Quotes about ghost
page 5

Julian of Norwich photo
Robert Seymour Bridges photo

“On such a night, when Air has loosed
Its guardian grasp on blood and brain,
Old terrors then of god or ghost
Creep from their caves to life again.”

Robert Seymour Bridges (1844–1930) British writer

Low Barometer http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2934.html, st. 2 (1926).
Poetry

Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Hermann Friedrich Kohlbrügge photo
Sufjan Stevens photo
Phil Brooks photo

“Have you guys ever ghost hunted in Hawaii? No? Well, I have this fat friend… I shouldn't say fat, that might offend him, but he's Samoan and claims to have seen ghosts.”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

Ghost Hunters. October 31, 2006.
In reference to Samoa Joe
Ghost Hunters

Thomas Tickell photo
Howard Bloom photo

“Almost every reality you "know" at any given second is a mere ghost held in memory.”

Howard Bloom (1943) American publicist and author

Source: Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century (2000), Ch.8 Reality is a Shared Hallucination

Arthur Schopenhauer photo
Manu Chao photo

“They call me the disappeared
That who when he arrives he is already gone
Flying I come, flying I go
Hastily, hastily to a lost course
When they search for me I am never there
When they find me he is not actually me
The one they have in front
Because I already moved along

They call me the disappeared
Ghost that never is to be found
They call me the ungrateful
But this is not the truth
I carry in my body a pain
That don't let me breathe
I carry in my body a curse
That always brings me to walk on”

Manu Chao (1961) French Spanish singer, guitarist and record producer

Me llaman el desaparecido
Que cuando llega ya se ha ido
Volando vengo, volando voy
Deprisa, deprisa a rumbo perdido
Cuando me buscan nunca estoy
Cuando me encuentran yo no soy
El que está enfrente porque ya
Me fui corriendo más allá

Me dicen el desaparecido
Fantasma que nunca está
Me dicen el desagradecido
Pero esa no es la verdad
Yo llevo en el cuerpo un dolor
Que no me deja respirar
Llevo en el cuerpo una condena
Que siempre me echa a caminar
Desaparecido https://www.youtube.com/embed/Qew9cYR3t0g.
Clandestino (1998)

William S. Burroughs photo

“A ghost in daylight on a crowded street.”

Junkie (1953)

Bruce Springsteen photo

“Well the highway is alive tonight,
But nobody’s kiddin’ nobody about where it goes.
I’m sittin’ down here in the campfire light
Searchin’ for the ghost of Tom Joad.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"The Ghost of Tom Joad"
Song lyrics, The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995)

Henry Adams photo
Bayard Taylor photo
Jeanette Winterson photo
Gwendolyn Brooks photo
Joseph Smith, Jr. photo
Sri Aurobindo photo
Terence McKenna photo
Northrop Frye photo

“A reader who quarrels with postulates, who dislikes Hamlet because he does not believe that there are ghosts or that people speak in pentameters, clearly has no business in literature.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

Source: "Quotes", Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (1957), p. 70

Alec Douglas-Home photo

“Douglas-Home: Can you not make me look better than I do on television? I look rather scraggy, like a ghost.
Make-up girl: No.
Douglas-Home: Why not?
Make-up girl: Because you have a head like a skull.
Douglas-Home: Doesn't everyone have a head like a skull?
Make-up girl: No.”

Alec Douglas-Home (1903–1995) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Michael Cockerell, "Live from Number 10", p. 105.
A story told by Douglas-Home about going on television in the 1964 election.
Attributed

Derren Brown photo
Gianni Sarcone photo

“Colors are ghosts, they only start to exist when light is perceived on the retina as a stimulus and is processed into color perception in our brain.”

Gianni Sarcone (1962) Italian author, artist, designer, and researcher in visual perception and cognitive psychology

Tangente Magazine (2013).

