Quotes about the soul (5690 quotes, page 55)

“Later I went to the design school and saw Kumar and Melamid, the Soviet dissident artists, who are funny. I sold them my soul for $1.”

David Sedaris (1956) American author

26.02.1981 - p.52
Theft by Finding: Diaries, Volume 1 (1977-2002) (2017)

School

“Human rights is the soul of our foreign policy, because human rights is the very soul of our sense of nationhood.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Remarks at a White House meeting commemorating the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (6 December 1978), Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, Jimmy Carter, 1978 Book 1: January 1 to June 30, 1978, p. 2164
Presidency (1977–1981), 1978

Sense

“Painting does not use language. Abstract painting teaches us this, and this is what gives it its power of expression. If colour does not relate to the feelings of our soul through an external relation but finds its true being in them – as a pure sensation and a pure experience – then it does not even need to translate, through a means, the abstract content of our invisible life. It coincides with our invisible life and is its pathos: its suffering, its boredom, its neglect or its joy.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Books on Culture and Barbarism, Seeing the Invisible: On Kandinsky (1988)
Source: Michel Henry, Seeing the invisible: On Kandinsky, Continuum, 2009, p. 72

Painting , Suffering , Joy , Relation ships

“Should the church be trying to erect a spiritual reign of terror over people by threatening earthly and eternal punishment on its own authority and commanding everything a person must believe and do to be saved? Should the church's word bring new tyranny and violent abuse to human souls? It may be that some people yearn for such servitude. But could the church ever serve such a longing?
When holy scripture speaks of following Jesus, it proclaims that people are free from all human rules, from everything which presumes, burdens, or causes worry and torment of conscience. In following Jesus, people are released from the hard yoke of their own laws to be under the gentle yoke of Jesus Christ. … Jesus' commandment never wishes to destroy life, but rather to preserve, strengthen, and heal life.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

"Preface", as translated by Barbara Green and Reihhard Krauss (2001)
Discipleship (1937)

Law , Personality , People , Christ

“If we’re not working in order to get rich, then why are we working at all? What are we supposed to do all day? Just sit home and watch TV?
Not at all, but thinking so is a temporary phase many people go through — when the values of the old world no longer have a hold on us, but the values of the new don’t yet grab your soul. They will.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Source: A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles" (1992), Ch. 7 : Work, §9 : Sales to Service

Home , People , Thinking , World

“Woe to him who in passing should hurl an insult at this gentle and pensive head. He would be punished, as all vulgar souls are punished, by his very vulgarity, and by his incapacity to conceive what is divine. This man, from his granite pedestal, will point out to all men the way of blessedness which he found; and ages hence, the cultivated traveler, passing by this spot, will say in his heart, "The truest vision ever had of God came, perhaps, here."”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Ernest Renan, at the dedication of a statue to Spinoza in 1882, as quoted in The Story of Philosophy (1962) http://caute.net.ru/spinoza/aln/durant.htm by Will Durant
M - R, Friedrich Nietzsche

God , Heart , Age , Way

“From this tribune, incessantly vibrating, gushed forth perpetually a sort of sonorous flood, a mighty oscillation of sentiments and ideas, which, from billow to billow, and from people to people, flowed to the utmost confines of the earth, to set in motion those intelligent waves which are called souls.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Napoleon the Little (1852), Book V, V
Napoleon the Little (1852)

Idea , Intelligence , People

“This tribune was the terror of every tyranny and fanaticism, it was the hope of every one who was oppressed under Heaven. Whoever placed his foot upon that height, felt distinctly the pulsations of the great heart of mankind. There, providing he was a man of earnest purpose, his soul swelled within him, and shone without. A breath of universal philanthropy seized him, and filled his mind as the breeze fills the sail; so long as his feet rested upon those four planks, he was a stronger and a better man; he felt at that consecrated minute as if he were living the life of all the nations; words of charity for all men came to his lips; beyond the Assembly, grouped at his feet, and frequently in a tumult, he beheld the people, attentive, serious, with ears strained, and fingers on lips; and beyond the people, the human race, plunged in thought, seated in circles, and listening.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Napoleon the Little (1852), Book V, V
Napoleon the Little (1852)

Hope , Heart , People , Universe

“The demon of avarice, it seems to me, is extraordinarily complex and is baffling in his deceits. Often, when frustrated by the strictness of our renunciation, he immediately pretends to be a steward and a lover of the poor; he urges us to prepare a welcome for strangers who have not yet arrived or to send provisions for absent brethren. He makes us mentally visit prisons in the city and ransom those on sale as slaves. He suggests that we should attach ourselves to wealthy women, and advises us to be obsequious to others who have a full purse. And so, after deceiving the soul, little by little he engulfs it in avaricious thoughts and then hands it over to the demon of self-esteem.”

