quotations about the soul
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 human soul is God's treasury, out of which he coins unspeakable riches.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
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
I'm a lost soul. We do wail.
ROGER ZELAZNY
Jack of Shadows
The living soul of man, once conscious of its power, cannot be quelled.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
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
I don't deserve a soul, yet I still have one. I know because it hurts.
DOUGLAS COUPLAND
The Gum Thief
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
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
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 man can be compelled to do anything, but his soul cannot be forced.
SIMON SOLOVEYCHIK
"Parenting for Everyone"
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
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
Each man's soul is his genius.
XENOCRATES
attributed, The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor
The soul ties its shoe; the mind washes its hands in a basin. All is incongruous.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
A soul. A soul is nothing. Can you see it, smell it, touch it? No.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENET
"The Devil and Daniel Webster"
Good men study to spiritualize their bodies; bad men to incarnate their souls.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
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
Emotions are the colors of the soul.
WM. PAUL YOUNG
The Shack