Anthony Burgess photo
Jean Baudrillard photo
Julian of Norwich photo
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn photo

“In my creed, waste of public money is like the sin against the Holy Ghost.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Vol. II, bk. 5, ch. 3.
Recollections (1917)

Julian of Norwich photo
Mordecai Richler photo
Huldrych Zwingli photo
Jon Courtenay Grimwood photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Jane Roberts photo
Gene Wolfe photo
John Knox photo
Stephen Vincent Benét photo

“For all those beaten, for the broken heads,
The fosterless, the simple, the oppressed,
The ghosts in the burning city of our time…”

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

Litany for Dictatorships (1935)

John Mayer photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“Oh! moral of enjoyment! — scattered, crushed : —
The pale checks of the few that staid, like ghosts
Haunting the footsteps of departing mirth,
While the bright pictures over them looked down
Almost in mockery.”

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

(17th July 1824) Poetic Sketches - 5th Series. Sketch the First. - Fidelity
The London Literary Gazette, 1824

Aron Ra photo
Conor Oberst photo
Harry Chapin photo
George Macaulay Trevelyan photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Ernest Rutherford photo

“I have broken the machine and touched the ghost of matter.”

Ernest Rutherford (1871–1937) New Zealand-born British chemist and physicist

As quoted by Richard Reeves, A Force of Nature The Frontier Genius of Ernest Rutherford (2008) citing Ernest Rutherford Atom Man http://www.nzedge.com/ernest-rutherford/

Matthew Lewis (writer) photo

“He was a child, and a spoiled child, but a child of high imagination; and so he wasted himself on ghost-stories and German romances.”

Matthew Lewis (writer) (1775–1818) English novelist and dramatist

Walter Scott, manuscript note written in 1825; cited from J. G. Lockhart The Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart. (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1896) p. 81 col. 2.
Criticism

Mark Rothko photo
Amir Taheri photo

“It is not solely by weapons that ISIS imposes its control. More important is the terror it has instilled in millions in Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and, increasingly, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Indeed, Jordan’s panic-driven decision to execute two jihadists in response to the burning of its captured pilot is another sign of the terror Daesh has instilled in Arab governments and much of the public. In the short run, terror is a very effective means of psychological control of unarmed and largely defenseless populations. Even in areas far from Daesh’s reach, growing numbers of preachers, writers, politicians and even sheiks and emirs, terrorized by unprecedented savagery, are hedging their bets. Today, Daesh is a menacing presence not only in Baghdad but in Arab capitals from Cairo to Muscat — an evil ghost capable of launching attacks in the Sinai and organizing deadly raids on Jordanian and Saudi borders. ISIS enjoys yet another advantage: It has a clear strategy of making areas beyond its control unsafe. No one thinks Daesh can seize Baghdad, but few Baghdadis feel they’re living anything close to a normal life. Daesh’s message is clear: No one is safe anywhere, including in non-Muslim lands, until the whole world is brought under “proper Islamic rule.””

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

How ISIS is winning: The long reach of terror http://nypost.com/2015/02/05/how-isis-is-winning-the-long-reach-of-terror/, New York Post (February 5, 2015).
New York Post

Dimitris Lyacos photo
Menno Simons photo
Kevin Kelly photo

“The "I" of a vivisystem is a ghost. Like the transient form of a whirlpool held upright by a million spinning atoms of water, it can be scattered with a fingertip.”

Kevin Kelly (1952) American author and editor

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995)

Emily St. John Mandel photo
David Woodard photo
John Suckling photo
Propertius photo

“There is something beyond the grave; death does not end all, and the pale ghost escapes from the vanquished pyre.”
Sunt aliquid Manes: letum non omnia finit, Luridaque evictos effugit umbra rogos.

