Quotes about spirit
page 22

Sören Kierkegaard photo
Gloria E. Anzaldúa photo
Miyamoto Musashi photo
Poul Anderson photo
Arnaut Daniel photo

“"O brother," said he, "He who is singled by
My finger (he pointed to a spirit in front)
Wrought better in the mother-tongue than I.
Whether in verses of love or prose romaunt
He surpassed all; and let the fools contend
Who make him of Limoges of more account.”

Arnaut Daniel (1150–1210) Occitan troubadour

"O frate," disse, "chesti qu'io ti cerno
col ditto," e additò un spirto innanzi,
"fu miglior fabbro del parlar materno.
Versi d'amore e prose di romanzi
soverchiò tutti; e lascia dir li stolti
che quel di Lemosì credon ch'avanzi.
Dante Purgatorio, canto 26, line 115; translation by Laurence Binyon, in Dante's Purgatorio (1938) p. 309.
Criticism

Giosuè Carducci photo
Robert J. Shiller photo
Jonathan Edwards photo

“It is evident from the Scripture, that there is yet remaining a great advancement of the interest of religion and the kingdom of Christ in this world, by an abundant outpouring of the Spirit of God, far greater and more extensive than ever yet has been. It is certain, that many things, which are spoken concerning a glorious time of the church’s enlargement and prosperity in the latter days, have never yet been fulfilled.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

An Humble Attempt To Promote Explicit Agreement And Visible Union Of God’s People In Extraordinary Prayer For The Revival Of Religion And The Advancement Of Christ’s Kingdom On Earth from Edwards, Jonathan, The works of Jonathan Edwards (Vol. 2, p. 278). Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh, 1974.

Koichi Tohei photo
John Maynard Keynes photo

“Adam Smith and Malthus and Ricardo! There is something about these three figures to evoke more than ordinary sentiments from us their children in the spirit.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

Source: Essays In Biography (1933), Robert Malthus: The First of the Cambridge Economists, p. 148

Whitley Strieber photo
Henrik Ibsen photo

“To crave for happiness in this world is simply to be possessed by a spirit of revolt. What right have we to happiness?”

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

Manders, Act I
Ghosts (1881)

Frederick II of Prussia photo
Norman Mailer photo
Monier Monier-Williams photo
Jane Roberts photo
John Ruskin photo
Philip Schaff photo

“He adapted the words to the capacity of the Germans, often at the expense of accuracy. He cared more for the substance than the form. He turned the Hebrew shekel into a Silberling, He used popular alliterative phrases as Geld und Gut, Land und Leute, Rath und That, Stecken und Stab, Dornen und Disteln, matt und müde, gäng und gäbe. He avoided foreign terms which rushed in like a flood with the revival of learning, especially in proper names (as Melanchthon for Schwarzerd, Aurifaber for Goldschmid, Oecolampadius for Hausschein, Camerarius for Kammermeister). He enriched the vocabulary with such beautiful words as holdselig, Gottseligkeit.
Erasmus Alber, a contemporary of Luther, called him the German Cicero, who not only reformed religion, but also the German language.
Luther's version is an idiomatic reproduction of the Bible in the very spirit of the Bible. It brings out the whole wealth, force, and beauty of the German language. It is the first German classic, as King James's version is the first English classic. It anticipated the golden age of German literature as represented by Klopstock, Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Schiller,—all of them Protestants, and more or less indebted to the Luther-Bible for their style. The best authority in Teutonic philology pronounces his language to be the foundation of the new High German dialect on account of its purity and influence, and the Protestant dialect on account of its freedom which conquered even Roman Catholic authors.”

Philip Schaff (1819–1893) American Calvinist theologian

Notable examples of Luther's renderings of Hebrew and Greek words

Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Frederick Douglass photo
Howard Zinn photo
Owen Lovejoy photo

“So far as my right to life and liberty is concerned, I did not get it from Congress or Parliament. I did not get it from the Democratic Party. I did not get it from any evil spirits whose names commence with the same initials as the Democrats.”

