quotations about the soul
The living soul of man, once conscious of its power, cannot be quelled.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul.
MURIEL SPARK
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
I'm a lost soul. We do wail.
ROGER ZELAZNY
Jack of Shadows
Some men live altogether outside their own souls; some live altogether within their own souls; some pass out and in: these last are the best men.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Taken as a whole, the universe is absurd. There seems an unalterable contradiction between the human mind and its employments. How can a soul be a merchant? What relation to an immortal being have the price of linseed, the fall of butter, the tare on tallow, or the brokerage on hemp? Can an undying creature debit "petty expenses," and charge for "carriage paid"?
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Negativity is an addiction to the bleak shadow that lingers around every human form ... you can transfigure negativity by turning it toward the light of your soul.
JOHN O'DONOHUE
Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
The mind as a glass, receives all images; and the soul becomes that with which it is in conjunction.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Look how much the soul is better than the body; so much more grievous are the diseases of the soul than the griefs of the body.
DIOGENES
attributed, Day's Collacon
My body seems a mere encumbrance to me; an imbecillic wagon, hitched to the horse of desire, which is the soul.
ROBERT E. HOWARD
letter to Tevis Clyde Smith, August 28, 1925
Our souls, shame-wounded by our sins, cling to us yet more, a woman to her lover clinging, the more the more.
JAMES JOYCE
Ulysses
There are apartments in the soul which have a glorious outlook; from whose windows you can see across the river of death, and into the shining city beyond; but how often are these neglected for the lower ones, which have earthward-looking windows.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam: I looked into the soul of another boy.
WOODY ALLEN
Annie Hall
Good men study to spiritualize their bodies; bad men to incarnate their souls.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in Hell.
BIBLE
Matthew 10:28
The soul ties its shoe; the mind washes its hands in a basin. All is incongruous.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Each man's soul is his genius.
XENOCRATES
attributed, The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor
For it appears to be possible that a soul of a higher order may inhabit a body of a lower, and a soul of a lower order a body of a higher.
ST. AUGUSTINE
The City of God
It seems to me absolutely true, that our world, which appears to us the surface of all things, is really the bottom of a deep ocean: all our trees are submarine growths, and we are weird, scaly-clad submarine fauna, feeding ourselves on offal like shrimps. Only occasionally the soul rises gasping through the fathomless fathoms under which we live, far up to the surface of the ether, where there is true air.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Lady Chatterley's Lover
For men know not what the nature of the soul is; whether it is engendered with us, or whether, on the contrary, it is infused into us at our birth, whether it perishes with us, dissolved by death, or whether it haunts the gloomy shades and vast pools of Orcus.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul.
CHARLES DICKENS
A Tale of Two Cities