quotations about the soul
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
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
Feeble souls are like those tracks of land which have neither depth nor richness of soil.
DAVID THOMAS
The Homilist
I count life just a stuff
To try the soul's strength on.
ROBERT BROWNING
In a Balcony
You are a little soul carrying about a corpse.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
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
I was brought up on a side street, listen now
I learned how to love before I could eat
I was educated from good stock
When I start lovin', oh, I can't stop
I'm a soul man, I'm a soul man
ISAAC HAYES & DAVID PORTER
"Soul Man"
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
Since our inner experiences consist of reproductions and combinations of sensory impressions, the concept of a soul without a body seem to me to be empty and devoid of meaning.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
attributed, Albert Einstein: The Human Side
All men's souls are immortal, but those of the righteous are both immortal and divine.
SOCRATES
attributed, Day's Collacon
We must never stop dreaming. Dreams provide nourishment for the soul, just as a meal does for the body.
PAULO COELHO
The Pilgrimage
What use do I put my soul to? It is a serviceable question this, and should frequently be put to oneself. How does my ruling part stand affected? And whose soul have I now? That of a child, or a young man, or a feeble woman, or of a tyrant, of cattle or wild beasts.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
To find a noble human soul is gain; it is nobler to keep it; and the noblest and most difficult is to save that which is already lost.
JOHANN GOTTFRIED VON HERDER
Der gerettete Jüngling
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
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"
I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam: I looked into the soul of another boy.
WOODY ALLEN
Annie Hall
The attributes of the spirit which we term the soul, bear a perfect correspondence to the physical senses of the body. That is, the soul bears exactly the same relation to the spirit as the physical senses to the human brain. Thus we have the physical and the spiritual senses. The physical are simply a reflection of the spiritual; they are two halves of the same attribute--the internal and the external. We see the intelligence, the mind, which at the back of the senses utilizes and tabulates the impressions it has received as the outer world, the world which it is itself powerless to penetrate. The mind is something above and beyond the senses, though it is absolutely dependent upon them. It is the same with the soul and the spirit. Evolve the states from within and without will take care of itself. Let us remember that the material life of man is only one second of his existence, and that it is one of the most unprofitable things in the world to be selfish. Purity is the great touchstone, and as Jesus has truly observed, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."
WALTER MATTHEWS
"The Soul", Human Life from Many Angles
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
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
The soul that has conceived one wickedness can nurse no good thereafter.
SOPHOCLES
Philoctetes