Evagrius Ponticus (345–399) Christian monk

On Discrimination, vol. 1, p. 51
The Philokalia

Self-confidence , Lovers , Making love , Women

“The ego involved in responsibility is me and no one else, me with whom one whould have liked to pair up a sister soul, from whom one would have substitution and sacrifice.”

Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995) French philosopher

The Levinas reader by Levinas, Emmanuel p. 116

Sister

“That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur, other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompence. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Stanza 3
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798)

Loss , Time , Sun , Mountain

“These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration:—feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lighten'd:—that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,—
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Stanza 2
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798)

Heart , Pleasure , Joy , World

“I have seen the truth, Dostoevski said. It is not as though I had invented it with my mind. I have seen it, seen it, and the living image of it has filled my soul forever.... In one day, one hour, everything could be arranged at once! The chief thing is to love.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Twelve, Human Connections: Relationships Changing

Truth , Making love , Love

“For the soul arrives therebye at a certain fixed and invincible state, a state which is genuinely heroic, and from out of which the greatest deeds it ever performs are executed.”

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804–1869) French literary critic

On “the phenomenon of grace.”

As quoted by william james in Varieties of Religious Experience Lecture 11, paragraph 3.

“Our soul needs to be fed on a daily basis too, as much as the body and the mind.”

Brunello Cucinelli (1953) Italian entrepreneur and philanthropist

Source: Samuel Hine, Brunello Cucinelli: the fashion designer who believes simple, communal meals feed the soul https://www.gq.com/story/how-to-find-your-best-diet/amp, GQ magazine, February 2020, p. 60

“When I think of soul I think of grease ’cause ain’t nothin’ no good without the grease.”

Tina Turner (1939) singer, dancer, actress, and author

Interlude to Respect, live at Basin Street West, San Francisco, 22 February 1969, Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT4PpnoPPqk&feature=youtu.be&t=420 on YouTube

Thinking

“The revolutionary principle introduced by Gandhi resolves the paradox of freedom. He called it satyagraha, "soul force" or "truth force."”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

Satyagraha was essentially misunderstood in the West, described as "passive resistance," a term Gandhi disavowed because it suggests weakness, or "non-violence," which was just one of its components.
The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Seven, Right Power

Truth , Freedom

“I have found heaven on earth, since heaven is God and God is in my soul. The day I understood that, everything became clear to me, and I would like to share this secret with all those I love so that they, too, might cling to God through everything, so that this prayer of Christ might be fulfilled: "Father, may they be made perfectly one!"”

Elizabeth of the Trinity (1880–1906) French Carmelite nun and mystic

Letters to Madame de Sourdon, L 122, 15 June 1902; as quoted in Always Believe in Love: Selected Writings of Elizabeth of the Trinity by Marian Murphy, 2017, p. 109 https://books.google.it/books?id=JX3LDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA109.

God , Secret , Christ , Love

“For, while the heart is full of thoughts for a little group of selves, near and dear to us, how shall the rest of mankind fare in our souls? What percentage of love and care will there remain to bestow on the “great orphan?””

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891) occult writer

And how shall the “still small voice” make itself heard in a soul entirely occupied with its own privileged tenants? What room is there left for the needs of Humanity en bloc...? He who would profit by the wisdom of the universal mind, has to reach it through the whole of Humanity without distinction of race, complexion, religion, or social status. It is altruism, not ego-ism even in its most legal and noble conception, that can lead the unit to merge its little Self in the Universal Selves. It is... to this work that the true disciple of true Occultism has to devote himself if he would obtain... divine Wisdom and Knowledge. p. 62
Practical Occultism (1888)

Heart , Making love , Love

“I will never sell my soul for a paycheck. I don’t need the money because I’m not extravagant. I share my house in London with five roommates. I take the Tube—it’s free entertainment! I intend to stay the exact same person I always was; my family and friends keep me grounded.”

Margot Robbie (1990) Australian actress

Amy Fine Collins, “Margot Robbie, Australia’s Newest Movie Goddess” https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2014/07/margot-robbie-actress-photos, Vanity Fair, July 9, 2014.

Money , Family , Housing , Personality

“Sometimes my old heart is like a washing machine
It bounces around 'til my Soul comes clean
And when I'm clean and hung out to dry
I'm gonna make you laugh until you cry”

John Prine (1946–2020) American country singer/songwriter

Boundless Love (co-written with Dan Auerbach and Pat McLaughlin)
Song lyrics, The Tree of Forgiveness (2018)

Making love , Cry , Heart

“There had been a human soul in that skull only a few hours earlier, and now no authority in the universe could bring her back. We were like monkeys sitting around a fire that had just extinguished, wondering why the warmth and light had gone away.”

