quotations about the soul
A soul. A soul is nothing. Can you see it, smell it, touch it? No.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENET
"The Devil and Daniel Webster"
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
Let thy chief terror be of thine own soul:
There, 'mid the throng of hurrying desires
That trample o'er the dead to seize their spoil,
Lurks vengeance, footless, irresistible
As exhalations laden with slow death,
And o'er the fairest troop of captured joys
Breathes pallid pestilence.
GEORGE ELIOT
Daniel Deronda
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
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
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
Good men study to spiritualize their bodies; bad men to incarnate their souls.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
The soul ties its shoe; the mind washes its hands in a basin. All is incongruous.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
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
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
The human body is the best picture of the human soul.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Philosophical Investigations
Bow with submission before thy soul's dictates rather than before the world's.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
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
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
If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.
JAMES HERRIOT
All Creatures Great and Small
Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy -- the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.
ERIC HOFFER
The Passionate State of Mind
I believe that the soul consists of its sufferings. For the soul that cures its own sufferings dies.
ANTONIO PORCHIA
Voces
If thy soul be good, the stroke of death cannot hurt thee, for thy spirit shall live blessedly in heaven.
ST. BASIL
attributed, Day's Collacon
The Soul can hear the violets grow!
It can hear the throbbing heart of God!
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"The Song of the Soul"
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