what they'd allowed to wither in themselves.”

Robert McCammon book Boy's Life

Introduction.
Boy's Life (1991)

God , People , Youth , Age

“I do not now pretend to define justifying faith, or to determine precisely how much is contained in it, but only to determine thus much concerning it, viz. That it is that by which the soul, which before was separate and alienated from Christ, unites itself to him, or ceases to be any longer in that state of alienation, and comes into that forementioned union or relation to him; or to use the scripture phrase, it is that by which the soul comes to Christ, and receives him; and this is evident by the Scriptures using these very expressions to signify faith. John vi. 35-39. 'He that cometh to me, shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me, shall never thirst…”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

Edwards later writes in this sermon... "The entire active uniting of the soul, or the whole of what is called coming to Christ, and receiving of him, is called faith in Scripture..."
Justification By Faith Alone (1738)

Hunger , Faith , Christ

“Tolstoy becomes intelligible when he is interpreted as a nineteenth century Russian who participates, in the depths of his unconscious soul as well as consciously, in the cultural movements of his time, and in the Russian mystic sense of community with men and nature. It is so with all the members of the radical Christian group. When they meet Christ they do so as heirs of a culture which they cannot reject because it is part of them.”

H. Richard Niebuhr (1894–1962) American theologian

Source: Christ and Culture (1951), p. 70

Men , Intelligence , Communication , Nature

“The rational soul in a certain manner possesses the excellence of infinity and eternity. If this were not the case, it would never characteristically incline toward the infinite. Undoubtedly this is the reason that there are none among men who live contentedly on earth and are satisfied with merely temporal possessions.”

Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) Italian philosopher

Source: Five Questions Concerning the Mind (1495), p. 202

Men

“Young girls sometimes make use of the expression: “Reading books to read one’s self.” They prefer a book that presents some resemblance to their own circumstances and experiences. It is true that we can never understand except through ourselves. Yet, when we want to understand a book, it should not be our aim to discover ourselves in that book, but to grasp clearly the meaning which its author has sought to convey through the characters presented in it. We reach through the book to the soul that created it. And when we have learned as much as this of the author, we often wish to read more of his works. We suspect that there is some connection running through the different things he has written and by reading his works consecutively we arrive at a better understanding of him and them. Take, for instance, Henrik Ibsen’s tragedy, “Ghosts.” This earnest and profound play was at first almost unanimously denounced as an immoral publication. Ibsen’s next work, “An Enemy of the People,” describes, as is well known the ill-treatment received by a doctor in a little seaside town when he points out the fact that the baths for which the town is noted are contaminated. The town does not want such a report spread; it is not willing to incur the necessary expensive reparation, but elects instead to abuse the doctor, treating him as if he and not the water were the contaminating element. The play was an answer to the reception given to “Ghosts,” and when we perceive this fact we read it in a new light. We ought, then, preferably to read so as to comprehend the connection between and author’s books. We ought to read, too, so as to grasp the connection between an author’s own books and those of other writers who have influenced him, or on whom he himself exerts an influence. Pause a moment over “An Enemy of the People,” and recollect the stress laid in that play upon the majority who as the majority are almost always in the wrong, against the emancipated individual, in the right; recollect the concluding reply about that strength that comes from standing alone. If the reader, struck by the force and singularity of these thoughts, were to trace whether they had previously been enunciated in Scandinavian books, he would find them expressed with quite fundamental energy throughout the writings of Soren Kierkegaard, and he would discern a connection between Norwegian and Danish literature, and observe how an influence from one country was asserting itself in the other. Thus, by careful reading, we reach through a book to the man behind it, to the great intellectual cohesion in which he stands, and to the influence which he in his turn exerts.”

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Source: On Reading: An Essay (1906), pp. 40-43

People , Books , Girl , Literature

“Love counts not its labour nor can it weigh its tenderness in the scale of purchase. That which it has it gives, and craves for more to give and give, till the soul's infinity be drained.”

H. Rider Haggard book Cleopatra

Cleopatra (1889)

Love

“I loafe and invite my soul.”

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

Song of Myself, 1
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Probably some ninety-nine out of every hundred of our gifted souls, who have to seek a career for themselves, go this beaver road. Whereby the first half-result, national wealth namely, is plentifully realized; and only the second half, or wisdom to guide it, is dreadfully behindhand.”

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

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Stump Orator (May 1, 1850)

Wisdom , Wealth

“As long as we are in this life, what time that we by our folly turn us to the beholding of the reproved, tenderly our Lord God toucheth us and blissfully calleth us, saying in our soul: Let be all thy love, my dearworthy child: turn thee to me — I am enough to thee — and enjoy in thy Saviour and in thy salvation. And that this is our Lord’s working in us, I am sure the soul that hath understanding therein by grace shall see it and feel it.”