Alastair Reynolds book House of Suns

Source: House of Suns (2008), Chapter 19 (pp. 307-308)

Light , Universe

“Dictators may torture or kill us, but they shall not succeed in demoralizing the soul of our movement, in bringing it to a state where for the sake of saving its life it is willing to renounce its ideal. Our cause will conquer in spite of everything, for in economic life as well as in politics the highest ability to accomplish and to advance things belongs to communities and organizations of free men working in free cooperation. These free communities will far outstrip every collective body, every organization that is built on compulsion and that can be maintained only by brute force; and ultimately the communities based on oppression will perish.”

Karl Kautsky (1854–1938) Czech-Austrian philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theoretician

Chap. V, The Period of Dictatorship
"Hitlerism and Social Democracy" (1934) https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1934/hitler/index.htm

Communication , Life , Men

“Doubt is never simply an intellectual problem. There is always a spiritual dimension to doubt, as well. There is an enemy of your souls, Satan, who hates you intensely and is bent on your destruction and who will do everything in his power to see that your faith is destroyed. And therefore when we have these intellectual doubts and problems we should never look at them as something that is spiritually neutral or divorce them from the spiritual conflict that we are involved in. Rather we need to take these doubts to God in prayer, to admit them honestly, to talk to our Christian friends about them, to not stuff them or hide them, we need to deal with them openly and honestly and talk to people about them and seek God's help in dealing with them.”

William Lane Craig (1949) American Christian apologist and evangelist

Dealing with Doubt

18 November 2007

YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-fDyPU3wlQ (2:11 into video)

God , Faith , Hate , Help

“Against the new leviathan, whether in the guise of universal suffrage, democracy, or of an equally fraudulent triumphant proletariat, [Kierkegaard] pitted the individual human soul made in the image of a God who was concerned about the fate of every living creature. In contrast with the notion of salvation through power, he held out the hope of salvation through suffering. The Cross against the ballot box or the clenched fist; the solitary pilgrim against the slogan-shouting mob; the crucified Christ against the demagogue-dictators promising a kingdom of heaven on earth, whether achieved through endlessly expanding wealth and material well-being, or through the ever greater concentration of power and its ever more ruthless exercise.”

Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist

The Oddest Prophet – Søren Kierkegaard by Malcolm Muggeridge

Democracy , God , Fate , Wealth

“This soul can only be a conspiracy of individuals”

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

Quoted by Marilyn Ferguson in The Aquarian Conspiracy, (1980)

“Now let us see what he can do with it. Let us see if, under easier conditions, he is able to build the planetary paradise he has always desired, or will abuse his new leisure to the destruction of his soul. Let us see if godly power will make him a little more godlike.”

Desmond Leslie (1921–2001) British pilot, film maker, writer, and musician

Source: The Amazing Mr. Lutterworth (1958), p. 201

Making love

“The obstacles to soul cognition are bodily disability, mental inertia, wrong questioning, carelessness, laziness, lack of dispassion, erroneous perception, inability to achieve concentration, failure to hold the meditative attitude when achieved.”

Patañjali (-200–-150 BC) ancient Indian scholar(s) of grammar and linguistics, of yoga, of medical treatises

The Light of the Soul: Its Science and Effect : a paraphrase of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, with commentary by Alice A. Bailey, (1927)

Failure , Question

“I didn’t try to be a soul singer, a jazz singer, a blues singer – no category…My music is my expression of what I feel and believe in a moment.”

Roberta Flack (1937) American singer

On her career trajectory in “Roberta Flack: 'My music is my expression of what I feel in a moment'” https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jan/21/roberta-flack-interview-music-grammys in The Guardian (2020 Jan 21)

Music , Feeling

“Learn to measure the people you deal with by the depth of their soul, and if possible associate as much as you can with those of the expansive variety.”

Robert Greene (1959) American author

Chap. 8 : Change Your Circumstances by Changing Your Attitude
The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

People , Learning

“If the brutes have consciousness and no souls, then it is clear that, in them, consciousness is a direct function of material changes; while, if they possess immaterial subjects of consciousness, or souls, then, as consciousness is brought into existence only as the consequence of molecular motion of the brain, it follows that it is an indirect product of material changes. The soul stands related to the body as the bell of a clock to the works, and consciousness answers to the sound which the bell gives out when it is struck.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

1870s, On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and Its History (1874)

Relation ships , Change

“Unhappy writer, you had dreamt of winning souls and you have won nothing but ears!”

Léon Bloy (1846–1917) French writer, poet and essayist

Source: Pilgrim of the Absolute (1947), p. 36

“[T]he recognition of the irredeemable vanity and falsity of all beauty and all greatness is itself a kind of beauty and greatness that fills the soul when it is conveyed by a work of genius. And the spectacle of nothingness is itself a thing in these works, and seems to enlarge the reader’s soul, to raise it up and to make it take satisfaction in itself and its despair.”