Owen Lovejoy (1811–1864) American politician

As quoted in His Brother's Blood: Speeches and Writings, 1838–64 https://web.archive.org/web/20160319081944/https://books.google.com/books?id=qMEv8DNXVbIC&pg=PA234#v=onepage&q&f=false (2004), edited by William Frederick Moore and Jane Ann Moore, p. 234
1860s, Speech (October 1860)

Florence Earle Coates photo
Norman Spinrad photo
Otto Pfleiderer photo
Robert F. Kennedy photo
Felix Adler photo
Jacques Maritain photo

“The supernatural light of the spirit is the only night from which the spirit can emerge alive.”

Jacques Maritain (1882–1973) French philosopher

Ransoming the Time (1941), p. 288.

Miguel de Unamuno photo
Vyasa photo

“It has been said by Sanatkumara and the great-spirited Vyasa, and it is enjoined in the Veda, O, King that one should go to Pratudaka on pilgrimage.”

Vyasa central and revered figure in most Hindu traditions

w:PulastyaPulastya in p. 49.
Sources, Seer of the Fifth Veda: Kr̥ṣṇa Dvaipāyana Vyāsa in the Mahābhārata

Mao Zedong photo

“This army has an indomitable spirit and is determined to vanquish all enemies and never to yield. No matter what the difficulties and hardships, so long as a single man remains, he will fight on.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On Coalition Government (1945)

Epes Sargent photo

“When the night-wind bewaileth the fall of the year,
And sweeps from the forest the leaves that are sere;
I wake from my slumber and list to the roar
And it saith to my spirit, "No more, never more!"”

Epes Sargent (1813–1880) American editor, poet and playwright

When the Night-wind bewaileth, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Herbert Marcuse photo

“The death of the spirit is the price of progress.”

Eric Voegelin (1901–1985) American philosopher

Eric Voegelin (1987), The New Science of Politics: An Introduction, ISBN 0226861147, p. 131

Alfred North Whitehead photo

“The science of pure mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925)

Edvard Munch photo
Tom Robbins photo
Andrei Sakharov photo
Aldous Huxley photo
Frederick Douglass photo
Evagrius Ponticus photo
Albert Lutuli photo
Edmund Burke photo

“In doing good, we are generally cold, and languid, and sluggish; and of all things afraid of being too much in the right. But the works of malice and injustice are quite in another style. They are finished with a bold, masterly hand; touched as they are with the spirit of those vehement passions that call forth all our energies, whenever we oppress and persecute.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Speech at Bristol Previous to the Election http://books.google.com/books?id=DAAUAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA435&dq=%22we+are+generally+cold,+and+languid,+and+sluggish%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=D4TSUuXqDYrekQe6uoH4Cw&ved=0CFAQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=%22we%20are%20generally%20cold%2C%20and%20languid%2C%20and%20sluggish%22&f=false (6 September 1780)
1780s

Joseph Smith, Jr. photo
Mark Hopkins (educator) photo

“That which the learned Jews did with the outward letter of their Law, that same do learned Christians with the outward letter of their gospel. Why did the Jewish church so furiously and obstinately cry out against Christ, Let him be crucified? It was because their letter-learned ears, their worldly spirit and temple-orthodoxy, would not bear to hear of an inward savior, not bear to hear of being born again of his Spirit, of eating his flesh, and drinking his blood, of his dwelling in them, and they in him. To have their Law of ordinances, their temple-pomp sunk into such a fulfilling savior as this, was such enthusiastic jargon to their ears, as forced their sober, rational theology, to call Christ, Beelzebub, his doctrine, blasphemy, and all for the sake of Moses and rabbinic orthodoxy.
Need it now be asked, whether the true Christ of the gospel be less blasphemed, less crucified, by that Christian theology which rejects an inward Christ, a savior living and working in the soul, as its inward light and life, generating his own nature and Spirit in it, as its only redemption, whether that which rejects all this as mystic madness be not that very same old Jewish wisdom sprung up in Christian theology, which said of Christ when teaching these very things, "He is mad, why hear ye him?" Our blessed Lord in a parable sets forth the blind Jews, as saying of himself, "We will not have this man to reign OVER us."”