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

The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 36

Love , Life , God , Feeling

“We also said that what is true of Europe is also true of Africa and South America. The countries of these continents have recently gained political freedom, but it has done little to help them to regain their spiritual identity. If they wish to rise in a deeper sense, they must recover their soul, their Gods, their roots in their own psyche. If they need any change, and there is no doubt they do, it must come from within themselves as a part of their own experience. They have to make the. best use of their own psychic and spiritual gifts. They cannot nse through imported deities, saviours and prophets.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Hindu View of Christianity and Islam (1992)

God , Sense , Freedom , Change

“It is truly a lordly spectacle how this great soul takes in all kinds of men and objects, a Falstaff, an Othello, a Juliet, a Coriolanus; sets them all forth to us in their round completeness; loving, just, the equal brother of all. Novum Organum, and all the intellect you will find in Bacon, is of a quite secondary order; earthy, material, poor in comparison with this. Among modern men, one finds, in strictness, almost nothing of the same rank. Goethe alone, since the days of Shakspeare, reminds me of it. Of him too you say that he saw the object; you may say what he himself says of Shakspeare: 'His characters are like watches with dial-plates of transparent crystal; they show you the hour like others, and the inward mechanism also is all visible.”

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

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Poet

Love , Men

“You know, you almost got to be a homosexual to be recognized in the entertainment industry anymore. Ellen [Degeneres], and all the rest. I love them, pray for their souls, but they're immoral. And the Hollywood scene — five and eight and 10 marriages — not something to be emulated.”

Jerry Falwell (1933–2007) American evangelical pastor, televangelist, and conservative political commentator

Televised sermon at the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia (25 June 2006), as quoted in "Falwell on the "moral pervert[s]" in Hollywood: "[Y]ou almost got to be a homosexual to be recognized in the entertainment industry anymore" at Media Matters for America (27 June 2006)

Love , Marriage

“At the core of the Perennial Philosophy we find four fundamental doctrines.
First: the phenomenal world of matter and of individualized consciousness — the world of things and animals and men and even gods — is the manifestation of a Divine Ground within which all partial realities have their being, and apart from which they would be non-existent.
Second: human beings are capable not merely of knowing about the Divine Ground by inference; they can also realize its existence by a direct intuition, superior to discursive reasoning. This immediate knowledge unites the knower with that which is known.
Third: man possesses a double nature, a phenomenal ego and an eternal Self, which is the inner man, the spirit, the spark of divinity within the soul. It is possible for a man, if he so desires, to identify himself with the spirit and therefore with the Divine Ground, which is of the same or like nature with the spirit.
Fourth: man’s life on earth has only one end and purpose: to identify himself with his eternal Self and so to come to unitive knowledge of the Divine Ground.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

Introduction to the Bhagavad-Gita (1944)

Life , Men , God , World

“It is more difficult, and it calls for higher energies of soul, to live a martyr than to die one.”

Horace Mann (1796–1859) American politician

Source: Thoughts Selected from the Writings of Horace Mann (1872), p. 213

“Jim was a big sheepdog of a man, 6-feet-4, 250 pounds, softhearted, soft-spoken. I never heard him use a dirty word; I never heard him tell a salacious story. Yet his novels are full of such words and stories; he seemed to have a need to dig deeply into the dark depraved nature of man. Nobody did it better. But then, anything he did, he did better. Two years ago, crippled by strokes, he appeared in a film, "Farewell, My Lovely," playing the cuckolded judge. When his wife in the film, played by Charlotte Rampling, carries on with Robert Mitchum in front of him, there is a look on his face that is part bewilderment, part despair and all forgiveness. He was that way, turning up the dark corners of the soul with love and forgiveness.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

From "Jim Thompson, 1906 - 1977"
Other Topics

Love , Way , Forgiveness , Nature

“This mortal Don Quixote died and descended into hell, which he entered lance on rest, and freed all the condemned, as he freed the galley slaves, and he shut the gates of hell, and tore down the scroll that Dante saw there and replaced it by one on which was written "Long live hope!" and escorted by those whom he had freed, and they laughing at him, he went to heaven. And God laughed paternally at him, and this divine laughter filled his soul with eternal happiness.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), Conclusion : Don Quixote in the Contemporary European Tragi-Comedy

God , Hope , Hell , Laughter

“What is the market place? Is it the secular city? Is it the factual market place, that is to say the urban inner city? Is it suburbia where all the supermarkets are? No. The market place is simply the soul of man. It is the place where man trades his soul either to God or to the devil or to the 'in between', with indifference, tepidity and complacency.”