Giacomo Leopardi book Zibaldone

260, 5th October 1820. Translation by Michael Caesar and Franco D'Intino et al. [Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010, ISBN 9780141194400], p. 177
Zibaldone (1898)

Despair , Making love , Beauty

“At the round earth's imagin'd corners, blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go.”

John Donne book Holy Sonnets

No. 7, line 1
Holy Sonnets (1633)

Angels , Death

“We then, who are this new soul, know
Of what we are composed and made,
For the' atomies of which we grow
Are souls, whom no change can invade.
But oh alas, so long, so far,
Our bodies why do we forbear?
They're ours, though they're not we; we are
The intelligences, they the spheres.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

The Ecstasy, line 45

Intelligence , Change

“When all thy mercies, O my God,
My rising soul surveys,
Transported with the view, I'm lost
In wonder, love and praise.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 453 (9 August 1712)
The Spectator (1711–1714)

Making love , God , Love

“Music religious heat inspires,
It wakes the soul, and lifts it high,
And wings it with sublime desires,
And fits it to bespeak the Deity.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

Song for St. Cecilia's Day (1692), st. 4

Music

“Dynasty, a political tool in the hands of the ruling class, has become the catalyst for a new colonization of a country whose soul has already been deeply scarred by centuries of it.”

Tavleen Singh (1950) Indian journalist

Singh, Tavleen (2017). Durbar.
2017

Country

“The doctrine of the transmigration of souls was indigenous to India and was brought into Greece by Pythagoras.”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture. New Delhi: Pragun Publication.

“The years took all the fight out of Janie’s face. For a while she thought it was gone from her soul.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Their Eyes Were Watching God

Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Ch. 7

Fight

“From this comes the realisation of the Self (the soul) and the removal of all obstacles.”

Patañjali (-200–-150 BC) ancient Indian scholar(s) of grammar and linguistics, of yoga, of medical treatises

The Light of the Soul: Its Science and Effect: a paraphrase of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, with commentary by Alice A. Bailey, (1927)

Self-confidence

“The obstacles to soul cognition are bodily disability, mental inertia, wrong questioning, carelessness, laziness, lack of dispassion, erroneous perception, inability to achieve concentration, failure to hold the meditative attitude when achieved.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: The Light of the Soul: Its Science and Effect: a paraphrase of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, with commentary (1927)

Failure , Question

“From this comes the realisation of the Self (the soul) and the removal of all obstacles.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

The Light of the Soul: Its Science and Effect: a paraphrase of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, with commentary (1927)

Self-confidence

“Our souls are tied across universes,
there is unbroken continuity,
you see the love is more powerful than death,
so let the winds of the heavens to dance with you
and give your smile at the other's welcome.”

alexis karpouzos

philosophy and awareness

Death , Smile , Universe , Dance

“We are the body of heaven
and the soul of etermity,
the desolation and pains of hell are within us,
the joy and pleasures of paradise also.
We finish at the start and with ending we begins
in the infinity of space-time the celestial ash wander.”

alexis karpouzos

mystic poetry and spirituality

Pain , Time , Hell , Pleasure

“Beyond the heaven there is the country of heart,
here dwell the deepest secret nobody knows,
here the bud see the bud, the mind
can't hide its darkness and the shadow
of the soul is illuminated,
and this is the miracle that's keeping
the stars in harmony orbit.”

alexis karpouzos

spirituality and wisdom

Country , Star , Heart , Secret

“We are a short poem
in a endless emptiness page,
words are lighthouses
that ignites and struggle
to deliver light to the dark edges of the infinite,
and mystic sounds struggle to give voice
to the unlived beings,
to bore a young soul to the gate of birth.”

alexis karpouzos

spirituality and consciousness

Light , Birth

“One look outward to Jesus and you are saved; not a look inward to a feeling that can give nothing but despair to the conscientious soul.”

William Paton Mackay (1839–1885) Scottish clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 230.

Despair , Feeling

“I don't believe in the anthropomorphic God. … I have four daughters and eight grandchildren. My soul lives on in them. That's immortality. That's the only immortality I care about.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Playboy interview (1996)

God , Daughters

“The infinite Yoga knows no end,
Endless the quest you apprehend.
You'll grow infinite and ascend,
When you are unhoused, O my soul!”

Kuvempu (1904–1994) Kannada novelist, poet, playwright, critic, and thinker

Aniketana (1964)

“Winnow the chaff of a hundred creeds
Beyond these systems, hollow as reeds,
Turn unhorizened to where Truth leads,
To be unhoused, O my soul!”

Kuvempu (1904–1994) Kannada novelist, poet, playwright, critic, and thinker

Aniketana (1964)

Truth

“Universal Creativity,
Flow through me,
From my heart
Through my mind to my hand,
Infuse my work with spirit
To feed hungry souls.”

