Quotes about the soul
page 8

“We don’t love Jesus enough. If you go to church, you know He loves you, because you hear it all the time. But do we love Him? I know I don’t tell Him enough. As part of my personal relationship with Jesus, when I get up in the morning, I tell Him, “I need you to know I love you.” And, forgiveness the heart and soul of the movie: forgiving at all costs. It’s hard for Christians, whether we’re working in the film business, or living in the Third Reich, but that’s why we’re Christian. Our Lord has told us to pray “… forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us…” We may feel this is hard, but how we feel has nothing to do with it. What is important is obedience; we must obey Christ’s command. Is following Christ’s command easy? No. But it is the way of the great.”

Jim Caviezel (1968) actor

Jim Caviezel on what he learned playing St. Luke—and why he thinks “We don’t love Jesus enough” http://www.catholicworldreport.com/2018/03/11/jim-caviezel-on-what-he-learned-playing-st-luke-and-why-he-thinks-we-dont-love-jesus-enough/ (March 11, 2018)

Love, Way, Feeling, Forgiveness

“As for the soul: why did I say I would leave it out? I forget. And the truth is, one can't write directly about the soul. Looked at, it vanishes; but look at the ceiling, at Grizzle, at the cheaper beasts in the Zoo which are exposed to walkers in Regent's Pak, and the soul slips in. Mrs Webb's book has made me think a little what I could say of my own life. But then there were causes in her life: prayer; principle. None in mine. Great excitability and search after something. Great content – almost always enjoying what I'm at, but with constant change of mood. I don't think I'm ever bored. Yet I have some restless searcher in me. Why is there not a discovery in life? Something one can lay hands on and say 'This is it'? What is it? And shall I die before I can find it? Then (as I was walking through Russell Square last night) I see mountains in the sky: the great clouds, and the moon which is risen over Persia; I have a great and astonishing sense of something there, which is 'it' – A sense of my own strangeness, walking on the earth is there too. Who am I, what am I, and so on; these questions are always floating about in me. Is that what I meant to say? Not in the least. I was thinking about my own character; not about the universe. Oh and about society again; dining with Lord Berners at Clive's made me think that. How, at a certain moment, I see through what I'm saying; detest myself; and wish for the other side of the moon; reading alone, that is.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Saturday 27 February 1926
A Moment's Liberty (1990)

Life, Truth, Books, Search

“The passion of rescue reveals the highest dynamic of the human soul.”

Kurt Hahn (1886–1974) German educator

Kurt Hahn website http://www.kurthahn.org/quotes/quote1.html.

Passion

“One must therefore portray the meaning of the sacred writings in a threefold way upon one's own soul, so that the simple person may be edified by what we may call the flesh of the scripture, this name being given to the obvious interpretation; while the one who has made some progress may be edified by its soul, as it were; and the one who is perfect and like those mentioned by the apostle: "We speak wisdom among the perfect; yet a wisdom not of this world, nor of the rulers of this world, which are coming to nought; but we speak God's wisdom in a mystery, even the wisdom that has been hidden, which God foreordained before the world unto our glory" (1 Cor. 2:6-7)--this one may be edified by the spiritual law, which has "a shadow of the good things to come" (cf. Rom. 7:14). For just as the human being consists of body, soul and spirit, so in the same way does the scripture, which has been prepared by God to be given for humanity's salvation.”

Origen (185–254) Christian scholar in Alexandria

“How divine scripture should be interpreted,” On First Principles, book 4, chapter 2, Readings in World Christian History (2013), p. 70
On First Principles

Wisdom, God, World, Law

“My whole heart and soul are stirred and incensed against the Turks and Mohammed, when I see this intolerable raging of the Devil. Therefore I shall pray and cry to God, nor rest until I know that my cry is heard in heaven.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Statement while being confined to residence at Coburg, as quoted in History of the Christian Church, (1910) http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc7.ii.ix.vii.html by Philip Schaff, Vol. VII : Modern Christianity : The German Reformation, § 123. Luther at the Coburg; though it mentions Muhammad, this remark might actually be directed at those responsible for his confinement, as he makes allusions to dwelling in the "empire of birds" and his location as a "Sinai" and regularly uses other uncomplimentary comparisons of those involved in suppressing his ideas to figures unpopular to himself and his contemporaries.

God, Rage, Heart, Cry

“At the same time, new difficulties are constantly surfacing: experiences of failure and the human weaknesses which bring so much pain. We all know from experience that sometimes a task does not bring the satisfaction we seek, results are few and changes are slow, and we are tempted to grow weary. Yet lowering our arms momentarily out of weariness is not the same as lowering them for good, overcome by chronic discontent and by a listlessness that parches the soul. It also happens that our hearts can tire of the struggle because in the end we are caught up in ourselves, in a careerism which thirsts for recognition, applause, rewards and status. In this case we do not lower our arms, but we no longer grasp what we seek, the resurrection is not there. In cases like these, the Gospel, the most beautiful message that this world can offer, is buried under a pile of excuses.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

Section 277
2010s, 2013, Evangelii Gaudium · The Joy of the Gospel

Pain, World, Beauty, Failure

“I would not have him sorrow at my hard lot, or say at the burial, Thus we lay out Socrates, or, Thus we follow him to the grave or bury him; for false words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil. Be of good cheer then, my good Crito, and say that you are burying my body only, and do with that as is usual, and as you think best.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Thinking, Evil, Falseness

“Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, gaiety and life to everything. It is the essence of order, and leads to all that is good, just, and beautiful, of which it is the invisible, but nevertheless dazzling, passionate, and eternal form.”

Plato (-427–-347 BC) Classical Greek philosopher

This quotation is not known to exist in Plato's writings. It apparently first appeared as a quotation attributed to Plato in The Pleasures of Life, Part II by Sir John Lubbock (Macmillan and Company, London and New York), published in 1889.
Misattributed

Life, Sadness, Law, Beauty

“There is violence and injustice in our world that must be confronted. We must confront it not by splitting apart but by standing together as free nations, as free people. I know that a call to arms can stir the souls of men and women more than a call to lay them down. But that is why the voices for peace and progress must be raised together.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2009, A World without Nuclear Weapons (April 2009)

Women, Men, People, World

“There are good citizens and bad citizens in every class as in every locality, and the attitude of decent people toward great public and social questions should be determined, not by the accidental questions of employment or locality, but by those deep-set principles which represent the innermost souls of men.”