Propertius (-47–-16 BC) Latin elegiac poet

IV, vii, 1.
Elegies

Grant Morrison photo

“The real world is filled with ghost stories, non sequiturs, inexplicable mysteries, dead ends and absurdities”

Grant Morrison (1960) writer

On life
Context: Otherwise, I know I’m often wasting my breath and electronic ink saying this, but the “real-world” is a pretty weird place where lots of inexplicable things happen all the time, and I like to catch the flavor of that too. It just seems more modern and authentic to me as a storyteller. The “real world” doesn’t come with the neat three-act structures and resolutions we love to impose on it, and if repeated doses of movie and TV-storytelling have convinced anyone that it does, it‘s time to get out and about a bit. The real world is filled with ghost stories, non sequiturs, inexplicable mysteries, dead ends and absurdities, and I think it’s cool to season our comfortable fictions with at least a little taste of what actual reality is like. http://www.newsarama.com/comics/060904-Grant-Batman.html

Dan Aykroyd photo

“You're from the isle of ghosts and, as you know, there are ghosts walking around all over the place over there.”

Dan Aykroyd (1952) Canadian film actor

To his interviewer in "I'm still haunted by Belushi" by Sean O'Hagan in The Observer (28 September 2003) http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2003/sep/28/features.review
Context: You're from the isle of ghosts and, as you know, there are ghosts walking around all over the place over there. Loads of people have seen them, heard a voice or felt the cold temperature. I believe that they are between here and there, that they exist between the fourth and the fifth dimension and that they visit us frequently.

Amy Tan photo

“Yin people is the term Kwan uses, because "ghosts" is politically incorrect.”

Amy Tan (1952) American novelist

SALON Interview (1995)
Context: I've long thought about how life is influenced by death, how it influences what you believe in and what you look for. Yes, I think I was pushed in a way to write this book by certain spirits — the yin people — in my life. They've always been there, I wouldn't say to help, but to kick me in the ass to write.... Yin people is the term Kwan uses, because "ghosts" is politically incorrect. People have such terrible assumptions about ghosts — you know, phantoms that haunt you, that make you scared, that turn the house upside down. Yin people are not in our living presence but are around, and kind of guide you to insights. Like in Las Vegas when the bells go off, telling you you've hit the jackpot. Yin people ring the bells, saying, "Pay attention." And you say, "Oh, I see now." Yet I'm a fairly skeptical person. I'm educated, I'm reasonably sane, and I know that this subject is fodder for ridicule.... To write the book, I had to put that aside. As with any book. I go through the anxiety, "What will people think of me for writing something like this?" But ultimately, I have to write what I have to write about, including the question of life continuing beyond our ordinary senses.

Robert G. Ingersoll photo

“When I saw that statement I will tell you what I did. I knew the man’s conscience must be writhing in his bosom to think that he had contributed a dollar toward my support, toward the support of a “materialistic demon.” I wrote him a letter and I said: “My Dear Sir: In order to relieve your conscience of the crime of having contributed to the support of an unbeliever in ghosts, I hereby enclose the amount you paid to attend my lecture.””

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)
Context: This gentlemen hated to contribute a cent to the support of a “materialistic demon.” When I saw that statement I will tell you what I did. I knew the man’s conscience must be writhing in his bosom to think that he had contributed a dollar toward my support, toward the support of a “materialistic demon.” I wrote him a letter and I said: “My Dear Sir: In order to relieve your conscience of the crime of having contributed to the support of an unbeliever in ghosts, I hereby enclose the amount you paid to attend my lecture.” I then gave him a little good advice. I advised him to be charitable, to be kind, and regretted exceedingly that any man could listen to one of my talks for an hour and a half and not go away satisfied that all men had the same right to think. This man denied having received the money, but it was traced to him through a blot on the envelope.

Virgil photo

“Ye realms, yet unrevealed to human sight,
Ye gods who rule the regions of the night,
Ye gliding ghosts, permit me to relate
The mystic wonders of your silent state!”

Di, quibus imperium est animarum, umbraeque silentes, Et Chaos, et Phlegethon, loca nocte tacentia late, Sit mihi fas audita loqui: sit numine vestro Pandere res alta terra et caligine mersas.

Source: Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book VI, Lines 264–267 (tr. John Dryden)

Joel Barlow photo

“Once draw the sword; its burning point shall bring
To thy quick nerves a never-ending sting;
The blood they shed thy weight of wo shall swell,
And their grim ghosts for ever with thee dwell.”