Alex Grey (1953) American artist

Art Psalms (2008), Artist's Prayer

Universe , Heart

“Mystic Art affirms the holy mystery and the ideals of truth,
goodness and beauty. No other artistic ideal can fulfill the longing
soul like the creation and appreciation of relevant sacred art.”

Alex Grey (1953) American artist

Art Psalms (2008), Seven Statements on Mystic Art

Truth , Beauty , Art

“Creators aligned with Divine Will
Make the soul perceptible.
Artist priests with minimal dogma
Transfix, transform, and evolve
The chaotic melding of cultures,
Through the dross of ego
To superconsciousness fusion
With the Nature-field.”

Alex Grey (1953) American artist

Art Psalms (2008), Art Psalms

Making love , Nature

“The Yoga of action, leading to union with the soul is fiery aspiration, spiritual reading and devotion to Ishvara.”

Patañjali (-200–-150 BC) ancient Indian scholar(s) of grammar and linguistics, of yoga, of medical treatises

Patanjali, in “The Little Red Book of Yoga Wisdom], p. 24.

Reading

“Then, in an ecstasy of love,
you will repeat the Name of Hu constantly,
devoting every breath of your life
in contemplation of him.
Only when your soul merges
in the essence of the Lord,will you deserve the name Bahu.”

Sultan Bahu (1630–1691) Punjabi poet

Raj Kumar: Encyclopaedia of Untouchables Ancient, Medieval and Modern, p. 187 https://books.google.com.pk/books?id=e8o5HyC0-FUC&pg=PA187&lpg=PA187&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
Kashf ul Asrār, Stanza

Love , Life , Making love

“[My soul] lingers for a pledge that this country shall not be abandoned to the Turk.”

Maharana Pratap (1540–1597) Hindu Rajput ruler of Mewar

Maharana Pratap's reply to Salumber's question: "What aileth thee, Sire, that thy soul departeth not in peace?"

Quoted in Lal, K. S. (2001). Historical essays. New Delhi: Radha.(II.198)

Country

“Because we write fiction we mine our souls. Of course you put yourself into your fiction, your fiction is you.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (1977) Nigerian writer

On the connection between the personal and fictional world in “Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: ‘This could be the beginning of a revolution’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/28/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-feminism-racism-sexism-gender-metoo in The Guardian (2018 Apr 28)

“I am more than half-persuaded that I am a man's soul put by some freak of nature into a woman's body...because I have fallen in love with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man.”

Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) American novelist

From an interview with poet and critic Louise Chandler Moulton, 1883.
Source: [Alberghene, Janice, Clark, Beverly, Little Women and the Feminist Imagination: Criticism, Controversy, Personal Essays, 2013, 1999, 9781138798977, Routledge]

Girl , Nature , Love , Making love

“Lo these were they, whose souls the Furies steel'd,
And curs'd with hearts unknowing how to yield.
Thus unlamented pass the proud away,
The gaze of fools, and pageant of a day!
So perish all, whose breast ne'er learn'd to glow
For others' good, or melt at others' woe.”

Alexander Pope Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady

Source: The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope (1717), Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, Line 45. Compare Pope's The Odyssey of Homer, Book XVIII, line 269

Heart , Fools

“Every music has its own soul, Quincy.”

Ray Charles (1930–2004) American musician

Source: Said to Quincy Jones as quoted in The Arranger, an article in Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-arranger-20940901/

Music

“Waft, gentle gale, oh waft to Samercand,
When next thou visitest that blissful land,
The plaint of Khorassania plung'd in woe:
Bear to Turania's King our piteous scroll,
Whose opening breathes forth all the anguish'd soul,
And close denotes whate'er the tortur'd know.”

Anvari (1126–1190) Persian poet

Ghazal, The Tears of Khorassan
Source: The Tears of Khorassan, translated by William Kirkpatrick, quoted in A Literary History of Persia, 1908

“Those whose minds are merged in Samadhi, are not deluded by the external jugglery. They are quite fearless. Siddhas (God realized souls) are not afraid of the world. A tiger or a cobra, when they see such a person, become calm, forgetting their ferocity. Similarly, all animals become calm at their sight. Even enemies forget their enmity and become friendly. As soon as they see a sadhu, they become stone-still. What is the cause of this? It is because of their doubting nature. At the sight of a sadhu, there is no darkness. Mind gets purified, realizing the Satwa quality.”

Bhagawan Nityananda (1897–1961) Hindu guru and saint

280
The Chidakasha Gita (1927)

God , Forgetting , Personality , Nature

“That the stars are celestial bodies with no mind or soul. They neither know the future nor affect people. Their effect on people however can be through their physical characteristics, such as the effect of the sun’s heat and rays on the planets and the effect of the moon on the tides of seas.”