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

1900s, A Square Deal (1903)

Men, People, Question

“The inner world of each man and woman is connected with the inner world of the earth. The spirit becomes flesh. Part of each individual soul, then, is intimately connected with what we will call the world's soul, or the soul of the earth.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 612, p. 3
The Nature of Personal Reality (1974)

World, Parting

“Inconceivable events and conditions form a class apart from all other story elements, and cannot be made convincing by any mere process of casual narration. They have the handicap of incredibility to overcome; and this can be accomplished only through a careful realism in every other phase of the story, plus a gradual atmospheric or emotional build-up of the utmost subtlety. The emphasis, too, must be kept right—hovering always over the wonder of the central abnormality itself. It must be remembered that any violation of what we know as natural law is in itself a far more tremendous thing than any other event or feeling which could possibly affect a human being. Therefore in a story dealing with such a thing we cannot expect to create any sense of life or illusion of reality if we treat the wonder casually and have the characters moving about under ordinary motivations. The characters, though they must be natural, should be subordinated to the central marvel around which they are grouped. The true "hero" of a marvel tale is not any human being, but simply a set of phenomena. Over and above everything else should tower the stark, outrageous monstrousness of the one chosen departure from Nature. The characters should react to it as real people would react to such a thing if it were suddenly to confront them in daily life; displaying the almost soul-shattering amazement which anyone would naturally display instead of the mild, tame, quickly-passed-over emotions prescribed by cheap popular convention. Even when the wonder is one to which the characters are assumed to be used, the sense of awe, marvel, and strangeness which the reader would feel in the presence of such a thing must somehow be suggested by the author.... Atmosphere, not action, is the thing to cultivate in the wonder story. We cannot put stress on the bare events, since the unnatural extravagance of these events makes them sound hollow and absurd when thrown into too high relief. Such events, even when theoretically possible or conceivable in the future, have no counterpart or basis in existing life and human experience, hence can never form the groundwork of an adult tale. All that a marvel story can ever be, in a serious way, is a vivid picture of a certain type of human mood. The moment it tries to be anything else it becomes cheap, puerile, and unconvincing. Therefore a fantastic author should see that his prime emphasis goes into subtle suggestion—the imperceptible hints and touches of selective and associative detail which express shadings of moods and build up a vague illusion of the strange reality of the unreal—instead of into bald catalogues of incredible happenings which can have no substance or meaning apart from a sustaining cloud of colour and mood-symbolism. A serious adult story must be true to something in life. Since marvel tales cannot be true to the events of life, they must shift their emphasis toward something to which they can be true; namely, certain wistful or restless moods of the human spirit, wherein it seeks to weave gossamer ladders of escape from the galling tyranny of time, space, and natural laws.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

"Some Notes on Interplanetary Fiction", Californian 3, No. 3 (Winter 1935): 39-42. Published in Collected Essays, Volume 2: Literary Criticism edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 178
Non-Fiction

Life, People, Law, Way

“This melancholy London. I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually. One feels them passing like a whiff of air.”

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

Letter to Katharine Tynan (25 August 1888)

Feeling, Imagination

“Throughout American history, there have been moments that call on us to meet the challenges of an uncertain world, and pay whatever price is required to secure our freedom. They are the soul-trying times our forbearers spoke of, when the ease of complacency and self-interest must give way to the more difficult task of rendering judgment on what is best for the nation and for posterity, and then acting on that judgment — making the hard choices and sacrifices necessary to uphold our most deeply held values and ideals. This was true for those who went to Lexington and Concord. It was true for those who lie buried at Gettysburg. It was true for those who built democracy’s arsenal to vanquish fascism, and who then built a series of alliances and a world order that would ultimately defeat communism. And this has been true for those of us who looked on the rubble and ashes of 9/11, and made a solemn pledge that such an atrocity would never again happen on United States soil; that we would do whatever it took to hunt down those responsible, and use every tool at our disposal – diplomatic, economic, and military — to root out both the agents of terrorism and the conditions that helped breed it.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

"A Way Forward in Iraq", Remarks to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs (20 November 2006)
2006

Lie, World, Way, Democracy

“p>To the new International that is now in the irreversible process of preparation we can contribute the ideas of worldwide organization and the world state; the English can suggest the idea of worldwide exploitation and trusts; the French can offer nothing….
Thus we find two great economic principles opposed to each other in the modern world. The Viking has become a free-tradesman; the Teutonic knight is now an administrative official. There can be no reconciliation. Each of these principles is proclaimed by a German people, Faustian men par excellence. Neither can accept a restriction of its will, and neither can be satisfied until the whole world has succumbed to its particular idea. This being the case, war will be waged until one side gains final victory. Is world economy to be worldwide exploitation, or worldwide organization? Are the Caesars of the coming empire to be billionaires or universal administrators? Shall the population of the earth, so long as this empire of Faustian civilization holds together, be subjected to cartels and trusts, or to men such as those envisioned in the closing pages of Goethe’s Faust, Part II? Truly, the destiny of the world is at stake….
This brings us to the political aspects of the English-Prussian antithesis. Politics is the highest and most powerful dimension of all historical existence. World history is the history of states; the history of states is the history of wars. Ideas, when they press for decisions, assume the form of political units: countries, peoples, or parties. They must be fought over not with words but with weapons. Economic warfare becomes military warfare between countries or within countries. Religious associations such as Jewry and Islam, Huguenots and Mormons, constitute themselves as countries when it becomes a matter of their continued existence or their success. Everything that proceeds from the innermost soul to become flesh or fleshly creation demands a sacrifice of flesh in return. Ideas that have become blood demand blood. War is the eternal pattern of higher human existence, and countries exist for war’s sake; they are signs of readiness for war. And even if a tired and blood-drained humanity desired to do away with war, like the citizens of the Classical world during its final centuries, like the Indians and Chinese of today, it would merely exchange its role of war-wager for that of the object about and with which others would wage war. Even if a Faustian universal harmony could be attained, masterful types on the order of late Roman, late Chinese, or late Egyptian Caesars would battle each other for this Empire—for the possession of it, if its final form were capitalistic; or for the highest rank in it, if it should become socialistic.”

