Zwei Seelen und ein Gedanke,
Zwei Herzen und ein Schlag.
Der Sohn der Wildnis (1842), Act ii (published in English as Ingomar the Barbarian; translation by Maria Lovell), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "Two friends, two bodies with one soul inspir’d", Alexander Pope, The Iliad of Homer, Book xvi, line 267.; "’T was then we luvit ilk ither weel, ’T was then we twa did part: Sweet time—sad time! twa bairns at scule— Twa bairns and but ae heart", William Motherwell, Jeannie Morrison (c. 1832), Stanza 3.
Zwei Seelen und ein Gedanke, Zwei Herzen und ein Schlag.
“Two souls with but a single thought,
Two hearts that beat as one!”
“Two souls in one, two hearts into one heart.”
First Week, Sixth Day. Compare: "Two friends, two bodies with one soul inspir'd", Alexander Pope, The Iliad of Homer, Book xvi, line 267.
La Semaine; ou, Création du monde (1578)
“Two hearts,
Two hearts that beat as one
Our lives have just begun.”
Endless Love (1981).
Song lyrics
“What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.”
Variant: A friend is one soul abiding in two bodies.
Variant: Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
Source: The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, p. 188; also reported in various sources as:
Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.
A true friend is one soul in two bodies.
Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.
Source: The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ch. I: Of Our Spiritual Strivings
Context: After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, — a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness, — an American, a Negro; two warring souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, — this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.