Ibn Hazm (994–1064) Arab theologian

Al-Fassl Fil Milal, vol 5, pp 35-39

Sun , Future , Star , People

“If science, and devoting oneself to it, had no other use than avoiding exhausting temptations, rushes of hope that give worry, and thoughts that sadden the soul, that alone should give us reasons to seek it… Kinglets have sought distraction in chess, wine, music, hunting and much else that only bring harm in this world and the other.”

Ibn Hazm (994–1064) Arab theologian

ibid

Hope , Music , World , Science

“Blame from a man with a corrupt soul in opposing him, and refraining from evil deeds is better for you than his esteem if you did evil.”

Ibn Hazm (994–1064) Arab theologian

ibid, 22

Evil

“I have come across most people- with the exception of those that God most High has protected-they rush into misery, worry, the exhaustion of this world, and amassing terrible sins, that will earn them hell-fire, gaining nothing in pursuing their evil deeds… And they know that their evil intentions will neither fulfill their wishes, nor bring any gains; and that with purer intentions they will obtain great rest for their souls.”

Ibn Hazm (994–1064) Arab theologian

Kitab al-Akhlaq wa’l Siyar p: 17

Hell , God , People , World

“We aren't alive or dead,
we aren't natural or ethereal,
we haven't body or soul,
we do not exist in this world or in another,
we have no beginning or end,
our place is placeless,
our time is timeless.
The heart has a mirror
to infinity turned.”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: The book AN OCEAN OF SOULS: Beyond the heaven

Time , Dead , Heart , Nature

“Asia gave us dowry deaths and the caste system. Africa elevated famine to an art form. North America cultivated chattel slavery for far longer than I would have dared hope; South America has done things with political oppression that I am obliged to call brilliant; Australia showed the world that the only good aborigine is a dead aborigine; and Antarctica has fabulous weather. Of all the continents that constitute Earth’s terrain, however, Europe remains dearest to my heart and closest to my soul.
I allude here not to the sweatshops, the world wars, or totalitarian socialism (though none of these innovations has escaped my notice) but to the fact that the European imagination endowed me with a degree of glamour—you might even say charm—that in pre-coma times enabled me to function with extraordinary effectiveness. The concept of an Evil One is intrinsic to Islam, of course; the ancient Hebrews had their “adversary,” their satan; the Egyptians feared a dark deity called Set; Zoroastrians believed in Ahriman, essence of destruction (forever warring with Ohrmazd, source of all things bright and beautiful). But only in Christian Europe did the Prince of Hell acquire a personality as vivid and endearing as any you will meet in a Dickens novel.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: Blameless in Abaddon (1996), Chapter 11 (p. 253; spoken by the Devil)

Hell , Imagination , Time , Dead

“Not in the time of pleasure
Hope doth set her bow;
But in the sky of sorrow,
Over the vale of woe. Through gloom and shadow look we
On beyond the years!
The soul would have no rainbow
Had the eyes no tears.”

John Vance Cheney (1848–1922) American writer

The Century Vol. 44, Issue 4 (August 1892)
Tears (1892)

Time , Hope , Pleasure , Tear

“The eyelids confess, and reject, and refuse to reject. They have expressed all things ever since man was man.And they express so much by seeming to hide or to reveal that which indeed expresses nothing. For there is no message from the eye. It has direction, it moves, in the service of the sense of sight; it receives the messages of the world. But expression is outward, and the eye has it not. There are no windows of the soul, there are only curtains.”

Alice Meynell (1847–1922) English publisher, editor, writer, poet, activist

"Eyes", pp. 98–99
The Colour of Life and Other Essays (1896)

Sense , World

“I don't care if it hurts.
I wanna have control.
I want a perfect body.
I want a perfect soul.
I want you to notice
When I'm not around.
You're so fuckin' special;>br>I wish I was special.”

Thom Yorke (1968) English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter

Creep
Lyrics, Pablo Honey (1993)

Perfection , Hurt

“Really important meetings are planned by the souls long before the bodies see each other. Generally speaking, these meetings occur when we reach a limit, when we need to die and be reborn emotionally. These meetings are waiting for us, but more often than not, we avoid them happening. If we are desperate, though, if we have nothing to lose, or if we are full of enthusiasm for life, then the unknown reveals itself, and our universe changes direction.”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Waiting , Universe , Life , Change

“I write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don’t hurt me, because it is me. If it was not me, if I was pretending to be someone else, then this could unbalance my world, but I know who I am.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

World , Hurt

“Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour ... If at my convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?”