Oswald Spengler (1880–1936) German historian and philosopher

Prussianism and Socialism (1919)

Men, War, People, World

“There thou wilt show me
That which my soul desired;
And there Thou wilt give at once,
O Thou, my life!
That which Thou gavest me the other day. ~ 38”

John of the Cross (1542–1591) Spanish mystic and Roman Catholic saint

Spiritual Canticle of The Soul and The Bridegroom

Life

“Work at these things, practice them, these are the things you ought to desire; they are what will put you on the path of divine virtue — yes, by the one who entrusted our soul with the tetraktys, source of ever-flowing nature. Pray to the gods for success and get to work.”

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher

As quoted in Divine Harmony: The Life and Teachings of Pythagoras by John Strohmeier and Peter Westbrook. (1999)
The Golden Verses

God, Nature, Success

“Of all the horrid brutalities of our age, I know of none so horrid as those that are sanctioned and defended by marriage. Night after night, there are thousands of rapes committed, under cover of this accursed license; and millions—yes I say it boldly, knowing whereof I speak—millions of poor, heart broken, suffering wives are compelled to minister to the lechery of insatiable husbands, when every instinct of body and sentiment of soul revolts in lathing and disgust…. The world has got to be startled from this pretense into realizing that there is nothing else now existing among pretendedly enlightened nations, except marriage, that invests men with the right to debauch women, sexually, against their wills, yet marriage is held to be synonymous with morality! I say, eternal damnation, sink such morality! …”

Victoria Woodhull (1838–1927) American suffragist

Tried As By Fire, or The True and The False, Socially, speech, 1874, quoted in Gabriel, Mary, Notorious Victoria: The Life of Victoria Woodhull, Uncensored (Chapel Hill, N.Car.: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1st ed. 1998 ISBN 1-56512-132-5, p. 222 & n. [20] (each ellipsis or set of suspension points so in original) (author Mary Gabriel journalist, Reuters News Service), in turn as reprinted in Stern, Madeleine B., ed., The Victoria Woodhull Reader (Weston, Mass.: M&S Press, 1974).

Women, Men, Marriage, Age

“The saddest thing that befalls a soul
Is when it loses faith in God and woman.”

Alexander Smith (1829–1867) Scottish poet and essayist

Scene 12.
A Life Drama and other Poems (1853)

Sad, God, Faith

““What were they saying?” Daly asked.
“They disapprove of your profession,” Doro told him.
“Heathen savages,” Daly muttered. “They’re like animals. They’re all cannibals.”
“These aren’t,” Doro said, “though some of the their neighbors are.”
“All of them,” Daly insisted. “Just give them the chance.”
Doro smiled. “Well, no doubt the missionaries will reach them eventually and teach them to practice only symbolic cannibalism.”
Daly jumped. He considered himself a pious man in spite of his work. “You shouldn’t say such things,” he whispered. “Not even you are beyond the reach of God.”
“Spare me your mythology,” Doro said, “and your righteous indignation.” Daly had been Doro’s man too long to be pampered in such matters. “At least we cannibals are honest about what we do,” Doro continued. “We don’t pretend as your slavers do to be acting for the benefit of our victims’ souls. We don’t tell ourselves we’ve caught them to teach them civilized religion.””

Octavia E. Butler Wild Seed

Source: Wild Seed (1980), Chapter 3 (p. 42)

God, Religion, Smile, Chance

“Care for thy soul as thing of greatest price,
Made to the end to taste of power divine,
Devoid of guilt, abhorring sin and vice”

William Byrd (1543–1623) British composer

Poem: Care for Thy Soul as Thing of Greatest Price http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/care-for-thy-soul-as-thing-of-greatest-price/

“They who have a care of their souls, and do not merely live in the fashions of the body, say farewell to all this; they will not walk in the ways of the blind: and when philosophy offers them purification and release from evil, they feel that they ought not resist her influence, and to her they incline, and whither she leads they follow her.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Way, Feeling, Fashion, Evil

“One may not give one's soul to a devil of hate — and remain forever scatheless.”

Eugene O'Neill (1888–1953) American playwright, and Nobel laureate in Literature

Father Baird: Act 3, Scene 1.
Days Without End (1933)

Hate

“Eyes so transparent that through them one sees the lucent soul.”

Théophile Gautier Paris

Ils sont si transparents qu'ils laissent voir votre âme.
"À Deux Beaux Yeux", line 12, in Poésies Complètes (Paris: Charpentier, 1845) p. 278; Maturin Murray Ballou (ed.) Notable Thoughts about Women (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1882) p. 398.

“As we focus on destroying ISIL, over-the-top claims that this is World War III just play into their hands. Masses of fighters on the back of pickup trucks and twisted souls plotting in apartments or garages pose an enormous danger to civilians and must be stopped. But they do not threaten our national existence. That’s the story ISIL wants to tell; that’s the kind of propaganda they use to recruit. We don’t need to build them up to show that we’re serious, nor do we need to push away vital allies in this fight by echoing the lie that ISIL is representative of one of the world’s largest religions. We just need to call them what they are — killers and fanatics who have to be rooted out, hunted down, and destroyed.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2016, State of the Union address (January 2016)

War, Lie, World, Religion

“Accent is the soul of language; it gives to it both feeling and truth.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher

L'accent est l'âme du discours.
English translation as quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, Both Ancient and Modern (1908) by Tryon Edwards, p. 2.

Truth, Feeling

“Never think there is anything impossible for the soul. It is the greatest heresy to think so. If there is sin, this is the only sin — to say that you are weak, or others are weak.”

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

Pearls of Wisdom

Thinking

“Everybody knows that the great reversed triangle of land, with its base in the north and its apex in the south, which is called India, embraces fourteen hundred thousand square miles, upon which is spread unequally a population of one hundred and eighty millions of souls. The British Crown exercises a real and despotic dominion over the larger portion of this vast country, and has a governor-general stationed at Calcutta, governors at Madras, Bombay, and in Bengal, and a lieutenant-governor at Agra.

But British India, properly so called, only embraces seven hundred thousand square miles, and a population of from one hundred to one hundred and ten millions of inhabitants. A considerable portion of India is still free from British authority; and there are certain ferocious rajahs in the interior who are absolutely independent.”

