quotations about the soul
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
A good book is the purest essence of a human soul.
THOMAS CARLYLE
speech in support of the London Library, 1840
I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul.
CHARLES DICKENS
A Tale of Two Cities
The soul is made of stuff so mysteriously elastic that a single event can make it big enough to contain the infinite.
STEFAN ZWEIG
The Post Office Girl
The soul ties its shoe; the mind washes its hands in a basin. All is incongruous.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Would men take the same care of their souls as they do of their bodies, we should find our churches as thronged upon the Sabbath, as our markets are upon a Saturday.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
Happily, and thanks to God, there are orifices through which our inner life constantly escapes, and the soul, like the blood, hath its pores. The mouth is the chief and foremost of these channels which lead the soul out of its invisible sanctuary; it is by speech that man communicates the secret converse which is his real life.
HENRI-DOMINIQUE LACORDAIRE
Jesus Christ: Conferences Delivered at Notre Dame in Paris
In the greatest confusion there is still an open channel to the soul. It may be difficult to find because by midlife it is overgrown, and some of the wildest thickets that surround it grow out of what we describe as our education. But the channel is always there, and it is our business to keep it open, to have access to the deepest part of ourselves.
SAUL BELLOW
foreword, The Closing of the American Mind
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
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
Bow with submission before thy soul's dictates rather than before the world's.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Soul is what you've been through
What's true for you
Where you going to
What you're gonna do
VAN MORRISON
"Soul"
The philosopher stands at his desk in the lecture hall, and demonstrates away the soul of man, and with exact thought measures out his atoms and resolves him back to gas and air. But the revolutionary, below in the crowd, hears, and only translates what he hears thus to his brethren: 'Let us drink while we may; property is robbery; this life is all; let us kill and eat; there is no God.'
OUIDA
A Village Commune
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
Just as a mirror, which reflects all things, is set in its own container, so too the rational soul is placed in the fragile container of the body. In this way, the body is governed in its earthly life by the soul, and the soul contemplates heavenly things through faith.
HILDEGARD OF BINDEN
letter to the Monk Guibert, 1175
The human body is the best picture of the human soul.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Philosophical Investigations
The Soul can hear the violets grow!
It can hear the throbbing heart of God!
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"The Song of the Soul"
The sphere that is deepest, most unexplored, and most unfathomable, the wonder and glory of God's thought and hand, is our own soul!
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Your soul knows the geography of your destiny. Your soul alone has the map of your future, therefore you can trust this indirect, oblique side of yourself. If you do, it will take you where you need to go, but more important it will teach you a kindness of rhythm in your journey.
JOHN O'DONOHUE
Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
A soul--a soul--an immortal soul! Think of its capacity, its duration, its value! Think of the hell it must endure, if impenitent; of the heaven it shall possess, if pardoned. Think of the price laid down by the incarnate Son of God.
JAMES WADDEL ALEXANDER
The Revival and Its Lessons