Charlotte Brontë book Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre

Time , Law

“In the process of dissipating glamour, the way of the greatest potency is to realise the necessity to act purely as a channel for the energy of the soul. If the disciple can make right alignment and consequent contact with his soul, the results show as increased light. This light pours down and irradiates not only the mind, but the brain consciousness as well. He sees the situation more clearly: he realises the facts of the case as against his "vain imaginings"; and so the "light shines upon his way."”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

He is not yet able to see truly in the larger sweeps of consciousness; the group glamour and, of course, the world glamour remain to him as yet a binding and bewildering mystery, but his own immediate way begins to clear, and he stands relatively free from the fog of his ancient and distorting emotional miasmas. Alignment, contact with his soul, and then steadfastness, are the keynotes to success.
Source: Glamour: A World Problem (1950), The Nature of Glamor

Imagination , Light , Way , Making love

“We are told by physicians and scientists that thousands of cells in the human brain are still dormant and, consequently, that the average human being uses only a small part of his equipment. The area of the brain which is found around the pineal gland is that connected with the intuition, and it is these cells which must be roused into activity before there can be any real intuitive perception which, when aroused, will manifest soul control, spiritual illumination, true psychological understanding of one's fellowmen, and a development of the true esoteric sense, which is the objective before you at this time.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: Glamour: A World Problem (1950), Certain Preliminary Clarifications, p. 2

Time , Understanding , Sense , Parting

“Outcasts of war, misfits, rebellious souls,
Seekers of some vague kingdom in the stars —
They hide out in the hills and stir up trouble,
Call themselves prophets, too, and prophesy
That something new is coming to the world,
The Lord knows what! Well, it's a long time coming,
And, meanwhile, we're the wheat between the stones.”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Innkeeper
Source: A Child is Born (1942)

Time , War , Star , World

“But all the stories about the devil making a deal and then cheating missed the point. The real horror was that once the bargain was struck, the devil didn’t cheat. He gave you exactly and explicitly all that had been promised. And the price was your soul.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: The Expanse, Tiamat's Wrath (2019), Chapter 13 (p. 136)

Making love , Cheating

“There is a great affinity in me with the Hindu genius - that mind, vast, imaginative, loving, dreamy and speculative, but destitute of ambition, personality and will. Pantheistic disinterestedness, the effacement of the self in the great whole, womanish gentleness, a horror of slaughter, antipathy to action - these are all present in my nature, in the nature at least which has been developed by years and circumstances. Still the West has also its part in me. What I have found difficult to keep up a prejudice in favor of my form, nationality or individuality whatever. Hence my indifference to my own person, my own usefulness, interest or opinions of the moment. What does it all matter? It is not perhaps not a bad thing,' he says, 'that in the midst of the devouring activities of the Western world there should be a few Brahmanical souls.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881) Swiss philosopher and poet

Source: Amie1, Henri Frederic Amie! s journal: The Journal intime of Henri-Frederic Amie! p. 159 161,224. and 269.
Quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture. New Delhi: Pragun Publication.

Imagination , Indifference , Personality , Bad luck

“This is something that the novel does better than any other art form: reproducing the inner life and the inner experience of another person, particularly extreme forms of consciousness like grief, dreams, drunkenness, spiritual revelations, even insanity. Unlike movies, where we’re always onlookers, in novels we have the experience of being someone else: knowing another person’s soul from the inside. No other art form does that. And I like dealing with particularly intense inner experiences because I think that in many ways, this is what the novel does best.”

Donna Tartt (1963) American writer

On what novels convey to Tartt in “Interview with Donna Tartt” https://medium.com/@Powells/interview-with-donna-tartt-8d86a2438b41 in Medium (2015 Jul 13)

Personality , Dreams , Art , Thinking

“O witness of the soul naturally Christian.”

Tertullian (155–220) Christian theologian

Original: (la) O testimonium animae naturaliter Christianae
Source: Apologeticus pro Christianis, Chapter 17

Nature

“Every gentleman here is born a petty tyrant. Practised in acts of despotism and cruelty, we become callous to the dictates of humanity and all the finer feelings of the soul. Taught to regard a part of our own Species in the most abject and contemptible Degree below us, we lose that Idea of the dignity of Man which the Hand of Nature had implanted in us, for great and useful purposes. Habituated from our Infancy to trample upon the Rights of Human Nature, every generous, every liberal Sentiment, if not extinguished, is enfeebled in our Minds; and in such an infernal school are to be educated our future legislators and rulers. The laws of impartial Providence may even by such means as these avenge upon our posterity the injury done to a set of wretches whom our injustice hath debased to a level with the brute creation. These remarks were extorted by a kind of irresistible, perhaps an enthusiastic impulse; and the author of them, conscious of his own good intentions, cares not whom they please or offend.”