Jules Verne book Around the World in Eighty Days

Personne n'ignore que l'Inde — ce grand triangle renversé dont la base est au nord et la pointe au sud — comprend une superficie de quatorze cent mille milles carrés, sur laquelle est inégalement répandue une population de cent quatre-vingts millions d'habitants. Le gouvernement britannique exerce une domination réelle sur une certaine partie de cet immense pays. Il entretient un gouverneur général à Calcutta, des gouverneurs à Madras, à Bombay, au Bengale, et un lieutenant-gouverneur à Agra.Mais l'Inde anglaise proprement dite ne compte qu'une superficie de sept cent mille milles carrés et une population de cent à cent dix millions d'habitants. C'est assez dire qu'une notable partie du territoire échappe encore à l'autorité de la reine; et, en effet, chez certains rajahs de l'intérieur, farouches et terribles, l'indépendance indoue est encore absolue.
Source: Around the World in Eighty Days (1873), Ch. X: In Which Passepartout Is Only Too Glad to Get Off with the Loss of His Shoes

Exercises, Country

“I believe that much of the secret of soul-winning lies in having bowels of compassion, in having spirits that can be touched with the feeling of human infirmities.”

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

The Soul-Winner (1895)

Secret, Feeling

“If you are a Christian, no earthly city is yours. Of our City ‘the Builder and Maker is God.’ Though we may gain possession of the whole world, we are withal but strangers and sojourners in it all. We are enrolled in heaven: our citizenship is there! Let us not, after the manner of little children, despise things that are great, and admire those which are little! Not our city’s greatness, but virtue of soul is our ornament and defence. If you suppose dignity to belong to a city, think how many persons must partake in this dignity, who are whoremongers, effeminate, depraved and full of ten thousand evil things, and at last despise such honour! But that City above is not of this kind; for it is impossible that he can be a partaker of it, who has not exhibited every virtue.”

John Chrysostom (349–407) important Early Church Father

Homilies on the Statues http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf109/Page_456.html, Homily XVII

God, Children, World, Thinking

“Every holy Mass, heard with devotion, produces in our souls marvelous effects, abundant spiritual and material graces which we, ourselves, do not know. It is easier for the earth to exist without the sun than without the holy Sacrifice of the Mass.”

Padre Pio (1887–1968) Italian saint, priest, stigmatist and mystic

Gerardo Di Flumeri, The Mystery of the Cross in Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, National Centre for Padre Pio, Barto, PA. p. 16.

Sun

“Faust complains of having two souls in his breast. I have a whole squabbling crowd. It goes on as in a republic.”

Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898) German statesman, Chancellor of Germany

As quoted in Bismarck: The Man and the Statesman (1955) by A. J. P. Taylor, p. 12. Cf. Goethe, Faust, Part I: Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust, / Die eine will sich von der andern trennen ("Two souls, alas! reside within my breast, / and each is eager for a separation"). Faust klagt über die zwei Seelen in seiner Brust; ich beherberge aber eine ganze Menge, die sich zanken. Es geht da zu wie in einer Republik... Das meiste, was sie sagen, teile ich mit. Es sind da aber auch ganze Provinzen, in die ich nie einen andern Menschen werde hineinsehen lassen. :*Bismarck traveling in an open carriage through the green valley of Hofgastein to Salzburg with Vortragender Rat Robert von Keudell and Geheimrat Heinrich Abeken on 18 August 1865 after the Gastein Convention had been signed on 14 August 1865 (as reported by Keudell). Bismarck: Die gesammelten Werke, Band 7 Gespräche, 1924, p. 101 https://books.google.de/books?id=mMkTAAAAQAAJ&q=seelen 1860s

“The soul is made of stuff so mysteriously elastic that a single event can make it big enough to contain the infinite.”

Stefan Zweig book The Post Office Girl

The Post Office Girl (published posthumously in 1982)

“Neither will the horse be adjudged to be generous, that is sumptuously adorned, but the horse whose nature is illustrious; nor is the man worthy who possesses great wealth, but he whose soul is generous.”

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher

"Pythagorean Ethical Sentences From Stobæus" (1904)
Florilegium

Nature, Horse, Wealth

“My Soul gave me good counsel, teaching me to touch what has never taken corporeal form or crystallized.”

Khalil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese artist, poet, and writer

The Vision: Reflections on the Way of the Soul (1994)
Context: My Soul gave me good counsel, teaching me to touch what has never taken corporeal form or crystallized. It made me understand that touching something is half the task of comprehending it, and that what we grasp therein is part of what we desire from it.

“Fool! All that is, at all,
Lasts ever, past recall;
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:
What entered into thee,
That was, is, and shall be:
Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure.”

Robert Browning Rabbi ben Ezra

Source: Dramatis Personae (1864), Rabbi Ben Ezra, Line 157.

God, Fools, Change, Time

“Let us… be careful of admitting into our souls the notion that there is no truth or health or soundness in any arguments at all; but let us rather say that there is as yet no health in us, and that we must quit ourselves like men and do our best to gain health—you and all other men with a view to the whole of your future life, and I myself with a view to death.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Life, Death, Men, Health

“We believe that every being is divine, is God. Every soul is a sun covered over with clouds of ignorance; the difference between soul and soul is owing to the difference in density of these layers of clouds.”

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

Pearls of Wisdom

God, Sun

“The soul seems to reside in the judgment, and the judgment would seem to be seated in that part where all the senses meet; and this is called the Common Sense and is not all-pervading throughout the body, as many have thought. Rather is it entirely in one part. Because, if it were all-pervading and the same in every part, there would have been no need to make the instruments of the senses meet in one centre and in one single spot; on the contrary it would have sufficed that the eye should fulfil the function of its sensation on its surface only, and not transmit the image of the things seen, to the sense, by means of the optic nerves, so that the soul — for the reason given above — may perceive it in the surface of the eye.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIV Anatomy, Zoology and Physiology

Sense, Parting

“Formerly an anti-Semite was somebody who hated Jews because they were Jews and had a Jewish soul. But nowadays an anti-Semite is somebody who is hated by Jews.”

Hajo Meyer (1924–2014) Dutch physicist

Quoted in Graeme Murray and Chris Watt, " Auschwitz survivor: 'Israel acts like Nazis' http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/politics/auschwitz-survivor-israel-acts-like-nazis-1.1000918", Sunday Herald, January 24, 2010. Retrieved on March 27, 2010.

Hate

“The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitely settled — but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.”

Edgar Allan Poe book The Cask of Amontillado

"The Cask of Amontillado" (1846).

Idea, Revenge, Nature

“Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart — one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a stupid action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgement, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?”