Catherine Doherty (1896–1985) Religious order founder; Servant of God

"Living the Mandate", p. 40
The last part of the quote, about those who trade their souls to the 'in between', alludes to Rev 3:15-16.
Unfinished Pilgrimage (1995)

God , Indifference

“… (In) contemplating the political institutions of the United States, I lament that (if we remove the Bible from schools) we waste so much time and money in punishing crimes and take so little pains to prevent them…For this Divine Book, above all others, favors that equality among mankind, that respect for just laws, and those sober and frugal virtues which constitute the soul of”

Benjamin Rush (1745–1813) American physician, educator, author

our government
Attributed to A Defence of the Use of the Bible in Schools; entries in parenthesis are insertions or modifications of the original quote.
Misattributed

Money , Pain , Books , School

“Art is like a fart for the soul. Better out than in.”

Martin Firrell (1963) British artist and activist

on the topic of public art, quoted at franceinlondon.com (September 2004).

Art

“Nice guys never have a soul patch.”

Gina Barberi

Radio From Hell (March 17, 2006)

Guy

“id is both a technology and an art company, so we try to push the art and the technology to its edge on each game, and when you're into high-tech you want to make sure your game can run on several platforms, and you have some room to experiment with several architectures. We don't want to have a basic product, get it out the door, sell as many copies as we can, and then just do the next one. Everyone's putting a lot of soul into the games, and id has got enough money overhead to decide that they can afford to have game ports to show that technology is good on Linux and on Apple hardware.”

Timothee Besset French software programmer

Quoted in Dustin Reyes, "Interview with id Software's Timothee Besset" http://web.archive.org/web/20040924113843/http://www.linuxgames.com/?dataloc=articles/ttimo/ LinuxGames (2004-08-22).

Money , Art , Game

“The night had passed completely. The morning star shone in the sky. I too had become a different person. The student of Talmud, the child I was, had been consumed by the flames. All that was left was a shape that resembled me. My soul had been invaded - and devoured - by a black flame.”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Night (1960)

Star , Personality , Night

“There are probably no creatures that require more the protective Divine word against the presumption of man than the animals, which, like man, have sensations and instincts, but whose body and powers are nevertheless subservient to man. In relation to them man so easily forgets that injured animal muscle twitches just like human muscle, that the maltreated nerves of an animal sicken like human nerves, that the animal being is just as sensitive to cuts, blows and beating as man. Thus man becomes the torturer of the animal soul, which has been subjected to him only for the fulfilment of humane and wise purposes; sometimes out of self-interest, at other times in order to satisfy a whim, sometimes out of thoughtlessness—yes, even for the satisfaction of crude satanic desire.”

Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808–1888) Jewish theologian, germany 19th century

Horeb: A Philosophy of Jewish Laws and Observances, translated by Isidor Grunfeld, London: Soncino Press, 1968, vol. II https://books.google.it/books?id=tEIIAAAAIAAJ, p. 292, sec. 415.

Time , Animals , Forgetting

“No one can take away the freedom of a man's soul.”

David Gemmell book Legend

Source: Drenai series, Legend, Pt 1: Against the Horde, Ch. 9

Freedom

“Rightfulness is that thing that is so good that may not be better than it is. For God Himself is very Rightfulness, and all His works are done rightfully as they are ordained from without beginning by His high Might, His high Wisdom, His high Goodness. And right as He ordained unto the best, right so He worketh continually, and leadeth it to the same end; and He is ever full-pleased with Himself and with all His works.
And the beholding of this blissful accord is full sweet to the soul that seeth by grace.”

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

The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 35

Wisdom , God

“The reward of renunciation is some good greater than the thing renounced. To renounce with no vision of such a good, from fear or in automatic obedience to a formula, is to weaken the springs of life, and to diminish the soul's resistance to this world.”

Hugh Kingsmill (1889–1949) British writer and journalist

Matthew Arnold (1928) p. 89

Life , World , Fear , Spring

“Arcadia? The realm of the infinite? It's a poet's corner… It's not a cult or a religion – it's an awareness of your surroundings; you're not going to force yourself on anyone and, equally, no one's going to force themselves on you. And it's about community and pleasure. It came from a whisper through the trees. It came from a crack in the pavement. It can also come when you open a bag of crisps, or when you kick a football against a goalpost. Even if I was winding you up, it would still be true, because Arcadia and the Arcadian Dream is so deep, is so true to our hearts… It can be as powerful as your imagination can allow it to be. But, it can also be as dark and twisted as your soul… Arcadia encompasses the infinite, and that's why it comforts me.”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

