quotations about the soul
In this way the Soul deliberately labours for growth; deliberately it works at itself, purifying always the lower nature with unceasing effort and with untiring demand; for ever it is comparing itself not with those who are below it but with Those who are above it, ever it is raising its eyes towards Those who have achieved.
ANNIE BESANT
In the Outer Court
We must never stop dreaming. Dreams provide nourishment for the soul, just as a meal does for the body.
PAULO COELHO
The Pilgrimage
Every soul is a battlefield.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
It is only God who can satisfy the soul.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The soul is healed by being with children.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
The Idiot
The soul is more than what happens to us when death enters, it's living a full life now, regardless of the time that you have left.
CORINE GATTI
"Live the Life You Want According to Thomas Moore", Beliefnet, July 31, 2017
The soul has, living apart from its corporeal envelope, a profound habitual meditation which prepares it for a future life.
THEODOR GOTTLIEB HIPPEL
attributed, Day's Collacon
The soul of Man must quicken to creation.
T. S. ELIOT
The Rock
The soul, then, lives by God when it lives well, for it cannot live well unless by God working in it what is good; and the body lives by the soul when the soul lives in the body, whether itself be living by God or no. For the wicked man's life in the body is a life not of the soul, but of the body.
ST. AUGUSTINE
The City of God
The soul is often hungrier than the body, and no shops can sell it food.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Whoever saw his own soul? No man. Yet what is there more present, or what to each man nearer, than his own soul?
EDWARD VI
attributed, Day's Collacon
Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
"The Philosophy of Composition", The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Volume 3
Since our inner experiences consist of reproductions and combinations of sensory impressions, the concept of a soul without a body seem to me to be empty and devoid of meaning.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
attributed, Albert Einstein: The Human Side
I do not mean that the soul is air, as has been supposed by some who could not conceive a spiritual nature; but, with much dissimilarity, the two things have a kind of likeness, which makes it suitable to say that the immaterial soul is illumined with the immaterial light of the simple wisdom of God, as the material air is irradiated with material light, and that, as the air, when deprived of this light, grows dark, (for material darkness is nothing else than air wanting light,) so the soul, deprived of the light of wisdom, grows dark.
ST. AUGUSTINE
The City of God
And more than once in the course of time, the same theme reappears: among the mystics of the fifteenth century, it has become the motif of the soul as a skiff, abandoned on the infinite sea of desires, in the sterile field of cares and ignorance, among the mirages of knowledge, amid the unreason of the world -- a craft at the mercy of the sea's great madness, unless it throws out a solid anchor, faith, or raises its spiritual sails so that the breath of God may bring it to port.
MICHEL FOUCAULT
Madness & Civilization
The body is our dwelling-place, and the soul the immortal guest which lodges there.
MENCIUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
You are a little soul carrying about a corpse.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
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
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 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