Quotes about the soul
page 5

“Romance is the sweetening of the soul
With fragrance offered by the stricken heart.”

Wole Soyinka (1934) Nigerian writer

Source: The Lion and the Jewel

Heart

“I have my own soul. My own spark of divine fire.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Source: Pygmalion & My Fair Lady

“The guy I'd felt such an immediate and deep connection to I'd thought that just maybe there really were such things as soul mates, and had considered, at least for a few brief moments, that he might be mine.”

P. C. Cast book Hunted

Source: Hunted

Guy

“I am the escaped one,
After I was born
They locked me up inside me
But I left.
My soul seeks me,
Through hills and valley,
I hope my soul
Never finds me.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

Hope

“It is better to be loved by one person who knows your soul than millions who don't even know your phone number.”

Richard Paul Evans (1962) American writer

Source: The Walk

Love, Personality

“The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Training

“No doubt the reason is that character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Helen Adams Keller (p. 60. Helen Keller's Journal: 1936-1937, Doubleday, Doran & company, inc., 1938)

Suffering, Success, Motivational

“The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

God, Heart, Sea

“May today there be peace within.

May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.

May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.

May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you.

May you be content knowing you are a child of God.

Let this presence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love.

It is there for each and every one of us.”

Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) Roman Catholic saint

Love, God, Peace, Faith

“no one talks more passionately about his rights than he who in the depths of his soul doubts whether he has any”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

I.597
Human, All Too Human (1878)
Context: No one talks more passionately about his rights than he who in the depths of his soul doubts whether he has any. By enlisting passion on his side he wants to stifle his reason and its doubts: thus he will acquire a good conscience and with it success among his fellow men.

Passion

“Time does to the body what stupidity does to the soul”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book Marina

Source: Marina

Stupidity, Time

“I want to be good. I can't bear the idea of my soul being hideous.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Idea

“I remembered you with my soul clenched”

Pablo Neruda book Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

Source: Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

“Illusions are to the soul what atmosphere is to the earth.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando

“Souls are like athletes, that need opponents worthy of them, if they are to be tried and extended and pushed to the full use of their powers, and rewarded according to their capacity.”

Thomas Merton book The Seven Storey Mountain

Source: The Seven Storey Mountain

“Once conform, once do what other people do because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and faculties of the soul. She becomes all outer show and inward emptiness; dull, callous, and indifferent.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

People, Indifference

“When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?”

Oscar Wilde book De Profundis

Source: De Profundis (1897)

Sun

“All through your life your soul takes care of you… your soul is alive and awakened, gathering, sheltering and guiding your ways and days in the world. In effect, your soul is your secret shelter.”

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

Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Life, Secret, World, Way

“All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

“because to influence a person is to give one's own soul.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Personality

“I USHERED SOULS INTO THE NEXT WORLD. I WAS THE GRAVE OF ALL HOPE. I WAS THE ULTIMATE REALITY. I WAS THE ASSASSIN AGAINST WHOM NO LOCK WOULD HOLD.
"Yes, point taken, but do you have any particular skills?”

Terry Pratchett book Mort

Source: Mort

World, Hope, Reality

“LORD ILLINGWORTH: The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life.
MRS ALLONBY: And the body is born young and grows old. That is life's tragedy.”

Oscar Wilde A Woman of No Importance

Source: A Woman of No Importance

Life

“Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

For Mother, Love, Animals, Parting

“Love's mysteries in souls do grow,
But yet the body is his book.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

The Extasy, line 71
Source: The Complete English Poems

Love, Books

“A witch ought never to be frightened in the darkest forest, Granny Weatherwax had once told her, because she should be sure in her soul that the most terrifying thing in the forest was her.”

Terry Pratchett book Wintersmith

Source: Wintersmith

“Possess your soul in patience - you will see!”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Source: The Glass Menagerie

Patience

“Better lose your life than your soul…”

Louisa May Alcott book Jo's Boys

Source: Jo's Boys

Life

“A sure way of retaining the grace of heaven is to disregard outward appearances, and diligently to cultivate such things as foster amendment of life and fervour of soul, rather than to cultivate those qualities that seem most popular.”

Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471) German canon regular

Source: The Inner Life

Life, Way, Appearance

“If one good deed in all my life I did,
I do repent it from my very soul.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Life

“From the greatest to the smallest, happiness and usefulness are largely found in the same soul, and the joy of life is won in its deepest and truest sense only by those who have not shirked life's burdens.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, A Square Deal (1903)

Life, Sense, Joy, Happiness

“How we need another soul to cling to.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

“Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!”

Arthur Miller The Crucible

Source: The Crucible (1953)
Context: Danforth: Do you mean to deny this confession when you are free?
Proctor: I mean to deny nothing!
Danforth: Then explain to me, Mr. Proctor, why you will not let —
Proctor: [With the cry of his whole soul] Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!