2002
Arcadia

Pleasure , Religion , Dreams , Imagination

“That which the learned Jews did with the outward letter of their Law, that same do learned Christians with the outward letter of their gospel. Why did the Jewish church so furiously and obstinately cry out against Christ, Let him be crucified? It was because their letter-learned ears, their worldly spirit and temple-orthodoxy, would not bear to hear of an inward savior, not bear to hear of being born again of his Spirit, of eating his flesh, and drinking his blood, of his dwelling in them, and they in him. To have their Law of ordinances, their temple-pomp sunk into such a fulfilling savior as this, was such enthusiastic jargon to their ears, as forced their sober, rational theology, to call Christ, Beelzebub, his doctrine, blasphemy, and all for the sake of Moses and rabbinic orthodoxy.
Need it now be asked, whether the true Christ of the gospel be less blasphemed, less crucified, by that Christian theology which rejects an inward Christ, a savior living and working in the soul, as its inward light and life, generating his own nature and Spirit in it, as its only redemption, whether that which rejects all this as mystic madness be not that very same old Jewish wisdom sprung up in Christian theology, which said of Christ when teaching these very things, "He is mad, why hear ye him?" Our blessed Lord in a parable sets forth the blind Jews, as saying of himself, "We will not have this man to reign OVER us."”

William Law (1686–1761) English cleric, nonjuror and theological writer

The sober-minded Christian scholar has none of this Jewish blindness, he only says of Christ, we will not have this man to REIGN IN US, and so keeps clear of such mystic absurdity as St. Paul fell into, when he enthusiastically said, "Yet not I, but Christ that liveth in me."
¶ 157 - 158.
An Humble, Earnest and Affectionate Address to the Clergy (1761)

Life , Wisdom , Law , Drink

“If you don’t feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Your soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great.9 God did not create you for this. There is an appetite for God. And it can be awakened. I invite you to turn from the dulling effects of food and the dangers of idolatry, and to say with some simple fast: “This much, O God, I want you.””

John Piper (1946) American writer

A Hunger for God: Desiring God through Fasting and Prayer (Crossway Books, 1997, ISBN 0891079661.

God , World , Food , Feeling

“There is a radical difference between the Christian expectation of the resurrection of the dead and the Greek belief in the immortality of the soul.. . . Although Christianity later established a link between these two beliefs, and today the average Christian confuses them completely, I see no reason to hide what I and the majority of scholars consider to be the truth.. . . The life and thought of the New Testament are entirely dominated by faith in the resurrection.. . . The whole man, who is really dead, is brought back to life by a new creative act of God.”

Oscar Cullmann (1902–1999) French theologian

In the book Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead?

Life , God , Truth , Faith

“Could we, with human reason, process the finality of death, we would be very different souls, giving more than we take, forgiving easily, and listening with all that is in us for the answers to questions we would not have otherwise asked.”

Donald Miller (1971) American writer

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

Death , Forgiveness , Question

“How my soul hates This language,
Which makes life itself a lie,
Flattering dust with eternity.”

George Gordon Byron Sardanapalus

Act I, scene 2.
Sardanapalus (1821)

Life , Hate , Lie

“Sin is man’s destruction. Only the rust of sin can consume the soul-or eternally destroy it. For here indeed is the remarkable thing from which already that simple wise man of olden time derived a proof of the immortality of the soul, that the sickness of the soul (sin) is not like bodily sickness which kills the body. Sin is not a passage-way which a man has to pass through once, for from it one shall flee; sin is not (like suffering) the instant, but an eternal fall from the eternal, hence it is not ‘once’, and it cannot possibly be that its ‘once’ is no time. No, just as between the rich man in hell and Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom there was a yawning gulf fixed, so is there also a yawning distinction between suffering and sin. Let us not confuse it, lest talk about suffering might become less frank-hearted, because it had also sin in mind, and this less frank-hearted talk might be boldly impudent inasmuch as it is talking this way about sin. This precisely is the Christian position, that there is this infinite distinction between evil and evil, as they are confusedly named; this precisely is the Christian characteristic, to talk of temporal sufferings ever more and more frank-heartedly, more triumphantly, more joyfully, because Christianity regarded, sin, and sin only, is destructive.”

Sören Kierkegaard book Christian Discourses

Søren Kierkegaard, Christian Discourses, The Joy of it – That We Suffer Only Once But Triumph Eternally. P. 108 Lowrie Translation 1961 Oxford University Press
1840s, Christian Discourses (1848)

Way , Hell , Suffering , Evil

“We are talking about an artist; and for the enjoyment of the artist the mask must be to some extent moulded on the face. What he makes outside him must correspond to something inside him; he can only make his effects out of some of the materials of his soul.”

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

The Dagger with Wings (1926)

“No nation is truly defeated which retains its spiritual self-possession. No nation is truly victorious which does not emerge soul unstained.”

Evelyn Underhill book Practical Mysticism

Preface, p. 14
Practical Mysticism (1914)

Victory

“One single ideal can transform a listless soul into a towering leader of men.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

Men

“How few philosophers are to be found who are such in character, so ordered in soul and in life, as reason demands; who regard their teaching not as a display of knowledge, but as the rule of life; who obey themselves, and submit to their own decrees!”
Quotus enim quisque philosophorum invenitur, qui sit ita moratus, ita animo ac vita constitutus, ut ratio postulat? qui disciplinam suam non ostentationem scientiae, sed legem vitae putet? qui obtemperet ipse sibi et decretis suis pareat?