William Law (1686–1761) English cleric, nonjuror and theological writer

The sober-minded Christian scholar has none of this Jewish blindness, he only says of Christ, we will not have this man to REIGN IN US, and so keeps clear of such mystic absurdity as St. Paul fell into, when he enthusiastically said, "Yet not I, but Christ that liveth in me."
¶ 157 - 158.
An Humble, Earnest and Affectionate Address to the Clergy (1761)

““In the early days of MARC, there was a small team of people dedicated to one thing—getting the MARC Pilot Project underway. It was a team spirit that I shall never forget….”

Henriette Avram (1919–2006) American computer programmer and system analyst. She developed the MARC formatting used in libraries

Source: MARC her Words: An Interview with Henriette Avram, 1989, p.860

Alfred North Whitehead photo

“…The pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit…”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

Source: 1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925), Ch. 2: "Mathematics as an Element in the History of Thought"

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel photo
Montesquieu photo
Lucius Shepard photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
David Woodard photo
William Winwood Reade photo
Robert Louis Stevenson photo
Neil Gaiman photo

“I am grim of mind and wrathful of spirit and I have no desire to be nice to anyone.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

Source: Norse Mythology (2017), Chapter 13, “Hymir and Thor’s Fishing Expedition” (p. 216)

Thomas Carlyle photo

“I shall now no more behold my dear father with these "bodily eyes. With him a whole threescore and ten years of the past has doubly died for me. It is as if a new leaf in the great hook of time were turned over. Strange time — endless time or of which I see neither end nor beginning. All rushes on. Man follows man. His life is as a tale that has been told; yet under Time does there not lie Eternity? Perhaps my father, all that essentially was my father, is even now near me, with me. Both he and I are with God. Perhaps, if it so please God, we shall in some higher state of being meet one another, recognize one another. As it is written. We shall be forever with God. The possibility, nay (in some way), the certainty, of perennial existence daily grows plainer to me. "The essence of whatever was, is, or shall be, even now is." God is great. God is good. His will be done, for it will be right. As it is, I can think peaceably of the departed love. All that was earthly, harsh, sinful, in our relation has fallen away; all that was holy in it remains. I can see my dear father's life in some measure as the sunk pillar on which mine was to rise and be built; the waters of time have now swelled up round his (as they will round mine); I can see it all transfigured, though I touch it no longer. I might almost say his spirit seems to have entered into me (so clearly do I discern and love him); I seem to myself only the continuation and second volume of my father. These days that I have spent thinking of him and of his end are the peaceablest, the only Sabbath that I have had in London. One other of the universal destinies of man has overtaken me. Thank Heaven, I know, and have known, what it is to be a son; to love a father, as spirit can love spirit. God give me to live to my father's honor and to His. And now, beloved father, farewell for the last time in this world of shadows I In the world of realities may the Great Father again bring us together in perfect holiness and perfect love! Amen!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1880s, Reminiscences (1881)

Haile Selassie photo

“We wish to recall here the spirit of tolerance shown by Our Lord Jesus Christ when He gave forgiveness to all including those that crucified Him.”

Haile Selassie (1892–1975) Emperor of Ethiopia

Address to the World Evangelical Congress in Berlin (28 October 1966)

John Buchan photo
David Wood photo

“Philosophy is said to have taken the 'linguistic turn' in this century. One hundred years ago, a philosopher would think in terms of mind, spirit, experience, consciousness; now the by-word is language.”