Life, Lie

“True love is not a potion one person can swallow and another refuse to drink. It happens only when the souls of two join together to form one”

P. C. Cast (1960) American writer

Source: Goddess of the Sea

Love, Drink, Personality

“Music, once admitted to the soul, becomes a sort of spirit, and never dies.”

Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803–1873) English novelist, poet, playwright, and politician

Music

“Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy - the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Hope, Disappointment

“Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable; procures success to the weak, and esteem to all.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Letter of Instructions to the Captains of the Virginia Regiments (29 July 1759)
1750s

Success

“Sustaining faith is what sets you through those dark nights of the soul when you don’t know where to go or what to do, and it seems that you can’t last another day…but because of your faith in God, you do.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

God, Faith, Night

“Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to someone who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer's day.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Feeling, Flowers, Summer

“Hang there like a fruit, my soul, Till the tree die!

-Posthumus Leonatus
Act V, Scene V”

William Shakespeare Cymbeline

Source: Cymbeline

Tree

“In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“My soul would sing of metamorphoses.
But since, o gods, you were the source of these
bodies becoming other bodies, breathe
your breath into my book of changes: may
the song I sing be seamless as its way
weaves from the world's beginning to our day.”

Ovid Metamorphoses

Source: Metamorphoses

God, Books, World, Way

“There is only one true aristocracy… and that is the aristocracy of passionate souls!”

Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) American playwright

Passion

“From such trivia, I believe my soul was born.”

Charlie Chaplin book My Autobiography

Source: My Autobiography

“It is as if my heart and my brain did not belong to the same person. Feelings come quicker than lightning and fill my soul, but they bring me no illumination; they burn me and dazzle me.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau book Confessions

Source: Confessions

Feeling, Heart, Personality

“I've solved the mystery: You have to submit silently. Open up, let go. Let anything penetrate you, even the most painful things. Endure. Bear up. That's the magic key! The text comes by itself, and its meaning shakes the soul… You mustn't let scar tissue form on your wounds; you have to keep ripping them open in order to turn your insides into a marvelous instrument that is capable of anything. All this has its price.”

Klaus Kinski (1926–1991) German actor

Source: Kinski Uncut : The Autobiography of Klaus Kinski (1996), p. 72-73
Context: At a performance everything works out on its own. I've solved the mystery: You have to submit silently. Open up, let go. Let anything penetrate you, even the most painful things. Endure. Bear up. That's the magic key! The text comes by itself, and its meaning shakes the soul. Everything else is taken care of by the life one has to live without sparing oneself. You mustn't let scar tissue form on your wounds; you have to keep ripping them open in order to turn your insides into a marvelous instrument that is capable of anything. All this has its price. I become so sensitive that I can't live under normal conditions. That's why the hours between performances are worst.

Pain

“Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.”

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

As quoted in The New Dictionary of Thoughts : A Cyclopedia of Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, both Ancient and Modern (1960) compiled by Tryon Edwards, C. N. Catrevas, Jonathan Edwards, and Ralph Emerson Browns.

Love

“It is surely harmful to souls to make it a heresy to believe what is proved.”

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer

“To touch the soul of another human being is to walk on holy ground.”

Stephen R. Covey (1932–2012) American educator, author, businessman and motivational speaker

“Do one thing at a Time, and while doing it put your whole Soul into it to the exclusion of all else.”

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

Time

“Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Life, People, World, Beauty

“Nature never repeats herself, and the possibilities of one human soul will never be found in another.”

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

Nature

“To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development. To deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.”

Oscar Wilde book De Profundis

Source: De Profundis

Life, Lie

“The moment you're loved, that's when you got your soul.”

Neal Shusterman book Unwind

Source: Unwind

Love

“Hatred is always a sin, my mother told me. Remember that. One drop of hatred in your soul will spread and discolor everything like a drop of black ink in white milk. I was struck by that and meant to try it, but knew I shouldn’t waste the milk.”

Alice Munro book Vintage Munro

Source: Vintage Munro

“There are two ways of seeing: with the body and with the soul. The body's sight can sometimes forget, but the soul remembers forever.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

Way, Forgetting

“I consist of body and soul - in the worlds of a child. And why shouldn't we speak like children? But the enlightened, the knowledgealbe would say: I am body through and through, nothing more; and the soul is just a word for something on the body.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Children, World

“You have to be able to center yourself, to let all of your emotions go. Don’t ever forget that you play with your soul as well as your body.”

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1947) American basketball player

Forgetting

“No matter how ugly the manner in which a man dies, it’s only the presence of a suffering human soul that is horrifying, once gone, what is left is only an object.”

Diana Gabaldon book Outlander

Source: Outlander

Suffering

“These are the times that try men's souls.”