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Book II, Chapter IV; translation by Andrew P. Peabody
Tusculanae Disputationes – Tusculan Disputations (45 BC)

Life , Knowledge

“Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
"Life is but an empty dream!"
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow A Psalm of Life

St. 1.
A Psalm of Life (1839)

Life , Dreams , Dead

“If the soul of Roman Catholicism is to be found in partisan politics, then it's probably time to shutter up the chapel”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

24
Essays, Can Poetry Matter? (1991), The Catholic Writer Today (2013)

Time

“These songs were the true names of things, spoken by the soul, so easily buried under the little busynesses of everyman everyday.”

Ian McDonald book Desolation Road

Source: Desolation Road (1988), Chapter 22 (p. 111).

“Salutations unto the Feet of Supreme Fathers, Almighty Lords Sawan and Kirpal, Who have had mercy on the poor souls. They showered Their grace upon the souls and gave them the gift of Their devotion…”

Ajaib Singh (1926–1997) Sant Ajaib Singh (11 September 1926 – 6 July 1997) was born in Maina, Bhatinda district, Punjab, India. He …

Ref. http://www.flickr.com/photos/100gurus/4888480241/.

“The anxiety about death is met in two ways. The reality of death is excluded from daily life to the highest possible degree. The dead are not allowed to show that they are dead; they are transformed into a mask of the living. The other and more important way of dealing with death is the belief in a continuation of life after death, called the immortality of the soul. This is not a Christian and hardly a Platonic doctrine. Christianity speaks of resurrection and eternal life, Platonism of a participation of the soul in the transtemporal sphere of essences. But the modern idea of immortality means a continuous participation in the productive process.”

Paul Tillich book The Courage to Be

Source: The Courage to Be (1952), p. 110

Life , Death , Way , Idea

“What of the souls already released from their bodies? We believe that they are overwhelmed in that vast sea of eternal light and of luminous eternity”

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) French abbot, theologian

From, On Loving of God, Paul Halsall trans., Ch. 11

Light , Sea

“Wilt thou debase the heart which God refined?
No; let thy heaven-taught soul to heaven aspire,
To fancy, freedom, harmony, resigned;
Ambition's groveling crew forever left behind.”

James Beattie (1735–1803) Scottish poet, moralist and philosopher

Book i. Stanza 7.
The Minstrel; or, The Progress of Genius (1771)

God , Freedom , Heart

“Every pitifulest whipster that walks within a skin has had his head filled with the notion that he is, shall be, or by all human and divine laws ought to be, 'happy.' His wishes, the pitifulest whipster's, are to be fulfilled for him; his days, the pitifulest whipster's, are to flow on in an ever-gentle current of enjoyment, impossible even for the gods. The prophets preach to us, Thou shalt be happy; thou shalt love pleasant things, and find them. The people clamor, Why have we not found pleasant things?… God's Laws are become a Greatest Happiness Principle. There is no religion; there is no God; man has lost his soul.”

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

Bk. III, ch. 4.
1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Love , God , People , Religion

“A Christian is a believer in Jesus. He believes that if he only throws his own lost and sinful soul on the Redeemer, there is in His sacrifice sufficient merit to cancel all his guilt, and in His heart sufficient love to undertake the keeping of his soul for all eternity. He believes that Jesus is a Saviour. He believes that His heart is set on His people's holiness, and that it is only by making them new creatures, pure-minded, kind-hearted, unselfish, devout, that He can fit them for a home and a life like His own, that He can fit them for the occupations and enjoyments of heaven. And believing all this he prays and labors after holiness.”

James Hamilton (1814–1867) Scottish minister and a prolific author of religious tracts

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 103.

Love , Life , People , Home

“A Heroick Poem, truly such, is undoubtedly the greatest Work which the Soul of Man is capable to perform.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

The Works of Virgil translated into English verse by Mr. Dryden, Volume II (London, 1709), "Dedication", p. 213.

“Prayer is the pulse of the renewed soul; and the constancy of its beat is the test and measure of the spiritual life.”

Octavius Winslow (1808–1878) English theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 458.

Life

“The more I write the less substance do I see in my work, … It is tolerably awful. And I face it, I face it but the fright is growing on me. My fortitude is shaken by the view of the monster. It does not move; its eyes are baleful; it is as still as death itself — and it will devour me. Its stare has eaten into my soul already deep, deep.”

Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Polish-British writer

Letter to Edward Garnett written in March 1899, published in The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad, edited by Frederick R. Karl and Laurence Davies, Vol. 2, p. 177

Death

“There are no ghosts, my love. Death is final. The soul is that ineffable combination of memory and personality which we carry through life…when life departs, the soul also dies. Except for what we leave in the memory of those who loved us.”

Dan Simmons book The Rise of Endymion

Source: The Rise of Endymion (1997), Chapter 27 (p. 578)

Love , Life , Death , Memory

“Malebranche would have it that not a soul is left; we humbly think that there still are hearts.”

Edmond Rostand Chantecler

Malebranche dirait qu’il n’y a plus une âme:
Nous pensons humblement qu’il reste encor des cœurs.
Prelude
Chantecler (1910)

Thinking , Heart

“I was an old man by the time I took that walk to the Public Library in San Francisco, because the years between birth and twenty are the years in which the soul travels farthest and swiftest.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills (1952)

Travel , Birth , Time

“I am no longer sure of anything. If I satiate my desires, I sin but I deliver myself from them; if I refuse to satisfy them, they infect the whole soul.”

Jean Paul Sartre book The Devil and the Good Lord

Act 10, sc. 2
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)

“An indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her with a vague anguish…like a shadow… a mist passing across her soul's summer day.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

Summer , Parting

“The ground of all religion, that which makes it possible, is the relation in which the human soul stands to God.”

John Campbell Shairp (1819–1885) British writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 493.

God , Religion

“The rites were just the husks left over from deeper things, no pith remaining and no mystery, nothing to lift up the soul or go to the brain like wine. And, as generally happens, the more truth the ritual lost the more they bolstered it with significance. There is a saying among the Moi: The chief is clad in gold and purple, only the god dares to go naked.”

Tanith Lee book Vazkor, Son of Vazkor

Book One, Part I “The Krarl”, Chapter 3 (p. 20)
Vazkor, Son of Vazkor (1978)

God , Truth , Wine

“He was wounded. I suppose some sharp thing in me wanted to sting him, for making me need him now. After he'd once cut me to the edge of what a soul will bear. But that was senseless…. I looked at this grown-up Loyd and tried to make sense of him, seeing clearly that he was too sweet to survive around me. I would go to my grave expecting the weapon in the empty hand.”

Barbara Kingsolver Animal Dreams

Codi Noline, Animal Dreams.
Animal Dreams (1990)

Sense

“The story of the brain's separation from the body begin with Rene Descartes. The most influential philosopher of the seventeenth century, Descartes divided being into two distinct substances: a holy soul and a mortal carcass. The soul was the source of reason, science, and everything nice. Our flesh, on the other hand, was "clock-like," just a machine that bleeds. With this schism, Descartes condemned the body to a life of subservience, a power plant for the brain's light bulbs.”

Jonah Lehrer book Proust Was a Neuroscientist

Source: Proust Was a Neuroscientist (2007), Chapter 1, page 3.

Life , Light , Science

“None but God can satisfy the longings of an immortal soul; that as the heart was made for Him, so He only can fill it.”

Richard Chenevix Trench (1807–1886) Irish bishop

Notes on the Parables, Prodigal Son; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 321.

God , Heart

“The soul is too great to know itself, yet each individual portion of the soul seeks this knowledge, and in the seeking creates new possibilities of development, new dimensions of actuality. The individual self at any given moment can connect with its soul.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Seth, Dreams & Projections of Consciousness, (1986), p. 285

Knowledge

“Cookie: What are you sad about?Harry: I'm spiritually bankrupt. I'm empty.Cookie: What do you mean?Harry: I'm frightened. I got no soul, you know what I mean? Let me put it this way: when I was younger it was less scary waiting for Lefty than it is waiting for Godot.Cookie: You lost me!Harry: You know that the universe is coming apart? You know about that? You know what a black hole is?Cookie: Yeah. That's how I make my living.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Deconstructing Harry (1997)

Sadness , Way , Universe , Waiting

“How can reason possibly grasp that immensity beyond all being where the precious food of the Eucharist is, in some marvellous way, made one with us, drawing us wholly to itself and changing us into itself? It is a union more intimate than any that the human mind can conceive, totally unlike any other change, a union more compatible than a tiny drop of water losing itself in the wine-vat and becoming one with the wine, or that of the rays of the sun made one with the sun's splendour; or the soul with the body, the two together making one person, one being. In this union the soul is lifted above the infirmity of its natural state, its own insufficiency, and there it is purified, transfigured and raised above its own powers, its human operations, its very self. Both being and activities are penetrated through and through by God, formed and transformed in a divine manner, the soul's new birth is accomplished in truth, and the spirit, losing all its native incompatibility, flows into divine union.”