David Wood (1946) British philosopher, born 1946

Source: Philosophy At The Limit (1990), Chapter 2, Metaphysics and Metaphor, p. 26

Joseph Goebbels photo

“The end of the year! I draw the balance. Inquiry of conscience and request to the Spirit for progress and maturity.
I grew stronger inside of me and I strive for a clearer knowledge and stronger faith.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Jahresende! Ich mache Bilanz. Gewissensschau und Bitte an den Geist um Fortschritt und Reife.
Ich bin stärker im Innern geworden und strebe zu klarerer Erkenntnis und festerem Glauben.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

Jean Paul photo
Andrew Dickson White photo

“His [Turgot's] first important literary and scholastic effort was a treatise On the Existence of God. Few fragments of it remain, but we are helped to understand him when we learn that he asserted, and to the end of his life maintained, his belief in an Almighty Creator and Upholder of the Universe. It did, indeed, at a later period suit the purposes of his enemies, exasperated by his tolerant spirit and his reforming plans, to proclaim him an atheist; but that sort of charge has been the commonest of missiles against troublesome thinkers in all times.”

Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) American politician

only three fragments of this treatise remain, per Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot (baron de l'Aulne), The life and writings of Turgot:Comptroller-General of France, 1774-6 http://books.google.com/books?id=DNHrAAAAMAAJ& W. Walker Stephens, editor, Longman, Green and Co. 1895 p. 7
Source: Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason (1915), p. 167-168

Theodore Dalrymple photo
Joseph Strutt photo
John Dryden photo

“He was exhaled; his great Creator drew
His spirit, as the sun the morning dew.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

On the Death of a Very Young Gentlemen (1700).

Steven Pressfield photo
Newton Lee photo
Philip José Farmer photo
Ludwig Uhland photo

“Take, O boatman, thrice thy fee,—
Take, I give it willingly;
For, invisible to thee,
Spirits twain have crossed with me.”

Ludwig Uhland (1787–1862) German poet

The Passage, Edinburgh Review (October 1832).

Kim Stanley Robinson photo
Francesco Saverio Nitti photo
John Ruysbroeck photo
Keir Hardie photo

“History is one long record of like illustrations. Must our modern civilisation with all its teeming wonders come to a like end? We are reproducing in faithful detail every cause which led to the downfall of the civilisations of other days—Imperialism, taking tribute from conquered races, the accumulation of great fortunes, the development of a population which owns no property, and is always in poverty. Land has gone out of cultivation and physical deterioration is an alarming fact. An so we Socialists say the system which is producing these results must not be allowed to continue. A system which has robbed religion of its saviour, destroyed handicraft, which awards the palm of success to the unscrupulous, corrupts the press, turns pure women on the streetsm and upright men into mean-spirited time-servers, cannot continue. In the end it is bound to work its own overthrow. Socialism with its promise of freedom, its larger hope for humanity, its triumph of peace over war, its binding of the races of the earth into one all-embracing brotherhood, must prevail. Capitalism is the creed of the dying present; socialism throbs with the life of the days that are to be. It has claimed its martyrs in the past, is claiming them now, will claim them still; but what then? Better to "rebel and die in the twenty worlds sooner than bear the yoke of thwarted life."”

Keir Hardie (1856–1915) Scottish socialist and labour leader

Source: From Serfdom to Socialism (1907), p. 103–104

Chris Cornell photo
Ahad Ha'am photo
Peter Medawar photo
Philip Johnson photo
Johannes Tauler photo
George Meredith photo
Sun Myung Moon photo
Ethan Hawke photo

“I've had different opportunities in my life, but I've tried to maintain the spirit of an amateur. Our culture roots everything in the barometer of success and how much money you make. But if you really just aspire to a life in the arts, it's really not a barometer at all.”

Ethan Hawke (1970) American actor and writer

New York Daily News http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/entertainment/2000/05/11/2000-05-11_a_renaissance_man_tackles_sh.html (2000-05-11)
2000–2004

Muhammad Ali Jinnah photo
D. V. Gundappa photo
Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
David Thomas (born 1813) photo