Joel Barlow (1754–1812) American diplomat

The Conspiracy of Kings (1792)
Context: Once draw the sword; its burning point shall bring
To thy quick nerves a never-ending sting;
The blood they shed thy weight of wo shall swell,
And their grim ghosts for ever with thee dwell. Learn hence, ye tyrants, ere ye learn too late,
Of all your craft th' inevitable fate.
The hour is come, the world's unclosing eyes
Discern with rapture where its wisdom lies;
From western heav'ns th' inverted Orient springs,
The morn of man, the dreadful night of kings.
Dim, like the day-struck owl, ye grope in light,
No arm for combat, no resource in sight;
If on your guards your lingering hopes repose,
Your guards are men, and men you've made your foes;
If to your rocky ramparts ye repair,
De Launay's fate can tell your fortune there.
No turn, no shift, no courtly arts avail,
Each mask is broken, all illusions fail;
Driv'n to your last retreat of shame and fear,
One counsel waits you, one relief is near :
By worth internal, rise to self-wrought fame,
Your equal rank, your human kindred claim;
'Tis Reason's choice, 'tis Wisdom's final plan,
To drop the monarch and assume the man.

Wallace Stevens photo

“Let him move as the sunlight moves on the floor,
Or moonlight, silently, as Plato's ghost”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

"Less and Less Human, O Savage Spirit"
Transport to Summer (1947)
Context: p> If there must be a god in the house, must be,
Saying things in the room and on the stair,Let him move as the sunlight moves on the floor,
Or moonlight, silently, as Plato's ghostOr Aristotle's skeleton. Let him hang out
His stars on the wall. He must dwell quietly.He must be incapable of speaking, closed,
As those are: as light, for all its motion, is;As color, even the closest to us, is;
As shapes, though they portend us, are.It is the human that is the alien,
The human that has no cousin in the moon.It is the human that demands his speech
From beasts or from the incommunicable mass.If there must be a god in the house, let him be one
That will not hear us when we speak: a coolnessA vermillioned nothingness, any stick of the mass
Of which we are too distantly a part.</p

John Keats photo

“Ghosts of melodious prophesyings rave
Round every spot where trod Apollo's foot”

Bk. I, l. 789
Endymion (1818)
Context: Ghosts of melodious prophesyings rave
Round every spot where trod Apollo's foot;
Bronze clarions awake, and faintly bruit,
Where long ago a giant battle was;
And, from the turf, a lullaby doth pass
In every place where infant Orpheus slept.
Feel we these things? — that moment have we stept
Into a sort of oneness, and our state
Is like a floating spirit's. But there are
Richer entanglements, enthralments far
More self-destroying, leading, by degrees,
To the chief intensity: the crown of these
Is made of love and friendship, and sits high
Upon the forehead of humanity.

Alan Moore photo

“This shows the lengths that hard science will go to to banish the ghost from the machine.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

De Abaitua interview (1998)
Context: B. F. Skinner actually put forward – and this is a measure of scientific desperation over consciousness – the idea that consciousness was a weird vibrational by-product of the vocal cords. That we did not actually think. We thought we thought because of this weird vibration caused by the vocal cords. This shows the lengths that hard science will go to to banish the ghost from the machine.

R. A. Lafferty photo

“They are the possessed men who do much of the running of the world, and theirs is the most frightening story that can be imagined. But those who watch the great men do not know that they are shells inhabited by ghosts.”

R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) American writer

Source: Archipelago (1979), Chapter Three, Pt. 5, A "ghost story" as narrated in its entirety by a character in the novel in a small ward gathering.
Context: "The perfect ghost story is the story of Possession," he said, "and that is hypnotism from beyond the grave. This is possible since hypnotism is by the will, and the will is immortal. A number of notable men have been possessed, and all of their lives seem to fit a pattern: the inconsequential early years, the hiatus when they stood where Faust stood, and the decision. And then the rise to power and influence and almost universal honor after they have made the deal. But it is not themselves, it is the devils within them that gain these things. They are the possessed men who do much of the running of the world, and theirs is the most frightening story that can be imagined. But those who watch the great men do not know that they are shells inhabited by ghosts."