Edgar Allan Poe book The Black Cat

The Black Cat (1843)

Stupidity, Law, Understanding, Time

“It is impossible to describe, or to imagine, the deep, the blissful sense of relief which the absence of the detested creature occasioned in my bosom. It did not make its appearance during the night — and thus for one night at least, since its introduction into the house, I soundly and tranquilly slept; aye, slept even with the burden of murder upon my soul!”

Edgar Allan Poe book The Black Cat

The Black Cat (1843)

Imagination, Sense, Appearance, Housing

“Great souls endure in silence.”

Friedrich Schiller Don Carlos

Act I, sc. iv ; as translated by R. D. Boylan and Joseph Mellish (1902)
Variant: ""Great spirits suffer patiently""; as translated by A. Leslie and Jeanne R. Willson (1983)
Don Carlos (1787)

Silence

“For knowledge to become wisdom, and for the soul to grow, the soul must be rooted in God: and it is through prayer that there comes to us that which is the strength of our strength, and the virtue of our virtue, the Holy Spirit.”

William Mountford (1816–1885) English Unitarian preacher and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 616.

Wisdom, God, Knowledge

“One trembles to think of that mysterious thing in the soul, which seems to acknowledge no human jurisdiction, but in spite of the individual's own innocent self, will still dream horrid dreams, and mutter unmentionable thoughts.”

Herman Melville book Pierre: or, The Ambiguities

Bk. IV
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)

Dreams, Thinking

“We teachers can only help the work going on, as servants wait upon a master. We then become witnesses to the development of the human soul; the emergence of the New Man who will no longer be the victim of events but, thanks to his clarity of vision, will become able to direct and to mold the future of mankind.”

Maria Montessori (1870–1952) Italian pedagogue, philosopher and physician

Part I : The Child's Part in World Reconstruction, p. 9
The Absorbent Mind (1949)

Teachers, Waiting, Future, Help

“Here once, through an alley Titanic,
Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul —
Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.”

Edgar Allan Poe Ulalume

St. 2.
Ulalume (1847)

“The blighter that is at the end of the sea
On the pitch-black night raised itself flying;
Round the vessel it flew three times,
Three times it flew creaking,
And said, 'Who dared pierce
Into my dens that I do not reveal,
My black ceilings of the end of the world?'
And the helmsman said, trembling,
'His Majesty King John the Second!'

'Whose sails are these then which I rub against?
Whose the keels I see and hear?'
Said the blighter, and rolled three times,
Three times it rolled filthy and bulky,
'Who attempts what is solely my power,
I who abide where no one ever could see me
And who drip the fears of the depthless sea?'
And the helmsman trembled, and said,
'His Majesty King John the Second!'

Three times he raised his hands from the helm,
Three times he had them rooted on the helm,
And said after trembling three times,
'Here at the helm I am more than myself:
I am a People who wants the sea that is yours;
And more than the blighter, that my soul fears
And rolls on the darkness of the end of the world,
Orders the will, that ties me at the helm,
Of His Majesty King John the Second!'”

Fernando Pessoa book Mensagem

Poem "O Mostrengo" http://www.inverso.pt/Mensagem/MarPortugues/mostrengo.htm, lines 1–9, trans. Charles Eglington ( Listen to the poem on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5Ihd-ECpYM) Message

People, World, Fear, Time

“If a painting has a soulful effect on the viewer, if it puts his mind into a soulful mood, then it has fulfilled the first requirement of a work of art. However bad it might be in drawing, color, handling, etc.”

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) Swedish painter

Quote of Friedrich's letter 8 Feb. 1809, to 'Akademiedirektor Schulz'; as cited by Helmut Bôrsch-Supan and Karl Wilhelm Jàhnig in Caspar David Friedrich: Gemâlde, Druckgraphik und bildmassige Zeichnungen (Munich: Prestel, 1973), 182-83, esp. 183; translation, David Britt - note 117 http://d2aohiyo3d3idm.cloudfront.net/publications/virtuallibrary/0892366745.pdf 1794 - 1840

Art, Color, Mood, Drawing

“I found them all drunk, I found no one among them athirst in his heart. And my soul was grieved for the sons of men, for they are blind in their minds and do not see that empty they have come into the world and that empty they are destined to come forth from the world.”

Thomas the Apostle Apostle of Jesus Christ

28
Gospel of Thomas (c. 50? — c. 140?)

Men, World, Heart

“To shake off the maddening and wearying limitations of time and space and natural law—to be linked with the vast outside—to come close to the nighted and abysmal secrets of the infinite and the ultimate—surely such a thing was worth the risk of one’s life, soul, and sanity!”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Fiction, The Whisperer in Darkness (1931)

Life, Secret, Law, Nature

“Europe is a molehill. It has never had any great empires, like those of the Orient, numbering six hundred million souls.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

“The relationship of soul and body is different in man and woman; the relationship of soul to body differs in their psychic life as well as that of the spiritual faculties to each other. The feminine species expresses a unity and wholeness of the toal psychosomatic personality and a harmonious development of faculties. The masculine species strives to enhance individual abilities in order that they may attain their highest achievements.”

Edith Stein (1891–1942) Jewish-German nun, theologian and philosopher

Essays on Woman (1996), Problems of Women's Education (1932)

Life, Personality

“Nature is the difference between the soul and God.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 150
The Book of Disquiet
Original: A natureza é a diferença entre a alma e Deus.

God, Nature

“The danger at such a moment is that designing politicians may take advantage of such sublime sentiments and may apply them for the furtherance of their sinister ends. I do not think there is any language which can denounce too strongly conduct of this description. He who at such a moment would avail himself of such a commanding sentiment in order to obtain his own individual ends, suggesting a course which he may know to be injurious to the interests of the country, and not favourable to the welfare of mankind, is a man whose conduct no language can too strongly condemn. He outrages the principle of patriotism, which is the soul of free communities. He does more—he influences in the most injurious manner the common welfare of humanity. Such conduct, if it be pursued by any man at this moment, ought to be indignantly reprobated by the people of England; for, in the general havoc and ruin which it may bring about, it may, I think, be fairly described as worse than any of those Bulgarian atrocities which now occupy attention.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Speech to the annual meeting of the Royal and Central Bucks Agricultural Association in Aylesbury (20 September 1876), quoted in 'Lord Beaconsfield At Aylesbury', The Times (21 September 1876), p. 6.

