quotations about the soul
You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
attributed, Walking a Sacred Path: Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Practice
The fire that burns in the soul is of the same essential nature as the stars.
GEORG LUKACS
attributed, "Can Poetry Change Your Life?", The New Yorker, July 31, 2017
Every soul is a battlefield.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
How can any man be free without a soul of his own, that he believes in and won't sell at any price?
D. H. LAWRENCE
Studies in Classic American Literature
You are a little soul carrying about a corpse.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
I count life just a stuff
To try the soul's strength on.
ROBERT BROWNING
In a Balcony
The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter -- often an unconscious but still a faithful interpreter -- in the eye.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Jane Eyre
For our soul is so preciously loved of him that is highest, that it over-passeth the knowing of all creatures.
JULIAN OF NORWICH
Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love
The soul of Man must quicken to creation.
T. S. ELIOT
The Rock
And unto them too, souls are born,
Those wondrous things, so slowly wrought,
That breathes a subtler thing in air,
And daily at the altar fare
Upon the living bread of thought.
CAROLINE SPENCER
"Humanity"
The human soul is God's treasury, out of which he coins unspeakable riches.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The soul is often hungrier than the body, and no shops can sell it food.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Laughter is the sound of the soul dancing. My soul probably looks like Fred Astaire.
JAROD KINTZ
This Book Is Not For Sale
We must never stop dreaming. Dreams provide nourishment for the soul, just as a meal does for the body.
PAULO COELHO
The Pilgrimage
The soul that has conceived one wickedness can nurse no good thereafter.
SOPHOCLES
Philoctetes
The soul is the connecting link between God and man, and between the spirit and the flesh, and has its earthly abode in the blood or life.
VAN BRUNT WYCKOFF
attributed, Day's Collacon
Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened.
ANATOLE FRANCE
attributed, Kinship with the Animals
There is one argument commonly employed for the immateriality of the soul, which seems to me remarkable. Whatever is extended consists of parts; and whatever consists of parts is divisible, if not in reality, at least in the imagination. But it is impossible anything divisible can be conjoined to a thought or perception, which is a being altogether inseparable and indivisible. For supposing such a conjunction, would the indivisible thought exist on the left or on the right hand of this extended divisible body? On the surface or in the middle? On the back or fore side of it? If it be conjoined with the extension, it must exist somewhere within its dimensions. If it exist within its dimensions, it must either exist in one particular part; and then that particular part is indivisible, and the perception is conjoined only with it, not with the extension: Or if the thought exists in every part, it must also be extended, and separable, and divisible, as well as the body; which is utterly absurd and contradictory. For can any one conceive a passion of a yard in length, a foot in breadth, and an inch in thickness? Thought, therefore, and extension are qualities wholly incompatible, and never can incorporate together into one subject.
DAVID HUME
"Of the Immateriality of the Soul", A Treatise of Human Nature
Dear Night! this world's defeat;
The stop to busy fools; care's check and curb;
The day of spirits; my soul's calm retreat
Which none disturb!
Christ's progress, and His prayer-time;
The hours to which high Heaven doth chime.
HENRY VAUGHAN
Silex Scintillans
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"A Psalm of Life"