François de La Rochefoucauld photo

“True love is like the appearance of ghosts: everyone talks about it but few have seen it.”

Il est du véritable amour comme de l'apparition des esprits: tout le monde en parle, mais peu de gens en ont vu.
Variant translation: With true love it's like with the appearance of ghosts: everyone talks about it but few have seen it.
Maxim 76.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo

“No man can blaspheme a book. No man can commit blasphemy by telling his honest thought. No man can blaspheme a God, or a Holy Ghost, or a Son of God. The Infinite cannot be blasphemed.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)
Context: Blasphemy is what an old mistake says of a newly discovered truth.
Blasphemy is what a withered last year's leaf says to a this year's bud.
Blasphemy is the bulwark of religious prejudice.
Blasphemy is the breastplate of the heartless.
And let me say now, that the crime of blasphemy, as set out in this statute, is impossible. No man can blaspheme a book. No man can commit blasphemy by telling his honest thought. No man can blaspheme a God, or a Holy Ghost, or a Son of God. The Infinite cannot be blasphemed.

James Randi photo
Robert M. Pirsig photo

“They are just ghosts, immortal gods of the modern mythos which appear to us to be real because we are in that mythos. But in reality they are just as much an artistic creation as the anthropomorphic Gods they replaced.”

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 29
Context: What is essential to understand at this point is that until now there was no such thing as mind and matter, subject and object, form and substance. Those divisions are just dialectical inventions that came later. The modern mind sometimes tends to balk at the thought of these dichotomies being inventions and says, "Well, the divisions were there for the Greeks to discover," and you have to say, "Where were they? Point to them!" And the modern mind gets a little confused and wonders what this is all about anyway, and still believes the divisions were there.
But they weren't, as Phædrus said. They are just ghosts, immortal gods of the modern mythos which appear to us to be real because we are in that mythos. But in reality they are just as much an artistic creation as the anthropomorphic Gods they replaced.

Julian of Norwich photo

“Our good Lord the Holy Ghost, which is endless life dwelling in our soul, full securely keepeth us; and worketh therein a peace and bringeth it to ease by grace, and accordeth it to God and maketh it pliant.”

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

Summations, Chapter 48
Context: Our good Lord the Holy Ghost, which is endless life dwelling in our soul, full securely keepeth us; and worketh therein a peace and bringeth it to ease by grace, and accordeth it to God and maketh it pliant. And this is the mercy and the way that our Lord continually leadeth us in as long as we be here in this life which is changeable.
For I saw no wrath but on man’s part; and that forgiveth He in us. For wrath is not else but a forwardness and a contrariness to peace and love; and either it cometh of failing of might, or of failing of wisdom, or of failing of goodness: which failing is not in God, but is on our part. For we by sin and wretchedness have in us a wretched and continuant contrariness to peace and to love. And that shewed He full often in His lovely Regard of Ruth and Pity. For the ground of mercy is love, and the working of mercy is our keeping in love. And this was shewed in such manner that I could not have perceived of the part of mercy but as it were alone in love; that is to say, as to my sight.

Robert Graves photo

“None of all the magic hosts,
None remain but a few ghosts
Of timorous heart, to linger on
Weeping for lost Babylon.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"Babylon"
Fairies and Fusiliers (1917)
Context: Robin, and Red Riding Hood
Take together to the wood,
And Sir Galahad lies hid
In a cave with Captain Kidd.
None of all the magic hosts,
None remain but a few ghosts
Of timorous heart, to linger on
Weeping for lost Babylon.

Siegfried Sassoon photo

“Selfless and ardent, resolute and gay,
So in this hour, in strange survival stands
Your ghost, whom I am powerless to repay.”

Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967) English poet, diarist and memoirist

Collected Poems (1949), Revisitation
Context: O fathering friend and scientist of good,
Who in solitude, one bygone summer’s day,
And in the throes of bodily anguish, passed away
From dream and conflict and research-lit lands
Of ethnological learning, — even as you stood
Selfless and ardent, resolute and gay,
So in this hour, in strange survival stands
Your ghost, whom I am powerless to repay.

