quotations about the soul
It is common, even in the pulpit, to hear the phrase, "Man has a soul;" and it is scarcely possible to avoid embodying this same thought sometimes in the phrase "man's soul," which is only an abbreviation. This phrase, however, expresses a falsehood. It is not true that man has a soul. Man is a soul. It would be more accurate to say that man has a body. We may say that the body has a soul, or that the soul has a body; as we may say that the ship has a captain, or the captain has a ship; but we ought never to forget that the true man is the mental and spiritual; the body is only the instrument which the mental and the spiritual uses.
LYMAN ABBOTT
A Study in Human Nature
Soul is a feeling, feeling deep within
Soul is not the colour of your skin
Soul is the essence, essence from within
It is where everything begins
VAN MORRISON
"Soul"
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
When you're born a lover
You're born to suffer
Like all soul sisters
And soul brothers
DEPECHE MODE
"Goodnight Lovers"
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
The body is our dwelling-place, and the soul the immortal guest which lodges there.
MENCIUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
The soul is often hungrier than the body, and no shops can sell it food.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
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
We must never stop dreaming. Dreams provide nourishment for the soul, just as a meal does for the body.
PAULO COELHO
The Pilgrimage
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
Within the human soul lie depths as deep
As ever slept within the ocean's breast,
And heights that rise beyond the breaker's crest
In the vain wish to pass their narrow bound.
MARTHA LAVINIA HOFFMAN
"The Depths"
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
Every soul is a battlefield.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
Feeble souls are like those tracks of land which have neither depth nor richness of soil.
DAVID THOMAS
The Homilist
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
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
How absurd it must seem for an immortal soul to be destined for Heaven or Hell, and yet be sitting in a kitchen, as a maid, or to see oneself objectified as a mechanic! how falsely the usual sunrise waked us, the clock dial, the city street the job! How wrongfully people find themselves in these systems--our time isn't there, our space isn't there, our space isn't even here, not even our name is there--the addressee for whom the alarm clock rings is identical to only a few, and the whole social story of waking, and certainly the day of the mechanic, is false.
ERNST BLOCH
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