George Mason (1725–1792) American delegate from Virginia to the U.S. Constitutional Convention

Source: Virginia Charters (1773)

School , Law , Future , Nature

“When men tell us that the great religious teachers are neuropaths, that Buddha, Christ, S. Francis, are neuropaths, then we are inclined to cast our lot with the abnormal few, rather than with the normal many. We know what they were. They were men who saw far more and knew far more than we; what matters it whether we call their brains normal or abnormal? In these men's consciousness is a ray of the Divine splendour; as Browning says: Through such souls alone God, stooping, shows sufficient of Hill Light For us in the dark to rise by. And if in those cases the brain change from a normal to an abnormal state, then humanity must ever remain thankful to abnormality. That was the first answer which may be made to this statement of Lombroso, and you find a man like Dr. Maudsley, the famous doctor, asking whether there is any law that nature shall use only for her purposes what we call the perfect brains? May it not be that for her higher performances she needs brains which are different from the ordinary, the normal brains of man?”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: Essays and Addresses, Vol. III- Evolution and Occultism (1913)

God , Law , Light , Teachers

“Allah, You created me when I was not worthy of mention; And You provided for me when I had nothing; And I wronged my soul and sinned, and I confess my guilt. If You forgive me, that will in no way reduce Your sovereignty; And if You punish me, that will in no way augment Your authority. You can find others to punish besides me, But I can find no one to forgive me but You. Truly, You are the most Merciful of those who show mercy. The Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) said 'Owais will come to Madinah to meet me, but he will not find me physically, for I shall then be united with my Lord.”

Uwais al-Qarani (594–657) Muslim saint

Quoted in Owais Qarni and his love for Prophet, https://www.arabnews.com/node/930256/islam-perspective by Abu Tariq Hijazi, Arab News, (28 May 2016)

Forgiveness , Way , Peace

“Look—I understand that many of my fellow Americans view the future with fear and trepidation. I understand they worry about their jobs. I understand like my dad, they lay in bed wondering, can I keep my health care, can I pay my mortgage. Thinking about their families, about what comes next. I promise you, I get it.But the answer is not to turn inward, to retreat into competing factions, distrusting those who don′t look like you or worship the way you do or don′t get their news from the same source as you do. We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal. We can do this if we open our souls instead of hardening our hearts.If we show a little tolerance and humility, and if we are willing to stand in the other person′s shoes—as my mom would say—just for a moment, stand in their shoes. Because here′s the thing about life: there′s no accounting for what fate will deal you.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

2021, January, Presidential Inaugural Address (2021)

Family , Life , Understanding , Fate

“In another January, on New Year′s Day in 1863, Abraham Lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation. When he put pen to paper, the president said, and I quote, “if my name ever goes down into history, it′ll be for this act, and my whole soul is in it.”“My whole soul is in it.””

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Today, on this January day, my whole soul is in this: bringing America together, uniting our people, uniting our nation. And I ask every American to join me in this cause.<p>Uniting to fight the foes we face, anger, resentment and hatred, extremism, lawlessness, violence, disease, joblessness and hopelessness. With unity, we can do great things, important things.
2021, January, Presidential Inaugural Address (2021)

History , Quotes

“It should also be remembered that the Bible is written in the language of symbols, a special category of literature designed both to conceal and to reveal spiritual truths. Blindness is a symbol for temporary unawareness of spiritual light. The Christ partly represents spiritual intuitiveness. When one who is spiritually blind becomes intuitively awakened and active or, symbolically, enters the presence of the Christ and is healed by him, the scales are said to have fallen from his eyes. This I believe to be the true symbolical interpretation; for I look upon the story as one of the many beautiful miniature mystery dramas to be found in the Bible, portraying in allegory and symbol the soul’s awakening from darkness to light. Nevertheless, symbolism apart, the answer given by the Lord was, as stated above, doctrinally and technically correct.”

Geoffrey Hodson (1886–1983) New Zealand occultist

Reincarnation & Christianity (1967)

Light , Beauty , Truth , Christ

“This objection to reincarnation by Christians, on grounds of doctrinal fidelity, is sufficiently important to merit a somewhat detailed examination. From this it is found that reincarnation has neither been proclaimed nor condemned by any general council of the Church or by any creed accepted by a general council. The Council of Constantinople held in 543 A.D., which proclaimed heretical Origen’s teaching of the preexistence of the soul and affirmed the doctrine of special creation, was not a general council, and so not universally authoritative.”

Geoffrey Hodson (1886–1983) New Zealand occultist

Reincarnation & Christianity (1967)

Universe

“This is life to come, —
Which martyred men have made more glorious
For us who strive to follow. May I reach
That purest heaven, — be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,
And in diffusion ever more intense!
So shall I join the choir invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world.”

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

O May I Join the Choir Invisible (1867)

Smile , Music , World , Love

“We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us — and if we do not agree, seems to put its hand in its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle or amaze with itself, but with its subject.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Letter to John Hamilton Reynolds (February 3, 1818)
Letters (1817–1820)

Hate

“To treat every person, no matter what his creed or race, as a special soul, is a mark of Islam.”

Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan (1918–2004) Sheikh of Abu Dhabi (1918-2004)

1 https://en.vogue.me/culture/the-most-inspirational-quotes-from-the-late-sheikh-zayed/

Personality