Johannes Tauler (1300–1361) German theologian

Sermons, From Our Daily Bread

God , Truth , Food , Way

“A novelist has to enter deeper exile still. In most outward ways the experience was depressive, as many young would-be writers and painters who have ever gone to Greece have discovered. We used to have a nickname for the sense of inadequacy and accidie it produced – the ‘Aegean blues’. One has to be a very complete artist to create good work among the purest and most balanced landscapes on the planet…The Greece of the Islands is Circe still; no place for the artist-voyager to linger long, if he cares for his soul.”

John Fowles book The Magus

Introduction (1977 edition)
The Magus (1965)

Way , Sense

“It is a sin of the soul to force young people into opinions … but it is culpable neglect not to impel young people into experiences.”

Kurt Hahn (1886–1974) German educator

John Gookin, NOLS Wilderness Wisdom: Quotes for Inspirational Exploration (2003), ISBN 0811726460, p. 45.
Attributed

People

“Since the soul in me is dead,
Better save the skin.”
Mortuus in anima<br/>curam gero cutis.

Archpoet (1130–1165) 12th century poet

Mortuus in anima
curam gero cutis.
Source: "Confession", Line 39

Dead

“Voluptuous habits speedily bind all the powers of the soul in loathsome vassalage, and exclude every thought except such as relate to the beastly pleasures of which it is the slave. Distracted by cravings as inexorable as they are base, and in their vileness perpetually reproduced, — tantalized by the impure fountains of a diseased imagination, and oppressed with its own effeminacy, — the mind loses its vigor and its productiveness. Every faculty rapidly deteriorates and decays; memory becomes extinguished, inanity destroys resolution, and the heart is as cold and callous as a cinder extinct. It ceases to love, to sympathize, and diffuse the delicious tears that sanctify friendship's shrine. The whole countenance assumes an expression of obdurateness and repugnance. The features, marked with premature decay, proclaim that the source of gentle sentiments, pure emotions, and innocent joys, is exhausted, like a limpid fountain invaded by the scoria and flame of a volcano. All the elements of life seem to have retreated into their abused organs only to perish there. Even the organs themselves are withered, and worse than dead; their infirmities, maladies, sufferings, rush in a multitude upon the degraded victim, and overwhelm him in awful retribution.”

Elias Lyman Magoon (1810–1886) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 354.

Love , Life , Friendship , Pleasure

“You look at any poetic creature: muslin, ether, demigoddess, millions of delights; then you look into the soul and find the most ordinary crocodile!”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

The Bear or The Boor, sc. viii (1888)

“A soul is a troublesome possession, and when man developed it he lost the Garden of Eden.”

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

Red http://books.google.com/books?id=6ZZgZw5yX8QC&q="a+soul+is+a+troublesome+possession+and+when+man+developed+it+he+lost+the+Garden+of+Eden"&pg=PA413#v=onepage (1921)

“The missionary calling has sometimes been interpreted as a calling to stem this fearful cataract of souls going to eternal perdition. But I do not find this in the center of the New Testament representation of the missionary calling.”

Lesslie Newbigin (1909–1998) Christian missionary

The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Eerdmans, 1989 (reprinted 2002),125.

Fear

“However we may receive blows, and however knocked about we may be, the Soul is there and is never injured. We are that Infinite.”

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

Pearls of Wisdom

“My heart…my mind… are broken. I loved Michael with all my soul and I can't imagine life without him. We had so much in common and we had such loving fun together.”

Elizabeth Taylor (1932–2011) British-American actress

As quoted in "Michael Jackson: Elizabeth Taylor Honors her good friend" http://news-briefs.ew.com/2009/06/elizabeth-taylor-honors-good-friend-michael-jackson.html by Dave Karger, Entertainment Weekly (26 June 2009)]

Love , Life , Imagination , Heart

“Take heed to carefully consider the words of every soul, then hold fast to the proofs which attest the truth. If ye fail to discover truth in a person’s words, make them not the object of contention, inasmuch as ye have been forbidden in the Bayán to enter into idle disputation and controversy, that perchance on the Day of Resurrection ye may not engage in argumentation, and dispute with Him Whom God shall make manifest.”

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

XVII, 16
The Kitáb-I-Asmá

God , Truth , Personality

“I think God didn't put eyes on my face because he took his time to put eyes in my soul.”

Leandro Díaz (1928–2013) Colombian musician

[Revista Festival de la Leyenda Vallenata, http://www.elvallenato.com/artistas/biografia.php?artista=120&mas=Leandro%20Diaz, Leandro Díaz, Revista Festival de la Leyenda Vallenata, 2001, 2008-03-26, Spanish]

God , Thinking , Time

“Go, Soul, the body’s guest,
Upon a thankless arrant:
Fear not to touch the best;
The truth shall be thy warrant:
Go, since I needs must die,
And give the world the lie.Say to the court, it glows.
And shines like rotten wood;
Say to the church, it shows
What’s good, and doth no good:
If church and court reply,
Then give them both the lie.”