Thomas Paine book The American Crisis

Source: The American Crisis

Men, Time

“The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Life, Art

“Behind the perfection of a man's style, must lie the passion of a man's soul.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Source: Reviews

Lie, Passion, Perfection

“the voice of beauty speaks softly; it creeps only into the most fully awakened souls”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Beauty

“A wretched soul, bruised with adversity,
We bid be quiet when we hear it cry;
But were we burdened with light weight of pain,
As much or more we should ourselves complain.”

William Shakespeare The Comedy of Errors

Source: The Comedy of Errors

Pain, Light, Cry

“Art calls for complete mastery of techniques, developed by reflection within the soul.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Art

“If you looked down to the bottom of my soul, you would understand fully the source of my longing and – pity me. Even the open, transparent lake has its unknown depths, which no divers know.”

Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet

Understanding

“Nothing contributes so much to tranquillize the mind as a steady purpose- a point on which the soul can focus its intellectual eye”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Robert Walton in "Letter 1"
Source: Frankenstein (1818)
Context: I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven, for nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose — a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.

“The face is the soul of the body.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book Philosophical Investigations

Source: Philosophical Investigations

“I am nothing special; of this I am sure. I am a common man with common thoughts, and I've led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten, but I've loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Duke, Miracles, p. 2
Source: 1990s, The Notebook (1996)

love, Love, Life, Heart

“I drink to separate my body from my soul.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Drink

“Neurosis is the suffering of a soul which has not discovered its meaning.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Suffering

“That, lad," he said proudly, "was some of the worst poetry I have heard for a long time. It was offensive to the ear and a torrrture to the soul…. We'll make a gonnagle out of ye yet!”

Terry Pratchett book The Wee Free Men

Source: The Wee Free Men

Time

“My soul is full of longing
For the secret of the Sea,
And the heart of the great ocean
Sends a thrilling pulse through me.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

The Secret of the Sea, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Secret, Heart, Sea

“Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Introduction..., p. 1 (1843).
Context: Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower.

People, World, Religion, Suffering

“A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul and that, I am sure, is why he does it.”

Roald Dahl (1916–1990) British novelist, short story writer, poet, fighter pilot and screenwriter

"Goodbye school" in Boy: Tales of Childhood (1984)

Fools, Freedom, Personality

“Flowers are reincarnation. They come out of the earth of our ashes. Nothing else looks so soul-like.”

Francesca Lia Block book Echo

Source: Echo

Flowers

“Clown: Good Madonna, why mournest thou?
Olivia: Good Fool, for my brother's death.
Clown:I think his soul is in hell, Madonna.
Olivia:I know his soul is in heaven, Fool.
Clown: The more fool, Madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul being in heaven.”

William Shakespeare Twelfth Night

Source: Twelfth Night

Death, Fools, Hell, Thinking

“What wings are to a bird, and sails to a ship, so is prayer to the soul.”

Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) Dutch resistance hero and writer

Bird

“Inside, my soul became so cold I hated everything. I even despised the sun, for I knew I would never be able to play in its warm presence. I cringed with hate whenever I heard other children laughing, as they played outside. My stomach coiled whenever I smelled food that was about to be served to somebody else, knowing it wasn't for me.”

Dave Pelzer (1960) American author

Source: A Child Called "It"

Hate, Children, Food, Sun

“People come to Los Angeles and sell their soul every day. It’s sad. Here, the mentality is that everyone has a price. But I say no – no money can buy my soul. I’ve had so many offers that I didn’t think were proper and I’d say sorry, I don’t need it. I didn’t want to work my butt off and not be happy. I’ll always choose happiness and life over all the money in the world. Across my entire career, I had respect in the industry, because I was the one who never sold out.”

Fabio Lanzoni (1961) Italian model, actor and author

Fabio: confessions of the original male supermodel https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2015/jul/15/fabio-confessions-original-male-supermodel (July 15, 2015)

Life, Money, People, World

“There are a host of bad habits and inconsiderate acts which mean nothing in themselves but which are terrible as indicators of the true composition of a soul.”

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) Austrian writer

Es gibt eine Menge kleiner Rücksichtslosigkeiten und Unarten, die an und für sich nichts bedeuten, aber furchtbar sind als Kennzeichen der Beschaffenheit der Seele.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 38.

“Could you love a woman you didn't respect? Could you worship someone without believeing in her? Could you be madly in love with a woman you didn't admire? Well, you could. Not only that, it might be better that way. Easier. It took Paul almost forty years to learn that carnal platitude. Nevertheless, he always took Sonia to dinners where, sooner or later, her stupidity would explode, with the result that brighter souls would inevitably pick up on it right away and cast a sympathetic, albeit ironical, look in his direction, which only excited him all the more.”