People, Communication, Thinking, Country

“Worldly people are in the habit of censuring those who give themselves up in earnest to God, regarding them as extravagant, in their withdrawal from the world, and in their manner of life. They say also of them that they are useless for all matters of importance, and lost to everything the world prizes and respects! This reproach the soul meets in the best way; boldly and courageously despising it with everything else that the world can lay to its charge. Having attained to a living love of God, it makes little account of all this; and that is not all: it confesses it itself in this stanza, and boasts that it has committed that folly, and that it is lost to the world and to itself for the Beloved.”

John of the Cross (1542–1591) Spanish mystic and Roman Catholic saint

Note to Stanza 29 part 1
Spiritual Canticle of The Soul and The Bridegroom, Notes to the Stanzas

Love, Life, God, People

“The important thing is not the amount of welfare, it is that there should be a maximum of love among men. The act of helping is the direct and adequate expression of love, not its meaning or “purpose.” Its meaning lies in itself, in its illumination of the soul, in the nobility of the loving soul in the act of love. Therefore nothing can be further removed from this genuine concept of Christian love than all kinds of “socialism,” “social feeling,” “altruism,” and other subaltern modern things. When the rich youth is told to divest himself of his riches and give them to the poor, it is really not in order to help the “poor” and to effect a better distribution of property in the interest of general welfare. Nor is it because poverty as such is supposed to be better than wealth. The order is given because the act of giving away, and the spiritual freedom and abundance of love which manifest themselves in this act, ennoble the youth and make him even “richer” than he is.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1961), p. 93

Love, Men, Youth, Feeling

“You cannot lay bare your private soul and look at it. You are too much ashamed of yourself. It is too disgusting. For that reason I confine myself to drawing the portraits of others.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 (2010), p. 16

Drawing

“Corporations have neither bodies to kick nor souls to damn.”

Andrew Jackson (1767–1845) American general and politician, 7th president of the United States

This is widely attributed to Jackson on the internet, but in research done for Wikiquote, no published source has been found. Similar remarks, "Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned, they therefore do as they like." and "It has no soul to damn and no body to kick." have been attributed to Edward Thurlow, 1st Baron Thurlow (9 December 1731 – 12 September 1806).
Disputed

“There are good men and bad men of all nationalities, creeds and colors; and if this world of ours is ever to become what we hope some day it may become, it must be by the general recognition that the man's heart and soul, the man's worth and actions, determine his standing.”

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

Letter http://www.trsite.org/content/pages/speaking-loudly (1 September 1903), Oyster Bay, New York 1900s

Men, World, Hope, Color

“We live through myriads of seconds, but there is only one second among all these myriads which brings our whole inner world to the boil; the second in which, as Stendhal described, there suddenly takes place a crystallization in the supersaturated blood; a magical second like that of procreation, and, like it, hidden in the warm interior of one's own body, invisible, intangible, impalpable, a unique experience of mystery. No algebra of the soul can calculate it; no alchemy can divine it. Usually, even for ourselves, it remains unsearchable.”

Stefan Zweig (1881–1942) Austrian writer

Confusion of Feelings or Confusion: The Private Papers of Privy Councillor R. Von D (1927)

World

“The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens to that primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach.”

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

The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man (1934)

Dreams, Night

“I was completely ignorant of the poetry of Poe; it is admirable, it is poetry itself, the dream, and how one feels that you have translated its soul! I am no more than a completely illiterate ignoramus, but am not any the less moved by it. I knew only Poe's prose, which I had read and admired very young before I had heard it spoken of, but how your poems complete and express the man he was”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

in his letter, 15 February 1889, (L. 911); as cited in Steven Z. Levine, ‎Claude Monet (1994), Monet, Narcissus, and Self-Reflection: The Modernist Myth of the Self. p. 93
1870 - 1890

Dreams, Feeling, Reading

“If religion be false, it is the basest imposition under heaven; but if the religion of Christ be true, it is the most solemn truth that ever was known! It is not a thing that a man dares to trifle with if it be true, for it is at his soul's peril to make a jest of it. If it be not true it is detestable, but if it be true it deserves all a man's faculties to consider it, and all his powers to obey it. It is not a trifle. Briefly consider why it is not. It deals with your soul. If it dealt with your body it were no trifle, for it is well to have the limbs of the body sound, but it has to do with your soul. As much as a man is better than the garments that he wears, so much is the soul better than the body. It is your immortal soul it deals with. Your soul has to live for ever, and the religion of Christ deals with its destiny. Can you laugh at such words as heaven and hell, at glory and at damnation? If you can, if you think these trifles, then is the faith of Christ to be trifled with. Consider also with whom it connects you—with God; before whom angels bow themselves and veil their faces. Is HE to be trifled with? Trifle with your monarch if you will, but not with the King of kings, the Lord of lords. Recollect that those who have ever known anything of it tell you it is no child's play. The saints will tell you it is no trifle to be converted. They will never forget the pangs of conviction, nor the joys of faith. They tell you it is no trifle to have religion, for it carries them through all their conflicts, bears them up under all distresses, cheers them under every gloom, and sustains them in all labour. They find it no mockery. The Christian life to them is something so solemn, that when they think of it they fall down before God, and say, "Hold thou me up and I shall be safe." And sinners, too, when they are in their senses, find it no trifle. When they come to die they find it no little thing to die without Christ. When conscience gets the grip of them, and shakes them, they find it no small thing to be without a hope of pardon—with guilt upon the conscience, and no means of getting rid of it. And, sirs, true ministers of God feel it to be no trifle. I do myself feel it to be such an awful thing to preach God's gospel, that if it were not "Woe unto me if I do not preach the gospel," I would resign my charge this moment. I would not for the proudest consideration under heaven know the agony of mind I felt but this one morning before I ventured upon this platform! Nothing but the hope of winning souls from death and hell, and a stern conviction that we have to deal with the grandest of all realities, would bring me here.”

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

Religion—a Reality part II. Secondly, "It is not a vain thing"—that is, IT IS NO TRIFLE. (June 22nd, 1862) http://www.biblebb.com/files/spurgeon/0457.HTM

Life, Death, God, Truth

“In my soul, therefore, I can see no one but God, since I suffer no one else to enter there, and myself less than any other, because I am my own worst enemy.”