Walter Raleigh (1554–1618) English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer

The Lie (1608)

Truth , Lie , World , Fear

“Perceive the Lord within your soul.”

Elia M. Ramollah (1973) founder and leader of the El Yasin Community

Flow of Divine Guidance (vol.1)

“In societies based around small communities, where almost everyone is either a friend, a relative, or an enemy of everyone else, the languages spoken tend even to lack words that correspond to "self-interest" or "altruism" but include very subtle vocabularies for describing envy, solidarity, pride, and the like. Their economic dealings with one another likewise tend to be based on much more subtle principles. … The work of destroying such ways of life is still often done by missionaries—representatives of those very world religions that originally sprang up in reaction to the market long ago. Missionaries, of course, are out to save souls; but they rarely interpret this to mean their role is simply to teach people to accept God and be more altruistic. Almost invariably, they end up trying to convince people to be more selfish and more altruistic at the same time. On the one hand, they set out to teach the "natives" proper work discipline, and try to get them involved with buying and selling products on the market, so as to better their material lot. At the same time, they explain to them that ultimately, material things are unimportant.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Army of Altruists (2007)

Life , God , People , World

“I have not told the police about it. Every member of the police department I have encountered during my stay in San Francisco has been nearly as surly and intractable as my rapist friend, because I look like a hippie. Each time I attempted to explain myself I was rebuffed or threatened.
From this experience I am tempted to draw an odd analogy: under stress, neither the policeman nor the rapist allows an opportunity for rational communication. Each one relies on violence to make to make his impression. This is not an accident, but, rather evidence of a widespread sickness. When will violence stop long enough for communication to begin? On second thought, perhaps I am doing the police department a grave disservice in not attempting to put them in contact with the rapist. Maybe, with just a little mind-bending, that rapist would make a damned good cop, and both could swagger together, true soul brothers, under the many-colored cloak of Fascism.”

Lisa Mason book Summer of Love

Source: Summer of Love (1994), Chapter 10 “Dedicated to the One I Love” (p. 230)

Color , Communication , Time , Drawing

“All men strive and hope for nothing other than eternal life in their human nature. For this they instituted purgations of souls and sacred rites, in order to be better adapted in their nature to that eternal life.”

Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) German philosopher, theologian, jurist, and astronomer

De Pace Fidei (The Peace of Faith) (1453)

Life , Men , Hope , Nature

“These — lowliness, meekness, long-suffering, loving forbearance — quiet, unpretending, unshowy virtues, are amongst the best means for promoting true unity in the church of God. Who is the most useful Christian? Not as a rule he who has the most transcendent genius, brilliant talents, and commanding eloquence, but he who has the most of this quiet, loving, forbearing spirit. The world may do without its Niagara, whose thundering roar and majestic rush excite the highest amazement of mankind, but it cannot spare the thousand rivulets that glide unseen and unheard every moment through the earth, imparting life, and verdure, and beauty wherever they go. And so the church may do without its men of splendid abilities, but it cannot do without its men of tender, loving, forbearing souls.”

David Thomas (born 1813) (1813–1894) 19th-century Welsh preacher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 105.

Love , Life , Men , God

“I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color-line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of the evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil. Is this the life you grudge us, O knightly America? Is this the life you long to change into the dull red hideousness of Georgia? Are you so afraid lest peering from this high Pisgah, between Philistine and Amalekite, we sight the Promised Land?”

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

Source: The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ch. VI: Of the Training of Black Men

Life , Women , Men , Truth

“Is not short paine well borne, that brings long ease,
And layes the soul to sleepe in quiet grave?
Sleepe after toyle, port after stormie seas,
Ease after warre, death after life does greatly please.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 9, stanza 40
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book I

Life , Death , Pain , Sleep

“History is not Time; nor is evolution. They are both consequences. Time is a state: the flame in which there lives the salamander of the human soul.”

Andrei Tarkovsky book Sculpting in Time

Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 57

History , Time

“Thoughts at the open window of the payroll department [in a military barrack - World War I. ]: That everything is transitory is merely a simile. Everything we see is a proposal, a possibility, an expedient. The real truth, to begin with, remains invisible beneath the surface. The colors that captivate us are not lighting, but light. The graphic universe consists of light and shadow. The diffused clarity of slightly overcast weather is richer in phenomena than a sunny day. A thin stratum of cloud just before the stars break through. It is difficult to catch and represent this, because the moment is so fleeting. It has to penetrate into our soul. The formal has to fuse with the Weltanschauung”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

world view
Quote (July 1917), # 1081, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, translation: Pierre B. Schneider, R. Y. Zachary and Max Knight; publisher, University of California Press, 1964
1916 - 1920

War , Truth , World , Color

Quotes about the soul page 36

Quotes about the soul
page 36