Christopher Moore photo

“I shagged a ghost!”

Drool, Ch 14 - On Tender Horns - pg 167
Fool (2009)

Robert G. Ingersoll photo

“This he has done in his sermon entitled “Ghosts against God or Ingersoll against Honesty.””

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)
Context: The next gentleman who has endeavored to answer what I have said, is the Rev. Samuel Robinson. This he has done in his sermon entitled “Ghosts against God or Ingersoll against Honesty.” I presume he imagines himself to be the defendant in both cases.

Jean Tinguely photo

“My ghosts are satisfied.”

Jean Tinguely (1925–1991) Swiss painter and sculptor

Jean Tinguely (1990); as quoted in: Museum Jean Tinguely Basel, ‎Jean Tinguely, ‎Fritz Gerber (1996) Museum Jean Tinguely Basel. p. 250.
This source explains, that Tinguely "wrote in the catalogue, a remark that addresses the elements of movement and hope that are always present in his sculptures. It appears that hopelessness was as foreign to him as it was to his machines."
Quotes, 1990's

William Gibson photo

“If your woman is a ghost, she doesn't know it. Neither will you.”

Neuromancer (1984)
Context: The lane to the land of the dead. Where you are, my friend. Marie-France, my lady, she prepared this road, but her lord choked her off before I could read the book of her days. Neuro from the nerves, the silver paths. Romancer. Necromancer. I call up the dead. But no, my friend," and the boy did a little dance, brown feet printing the sand, "I am the dead, and their land." He laughed. A gull cried, "Stay. If your woman is a ghost, she doesn't know it. Neither will you."

Robert G. Ingersoll photo

“In my judgment, they were right. To give up witchcraft is to give up, in a great degree at least, the supernatural. To throw away the little ghosts simply prepares the mind of man to give up the great ones.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)
Context: It was said by Sir Thomas More that to give up witchcraft was to give up the Bible itself. This idea was entertained by nearly all the eminent theologians of a hundred years ago. In my judgment, they were right. To give up witchcraft is to give up, in a great degree at least, the supernatural. To throw away the little ghosts simply prepares the mind of man to give up the great ones. The founders of nearly all creeds, and of all religions properly so called, have taught the existence of good and evil spirits. They have peopled the dark with devils and the light with angels. They have crowded hell with demons and heaven with seraphs. The moment these good and evil spirits, these angels and fiends, disappear from the imaginations of men, and phenomena are accounted for by natural rather than by supernatural means, a great step has been taken in the direction of what is now known as materialism. While the church believes in witchcraft, it is in a greatly modified form. The evil spirits are not as plenty as in former times, and more phenomena are accounted for by natural means. Just to the extent that belief has been lost in spirits, just to that extent the church has lost its power and authority. When men ceased to account for the happening of any event by ascribing it to the direct action of good or evil spirits, and began to reason from known premises, the chains of superstition began to grow weak.

Julian of Norwich photo

“Our faith is a Virtue that cometh of our Nature-Substance into our Sense-soul by the Holy Ghost; in which all our virtues come to us: for without that, no man may receive virtue. For it is nought else but a right understanding, with true belief, and sure trust, of our Being: that we are in God, and God in us, Whom we see not.”

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

Summations, Chapter 54
Variant: Faith is nought else but a right understanding, with true belief and sure trust, of our Being: that we are in God, and God is in us: Whom we see not.
Context: Our faith is a Virtue that cometh of our Nature-Substance into our Sense-soul by the Holy Ghost; in which all our virtues come to us: for without that, no man may receive virtue. For it is nought else but a right understanding, with true belief, and sure trust, of our Being: that we are in God, and God in us, Whom we see not. And this virtue, with all other that God hath ordained to us coming therein, worketh in us great things. For Christ’s merciful working is in us, and we graciously accord to Him through the gifts and the virtues of the Holy Ghost. This working maketh that we are Christ’s children, and Christian in living.