Françoise Sagan (1935–2004) French writer

Un chagrin de passage (1994, A Fleeting Sorrow, translated 1995)

Love, Stupidity, Way, Learning

“If experience is the soul of religion, expression is the body through which it fulfills its destiny. We have the spiritual facts and their interpretations by which they are communicated to others. It is the distinction between immediacy and thought. Intuitions abide, while interpretations change.”

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

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Variant: We have spiritual facts and their interpretations by which they are communicated to others, sruti or what is heard, and smṛti or what is remembered. Śaṅkara equates them with pratyakṣa or intuition and anumana or inference. It is the distinction between immediacy and thought. Intuitions abide, while interpretations change.

Religion, Communication, Change

“Old age diminishes our strength; it takes away our pleasures one after the other; it withers the soul as well as the body; it renders adventure and friendship difficult; and finally it is shadowed by thoughts of death.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Growing Old

Death, Friendship, Pleasure, Age

“Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term "Art," I should call it "the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul." The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of "Artist".”

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic

Marginalia http://www.easylit.com/poe/comtext/prose/margin.shtml (November 1844)

Art, Nature, Sense

“I wonder at those who think about their body's food, but do not think about their soul's food. They keep away disturbing food from their belly, but fill up their hearts with destructive subjects.”

Hasan ibn Ali (624–669) Shia Imam

Shaykh ‘Abbās Qummi, Safīnatul Bihār, Article of Taste
Religious-based Quotes

Food, Thinking, Heart

“Yeah, come on & let the good times roll
We're gonna stay here till we soothe our souls.
If it take all night long.”

Sam Cooke (1931–1964) American singer-songwriter and entrepreneur

Good Times
Song lyrics, Ain't That Good News (1964)

Time, Night

“Volunteering is good for our heart and soul.”

Roy E. Disney (1930–2009) longtime senior executive for The Walt Disney Company

Roy Edward Disney (2003) as quoted in Disney Stories: Getting to Digital (2012) by Newton Lee and Krystina Madej, p. 4

Heart

“The people who have discovered something important in any of the more noble arts have principally done so when they have abandoned the body and taken refuge in the citadel of the soul.”

Marsilio Ficino book Platonic Theology

Platonic Theology, Book 13, Chapter 2

People, Art

“A falling-down wreck on the edge of town, curtains permanently drawn, that would turn out to have been home to some ancient recluse who'd been surviving on ramen and toenail clippings since time immemorial, though no one realizes it until a property appraiser or an overly ambitious census taker barges in to find the poor soul returning to dust in a La-Z-Boy. People get too old to care for a place, their family writes them off for one reason or another—it's sad, but it happens.”

Ransom Riggs book Miss Peregrine's Home of Peculiar Children

Source: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2011), Chapter 3, Page 79

People, Sadness, Family, Home

“Soul-winning is the chief business of the Christian minister; it should be the main pursuit of every true believer.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

The Soul-Winner (1895)

Business

“Do you wish to honor the Body of the Savior? Do not despise it when it is naked. Do not honor it in church with silk vestments while outside it is naked and numb with cold. He who said, “This is my body,” and made it so by his word, is the same that said, “You saw me hungry and you gave me no food. As you did it not to the least of these, you did it not to me.” Honor him then by sharing your property with the poor. For what God needs is not golden chalices but golden souls.”

John Chrysostom (349–407) important Early Church Father

Homilies on the Gospel of Saint Matthew http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf110/Page_303.html, Homily L

God, Food

“I trust in Nature for the stable laws
Of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant
And Autumn garner to the end of time.
I trust in God,—the right shall be the right
And other than the wrong, while he endures.
I trust in my own soul, that can perceive
The outward and the inward,—Nature's good
And God's.”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

A Soul's Tragedy (1846), Act. i.

God, Law, Beauty, Spring

“It was not until 1869 that I met him Manet again, but this time, we became friends immediately. From the first meeting, he invited me to join him every evening in a café of the 'Batignolles' where he and his friends would gather to talk at the end of a day spent at their studios. I would meet there, Fantin-Latour and Cézanne, Degas - who arrived shortly afterwards from Italy, the art critic Duranty, Emile Zola who was just starting-off in the literary world and a number of others. I would take Sisley, Bazille and Renoir. There was nothing more interesting than these discussions with their perpetual differences of opinion. Our mind and souls were stimulated... One would always leave, all the better immersed, the will stronger, our thinking more defined and clear.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

in Claude Monet par lui-meme – interview by Thiébault-Sisson / translated by Louise McGlone Jacot-Descombes; published in Le Temps newspaper, 26 November 1900
about Édouard Manet, leading artist in Impressionism then, in Paris.
1900 - 1920

World, Art, Thinking, Time