Catherine of Genoa (1447–1510) Italian author and nurse

Life and Doctrine

God, Suffering

“The ultimate, angels' law,
Indulging every instinct of the soul
There where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing!”

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

A Death in the Desert (1864)

Life, Law, Angels, Joy

“I do not mean to affirm that the description which I have given of the soul and her missions is exactly true—a man of sense ought hardly say that. But I do say that, inasmuch as the soul is shown to be immortal, he may venture to think, not improperly or unworthily, that something of this kind is true.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Thinking, Sense

“Unless one always speaks the truth, one cannot find God Who is the soul of truth.”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (1960), p. 531

God, Truth

“I hope to write someday and that’s even more terrifying than performing. You don’t just entertain the audience, you give them little bits of your soul.”

Chris Colfer (1990) actor, singer, book author

Personal Quotes 2009–2012

Hope

“Christian theology is, in a certain sense, a psychology, since its primary interest is the soul, the most precious of things. Our Lord balanced a universe against a soul and found the soul worth more than gaining a world.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Source: Peace of Soul (1949), Ch. 1, p. 7

World, Sense, Universe

“Every person is worthy of an infinite wealth of love — the beauty of his soul knows no limit.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Glimpses of Bengal http://www.spiritualbee.com/tagore-book-of-letters/ (1921)

Love, Beauty, Personality, Wealth

“I see without eyes, and I hear without ears. I feel without feeling and taste without tasting. I know neither form nor measure; for without seeing I yet behold an operation so divine that the words I first used, perfection, purity, and the like, seem to me now mere lies in the presence of truth…. Nor can I any longer say, “My God, my all.” Everything is mine, for all that is God’s seem to be wholly mine. I am mute and lost in God… God so transforms the soul in Him that it knows nothing other than God; and He continues to draw it up into His fiery love until He restores it to that pure state from which it first issued”

Catherine of Genoa (1447–1510) Italian author and nurse

Source: Life and Doctrine, p. 50

Love, God, Truth, Feeling

“My brain's gone, my soul's worn and my spirit is torn The rest of my body's still bein operated on.”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"Still Don't Give A Fuck" (Track 20).
1990s, The Slim Shady LP (1999)

“I'll tell you about punk rock: punk rock is a word used by dilettantes and, uh… and, uh… heartless manipulators, about music… that takes up the energies, and the bodies, and the hearts and the souls and the time and the minds, of young men, who give what they have to it, and give everything they have to it. And it's a… it's a term that's based on contempt; it's a term that's based on fashion, style, elitism, satanism, and, everything that's rotten about rock 'n' roll. I don't know Johnny Rotten.. but I'm sure, I'm sure he puts as much blood and sweat into what he does as Sigmund Freud did. You see, what, what sounds to you like a big load of trashy old noise… is in fact… the brilliant music of a genius… myself. And that music is so powerful, that it's quite beyond my control. And, ah… when I'm in the grips of it, I don't feel pleasure and I don't feel pain, either physically or emotionally. Do you understand what I'm talking about? Have you ever, have you ever felt like that? When you just, when you just, you couldn't feel anything, and you didn't want to either. You know, like that? Do you understand what I'm saying, sir?”

Iggy Pop (1947) American rock singer-songwriter, musician, and actor

Peter Gzowski's 90 Minutes Live interview (1977)

Men, Pain, Pleasure, Music

“So, to all of you that have put your heart and soul, not just into the campaign but into making schools better, making sure our veterans got the care they needed, making sure that we left behind a planet that is safe and secure for our kids, making sure that hardworking people have a ladder of opportunity and can support families. For all of you, who have just done amazing remarkable work, most of it unheralded, most if without fanfare, most of it without you getting any word of thanks, we could not be prouder of you.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2017, Farewell to Staff Members (January 2017)

People, School, Family, Support

“There be those who say that things and places have souls, and there be those who say they have not; I dare not say, myself, but I will tell of The Street.”

H.P. Lovecraft book The Street

"The Street" - first published in The Wolverine, No. 8 (December 1920)
Fiction

“I have said this to explain the stanza that follows, in which the soul replies to those who call in question its holy tranquillity, who will have it wholly occupied with outward duties, that its light may shine before the world: these persons have no conception of the fibres and the unseen root whence the sap is drawn, and which nourish the fruit.”

John of the Cross (1542–1591) Spanish mystic and Roman Catholic saint

Note to Stanza 28 part 4
Spiritual Canticle of The Soul and The Bridegroom, Notes to the Stanzas

World, Question, Light, Personality

“Some are jealous of being successors of the Apostles. I would rather be a successor of the Samaritan woman, who, while the Apostles went for meat and forgot souls, forgot her water pot in her zeal to spread the good tidings.”

James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) Missionary in China

(Hudson Taylor’s Choice Sayings: A Compilation from His Writings and Addresses. London: China Inland Mission, n.d., 69).

Water

“There is no help for you outside of yourself; you are the creator of the universe. Like the silkworm you have built a cocoon around yourself…. Burst your own cocoon and come out as the beautiful butterfly, as the free soul. Then alone you will see Truth.”

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

Pearls of Wisdom

Truth, Beauty, Universe, Help

“Come purge my soul, Thou Master of my days,
Of vain and empty words, of idle ways,
Of base ambition and the urge to rule;
That hidden serpent that corrupts a fool;
and grant me, Lord, to see my sins alone.
That I not call my brother to atone;
Make chaste my heart and lend me from above
Thy fortitude, humility, and love.”

Aleksandr Pushkin (1799–1837) Russian poet

A Prayer
as quoted in Pushkin, Alexander (2009). Selected Lyric Poetry. Northwestern University Press, p. 199.

Love, Fools, Way, Heart

“I've sold my soul to the devil.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

On the commercial success of the Beatles, as quoted in Lennon (1985) by Ray Coleman

“There's no greater tragedy than an equal intensity, in the same soul or the same man, of the intellectual sentiment and the moral sentiment. For a man to be utterly and absolutely moral, he has to be a bit stupid. For a man to be absolutely intellectual, he has to be a bit immoral.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Education Of the Stoic

Ibid., p. 9
The Education of the Stoic

Stupidity

“There are two kinds of pity. One, the weak and sentimental kind, which is really no more than the heart's impatience to be rid as quickly as possible of the painful emotion aroused by the sight of another's unhappiness, that pity which is not compassion, but only an instinctive desire to fortify one's own soul agains the sufferings of another; and the other, the only one at counts, the unsentimental but creative kind, which knows what it is about and is determined to hold out, in patience and forbearance, to the very limit of its strength and even beyond.”