Don McLean photo

“And the three men I admire most
The Father, Son and the Holy Ghost
They caught the last train for the coast
The day the music died.”

Don McLean (1945) American Singer and songwriter

Song lyrics, American Pie (1971), American Pie
Context: I met a girl who sang the blues
And I asked her for some happy news
But she just smiled and turned away
I went down to the sacred store
Where I'd heard the music years before
But the man there said the music woudn't play
And in the streets the children screamed
The lovers cried, and the poets dreamed
But not a word was spoken
The church bells all were broken
And the three men I admire most
The Father, Son and the Holy Ghost
They caught the last train for the coast
The day the music died.

Percy Bysshe Shelley photo

“I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.”

St. 7 (a cenotaph is an empty tomb or a monument erected in honor of a person who is buried elsewhere)
The Cloud (1820)
Context: For after the rain when with never a stain
The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams
Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.

Henrik Ibsen photo

“I am half inclined to think we are all ghosts, Mr. Manders. It is not only what we have inherited from our fathers and mothers that exists again in us, but all sorts of old dead ideas and all kinds of old dead beliefs and things of that kind.”

Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet

Mrs. Alving, Act II
Ghosts (1881)
Context: I am half inclined to think we are all ghosts, Mr. Manders. It is not only what we have inherited from our fathers and mothers that exists again in us, but all sorts of old dead ideas and all kinds of old dead beliefs and things of that kind. They are not actually alive in us; but there they are dormant, all the same, and we can never be rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper and read it, I fancy I see ghosts creeping between the lines. There must be ghosts all over the world. They must be as countless as the grains of the sands, it seems to me. And we are so miserably afraid of the light, all of us.

George Müller photo
Julian of Norwich photo

“Our Substance is our Father, God Almighty, and our Substance is our Mother, God, All-wisdom; and our Substance is in our Lord the Holy Ghost, God All-goodness.”

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

Summations, Chapter 58
Context: Our Substance is our Father, God Almighty, and our Substance is our Mother, God, All-wisdom; and our Substance is in our Lord the Holy Ghost, God All-goodness. For our Substance is whole in each Person of the Trinity, which is one God. And our Sense-soul is only in the Second Person Christ Jesus; in whom is the Father and the Holy Ghost: and in Him and by Him we are mightily taken out of Hell, and out of the wretchedness in Earth worshipfully brought up into Heaven and blissfully oned to our Substance: increased in riches and in nobleness by all the virtues of Christ, and by the grace and working of the Holy Ghost.

Miguel de Unamuno photo

“The real sin — perhaps it is a sin against the Holy Ghost for which there is no remission — is the sin of heresy, the sin of thinking for oneself.”

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

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), IV : The Essence of Catholicism
Context: The real sin — perhaps it is a sin against the Holy Ghost for which there is no remission — is the sin of heresy, the sin of thinking for oneself. The saying has been heard before now, here in Spain, that to be a liberal — that is, a heretic — is worse than being an assassin, a thief, or an adulterer. The gravest sin is not to obey the Church, whose infallibility protects us from reason.

Percy Bysshe Shelley photo

“O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes”

St. I
Ode to the West Wind (1819)
Context: O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth.

Baruch Spinoza photo

“If I had as clear an idea of ghosts, as I have of a triangle or a circle, I should not in the least hesitate to affirm that they had been created by God; but as the idea I possess of them is just like the ideas, which my imagination forms”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Letter to Hugo Boxel (Oct. 1674) The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza (1891) Tr. R. H. M. Elwes, Vol. 2, Letter 58 (54).
Context: If I had as clear an idea of ghosts, as I have of a triangle or a circle, I should not in the least hesitate to affirm that they had been created by God; but as the idea I possess of them is just like the ideas, which my imagination forms of harpies, gryphons, hydras, &c., I cannot consider them as anything but dreams, which differ from God as totally as that which is not differs from that which is.<!--pp. 382-383

Robert G. Ingersoll photo

“They have told ghost stories to courage until courage became fear. They have done all in their power to keep men from growing intellectually, to keep the world in a state of childhood, that they themselves might be deemed great and good and wise. They have always known that their reputation for wisdom depended upon the ignorance of the people.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

