quotations about the soul
The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.
FERDINAND FOCH
attributed, The 32d Infantry Division in World War II
I don't deserve a soul, yet I still have one. I know because it hurts.
DOUGLAS COUPLAND
The Gum Thief
The eyes ... are the windows of the soul.
PLATO
Phaedrus
I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam: I looked into the soul of another boy.
WOODY ALLEN
Annie Hall
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
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
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 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
My mind is incapable of conceiving such a thing as a soul. I may be in error, and man may have a soul; but I simply do not believe it. What a soul may be is beyond my understanding.
THOMAS EDISON
"Do We Live Again?", The Illustrated London News, May 3, 1924
I believe that the soul consists of its sufferings. For the soul that cures its own sufferings dies.
ANTONIO PORCHIA
Voces
Good men study to spiritualize their bodies; bad men to incarnate their souls.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
A soul. A soul is nothing. Can you see it, smell it, touch it? No.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENET
"The Devil and Daniel Webster"
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
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
If I were a carpenter, I would build you a window to my soul. But I would leave that window shut and locked, so that every time you tried to look through it all you would see is your own reflection. You would see that my soul is a reflection of you.
COLLEEN HOOVER
Point of Retreat
Emotions are the colors of the soul.
WM. PAUL YOUNG
The Shack
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 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 mind as a glass, receives all images; and the soul becomes that with which it is in conjunction.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
No soul that aspires can ever fail to rise; no heart that loves can ever be abandoned. Difficulties exist only that in overcoming them we may grow strong, and only those who have suffered are able to save.
ANNIE BESANT
Some Problems of Life