Stefan Zweig book Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

Pain, Suffering, Heart, Patience

“Judy Garland was the singer I most wanted to sound like then, not to copy, but to get some of her soul and purity. A wonderful young voice.”

Sarah Vaughan (1924–1990) American jazz singer

Interview, The Los Angeles Times, 1969

“One who by himself is mild enough and void of all offence will become terrible and fierce by being in bad company, and will most cruelly take the life of many men, and would kill many more if they were not hindered by bodies having no soul, that have come out of caverns — that is, breastplates of iron.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XX Humorous Writings

Life, Men

“Demon’s Souls wasn’t doing well,” he says. “The project had problems and the team had been unable to create a compelling prototype. But when I heard it was a fantasy-action role-playing game, I was excited. I figured if I could find a way to take control of the game, I could turn it into anything I wanted. Best of all, if my ideas failed, nobody would care – it was already a failure.”

Hidetaka Miyazaki (1974) Japanese video game director

Bloodborne creator Hidetaka Miyazaki: ‘I didn’t have a dream. I wasn’t ambitious' https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/31/bloodborne-dark-souls-creator-hidetaka-miyazaki-interview (March 31, 2015)

Way, Game, Idea, Failure

“Idolatry is a more dangerous crime because it is apt by the authority of Kings & under very specious pretenses to insinuate it self into mankind. Kings being apt to enjoyn the honour of their dead ancestors: & it seeming very plausible to honour the souls of Heroes & Saints & to believe that they can heare us & help us & are mediators between God & man & reside & act principally in the temples & statues dedicated to their honour & memory? And yet this being against the principal part of religion is in scripture condemned & detested above all other crimes. The sin consists first in omitting the service of the true God.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

Of Idolatry
A short Schem of the true Religion

God, Religion, Memory, Help

“The soul, being a harmony, can never utter a note at variance with the tensions and relaxations and vibrations and other affections of the strings out of which she is composed; she can only follow, she cannot lead them? …And yet do we not now discover the soul to be doing the exact opposite—leading the elements of which she is believed to be composed; almost always opposing and coercing them in all sorts of ways throughout life… threatening and reprimanding the desires, passions, fears, as if talking to a thing which is not herself…”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Life, Fear, Way, Passion

“Blow, blow your trumpets till they crack,
Ye little men of little souls!
And bid them huddle at your back -
Gold-sucking leeches, shoals on shoals!Fill all the air with hungry wails -
"Reward us, ere we think or write!
Without your Gold mere Knowledge fails
To sate the swinish appetite!"”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Fame's Penny-Trumpet st. 1 & 2
Rhyme? and Reason? (1883)

Men, Knowledge, Thinking

“Today, I don't think that there is a fear of Islam as such but of ISIS and its war of conquest, which is partly drawn from Islam. It is true that the idea of conquest is inherent in the soul of Islam. However, it is also possible to interpret the objective in Matthew's Gospel, where Jesus sends his disciples to all nations, in terms of the same idea of conquest.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

INTERVIEW Pope Francis http://www.la-croix.com/Religion/Pape/INTERVIEW-Pope-Francis-2016-05-17-1200760633 by Guillaume Goubert and Sébastien Maillard for La Croix (17 May 2016); translation by Stefan Gigacz. 2010s, 2016

War, Fear, Idea, Thinking

“Go for souls and go for the worst.”

William Booth (1829–1912) British Methodist preacher

As quoted in The Life of General Booth (1913) by Hulda Friedrichs

“My sweet, I do not mean to upset you in writing this, but I want to tell you that within us, as within the nature of every person's soul there is an emptiness and we constantly seek to find that and those in order to escape from being alone. This always has been so, and always the weight of loneliness is with us, and for this reason we think of this thing or that so as not to be left alone.”

Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) Armenian-American painter

Source: 1930 - 1941, from 'Arshile Gorky, – Goats on the roof' (2009), p. 132: in a letter to his sister Vartush Mooradian, after Mai 1938

Nature, Thinking, Personality, Loneliness

“To experience the loneliness of soul is the hardest thing in the world.”

Brigitte Bardot (1934) French model, actor, singer and animal rights activist

Unsourced

World, Loneliness

“For the salvation of their soul.”
Pro salutae animae sua.

Pope Alexander VI (1431–1503) pope of the Catholic Church 1492-1503

As pope, to Cardinal Ximenes on the why he saw no reason to hinder his son Cesare Borgia's renunciation of the Purple (August, 1498), as quoted in The Life of Cesare Borgia (1912) by Rafael Sabatini, Chapter V: The Renunciation of the Purple.

“I am essentially a recluse who will have very little to do with people wherever he may be. I think that most people only make me nervous—that only by accident, and in extremely small quantities, would I ever be likely to come across people who wouldn't. It makes no difference how well they mean or how cordial they are—they simply get on my nerves unless they chance to represent a peculiarly similar combination of tastes, experiences, and heritages; as, for instance, Belknap chances to do... Therefore it may be taken as axiomatic that the people of a place matter absolutely nothing to me except as components of the general landscape and scenery. Let me have normal American faces in the streets to give the aspect of home and a white man's country, and I ask no more of featherless bipeds. My life lies not among people but among scenes—my local affections are not personal, but topographical and architectural. No one in Providence—family aside—has any especial bond of interest with me, but for that matter no one in Cambridge or anywhere else has, either. The question is that of which roofs and chimneys and doorways and trees and street vistas I love the best; which hills and woods, which roads and meadows, which farmhouses and views of distant white steeples in green valleys. I am always an outsider—to all scenes and all people—but outsiders have their sentimental preferences in visual environment. I will be dogmatic only to the extent of saying that it is New England I must have—in some form or other. Providence is part of me—I am Providence—but as I review the new impressions which have impinged upon me since birth, I think the greatest single emotion—and the most permanent one as concerns consequences to my inner life and imagination—I have ever experienced was my first sight of Marblehead in the golden glamour of late afternoon under the snow on December 17, 1922. That thrill has lasted as nothing else has—a visible climax and symbol of the lifelong mysterious tie which binds my soul to ancient things and ancient places.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Lillian D. Clark (29 March 1926), quoted in Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 186
Non-Fiction, Letters

Love, Life, People, Family