"To the Indianapolis Clergy." The Iconoclast (Indianapolis, IN) (1883)
Context: The inventor of paper—and he was not a Christian—did more than all the early fathers for mankind. The inventors of plows, of sickles, of cradles, of reapers; the inventors of wagons, coaches, locomotives; the inventors of skiffs, sail-vessels, steamships; the men who have made looms—in short, the inventors of all useful things—they are the civilizers taken in connection with the great thinkers, the poets, the musicians, the actors, the painters, the sculptors. The men who have invented the useful, and the men who have made the useful beautiful, are the real civilizers of mankind. The priests, in all ages, have been hindrances—stumbling-blocks. They have prevented man from using his reason. They have told ghost stories to courage until courage became fear. They have done all in their power to keep men from growing intellectually, to keep the world in a state of childhood, that they themselves might be deemed great and good and wise. They have always known that their reputation for wisdom depended upon the ignorance of the people.

Joaquin Miller photo

“Aye, I built in woe. God willed it;
Woe that passeth ghosts of guilt.”

Joaquin Miller (1837–1913) American judge

"Juanita".
In Classic Shades, and Other Poems (1890)
Context: p>Dear, I took these trackless masses
Fresh from Him who fashioned them;
Wrought in rock, and hewed fair passes,
Flower set, as sets a gem.Aye, I built in woe. God willed it;
Woe that passeth ghosts of guilt.
Yet I built as His birds builded —
Builded singing as I built.All is finished! Roads of flowers
Wait your loyal little feet.
All completed? Nay, the hours
Till you come are incomplete.</p

Henrik Ibsen photo

“There must be ghosts all over the world. They must be as countless as the grains of the sands, it seems to me. And we are so miserably afraid of the light, all of us.”

Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet

Mrs. Alving, Act II
Ghosts (1881)
Context: I am half inclined to think we are all ghosts, Mr. Manders. It is not only what we have inherited from our fathers and mothers that exists again in us, but all sorts of old dead ideas and all kinds of old dead beliefs and things of that kind. They are not actually alive in us; but there they are dormant, all the same, and we can never be rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper and read it, I fancy I see ghosts creeping between the lines. There must be ghosts all over the world. They must be as countless as the grains of the sands, it seems to me. And we are so miserably afraid of the light, all of us.

Julian of Norwich photo

“I speak but little of reverent dread, for I hope it may be seen in this matter aforesaid. But well I wot our Lord shewed me no souls but those that dread Him. For well I wot the soul that truly taketh the teaching of the Holy Ghost, it hateth more sin for vileness and horribleness than it doth all the pain that is in hell.”

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

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 76
Context: I speak but little of reverent dread, for I hope it may be seen in this matter aforesaid. But well I wot our Lord shewed me no souls but those that dread Him. For well I wot the soul that truly taketh the teaching of the Holy Ghost, it hateth more sin for vileness and horribleness than it doth all the pain that is in hell. For the soul that beholdeth the fair nature of our Lord Jesus, it hateth no hell but sin, as to my sight. And therefore it is God’s will that we know sin, and pray busily and travail earnestly and seek teaching meekly that we fall not blindly therein; and if we fall, that we rise readily. For it is the most pain that the soul may have, to turn from God any time by sin.

Joaquin Miller photo

“Give glory and honor and pitiful tears
To all who fail in their deeds sublime;
Their ghosts are many in the van of years,
They were born with Time in advance of Time.”

Joaquin Miller (1837–1913) American judge

"For Those Who Fail" in Memorie and Rime (1884), p. 237.
Context: "All honor to him who shall win the prize,"
The world has cried for a thousand years;
But to him who tries, and who fails and dies,
I give great honor and glory and tears.Give glory and honor and pitiful tears
To all who fail in their deeds sublime;
Their ghosts are many in the van of years,
They were born with Time in advance of Time.

Paul J. McAuley photo
Franz Bardon photo