quotations about the soul
The soul is often hungrier than the body, and no shops can sell it food.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Well my soul Lord
My soul's got wings
My load is heavy
But I can still sing
JOHN MELLENCAMP
"My Soul's Got Wings"
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
Life, with the Soul predominant,
Is a noble mosaic, a bewitching arabesque.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"The Song of the Soul"
The wealth of a soul is measured by how much it can feel; its poverty, by how little.
WILLIAM ROUNSEVILLE ALGER
The Solitudes of Nature and of Man: Or, The Loneliness of Human Life
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
All men's souls are immortal, but those of the righteous are both immortal and divine.
SOCRATES
attributed, Day's Collacon
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"
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
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
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
The soul is the human being considered as having a value in itself.
SIMONE WEIL
Gravity and Grace
Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened.
ANATOLE FRANCE
attributed, Kinship with the Animals
Human beings frequently speak of their soul without, however, having the slightest comprehension of what the soul and its attributes really are. Only those who possess spiritual illumination, who have attained to the degree of mastership in psychic unfoldment can speak authoritatively on this subject. In order to give my readers a slight comprehension of the soul and its attributes, I quote from a book titled "The Light of Egypt," by T. H. Burgoyne (now out of print): "The soul is formless and intangible, and constitutes the attributes of the divine spirit: therefore, we can only conceive and know the soul by learning the powers or attributes of the spirit. To illustrate, take a ray of light. What do we know concerning it? Nothing, except by its action upon something else. This action we term the attributes of light. In themselves the attributes of light are formless, but they may easily be rendered visible, either by their colors when refracted by the prism, or by their effects when concentrated upon material objects. This may be termed the soul of the ray of light. The organism of man gives us another example. Man possesses five external senses, viz: seeing, feeling, hearing, tasting and smelling. In reality he has seven senses which can be used externally. All our knowledge concerning external phenomena must come at present through the mediumship of one or more of the five physical senses. The organs through which the function of the senses become manifest are visible, but the senses themselves are invisible and formless. We know them only as the attributes of the body; while the mind, which is perfectly and absolutely dependent upon the senses for information, well represents the spiritual Ego in its relation to the soul. The soul is formless and intangible, and can only be defined as the attribute of spirit. One cannot exist without the other; they cannot be called the same; there is the same difference between them as between a ray of light and its action and between the body and its physical senses.
WALTER MATTHEWS
"The Soul", Human Life from Many Angles
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"
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
The human soul is God's treasury, out of which he coins unspeakable riches.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The soul is healed by being with children.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
The Idiot
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
The soul that has conceived one wickedness can nurse no good thereafter.
SOPHOCLES
Philoctetes