Selected soul quotes

1. False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

2. False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

3. Paintings have a life of their own that derives from the painter's soul.

4. I do not want to frighten you by telling you about the temptations life will bring. Anyone who is healthy in spirit will overcome them. But there is something I want you to realize. It does not matter so much what you do. What matters is whether your soul is harmed by what you do. If your soul is harmed, something irreparable happens, the extent of which you won't realize until it will be too late.

5. Don't let your hearts grow numb. Stay alert. It is your soul which matters.

6. We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one.

7. The idea does not belong to the soul; it is the soul that belongs to the idea.

8. Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.

9. A soul without reflection, like a pile Without inhabitant, to ruin runs.

10. Crows pick out the eyes of the dead, when the dead have no longer need of them; but flatterers mar the soul of the living, and her eyes they blind.

11. Reverie is not a mind vacuum. It is rather the gift of an hour which knows the plenitude of the soul.

12. Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul When hot for certainties in this our life! - In tragic hints here see what evermore Moves dark as yonder midnight ocean's force, Thundering like ramping hosts of warrior horse, To throw that faint thin fine upon the shore!

13. Of the eternal incorporeal substance nothing is changed, is formed or deformed, but there always remains only that thing which cannot be a subject of dissolution, since it is not possible that it be a subject of composition, and therefore, either of itself or by accident, it cannot be said to die.

14. The wise soul feareth not death; rather she sometimes striveth for death, she goeth beyond to meet her. Yet eternity maintaineth her substance throughout time, immensity throughout space, universal form throughout motion.

15. The soul of man is larger than the sky, Deeper than ocean, or the abysmal dark Of the unfathomed center.

16. Impressionism is the newspaper of the soul.

17. As long as habit and routine dictate the pattern of living, new dimensions of the soul will not emerge.

18. A man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life.

19. I confess that I do not see what good it does to fulminate against the English tyranny while the Roman tyranny occupies the palace of the soul.

20. The nurse of full-grown souls is solitude.

21. Great truths are portions of the soul of man; Great souls are portions of eternity.

22. No seed shall perish which the soul hath sown.

23. Prayer opens the heart to God, and it is the means by which the soul, though empty, is filled by God.

24. Only love makes fruitful the soul. The sense of form that both had in such high degree prevented much demonstration; but to be with him, do things for him, to admire, and credit him with perfection; and, since she could not exactly wear the same clothes or speak in the same clipped, quiet, decisive voice, to dislike the clothes and voices of other men - all this was precious to her beyond everything.

25. Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony.

26. And looks commercing with the skies, Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes.

27. Imagination is the eye of the soul.

28. Taste is the literary conscience of the soul.

29. What am I singing? A song of seeds The food of love. Eat the music.

30. My Soul gave me good counsel, teaching me to love what the people abhor and to show good will toward the one they hate. It showed me that Love is a property not of the lover but of the beloved. Before my Soul taught me, Love was for me a delicate thread stretched between two adjacent pegs, but now it has been transformed into a halo; its first is its last, and its last is its first. It encompasses every being, slowly expanding to embrace all that ever will be.

31. The practice of art isn't to make a living. It's to make your soul grow.

32. A writer is dear and necessary for us only in the measure of which he reveals to us the inner workings of his very soul.

33. No words suffice the secret soul to show, For truth denies all eloquence to woe.

34. Hinduism is a living organism. One and indivisible at the root, it has grown into a vast tree with innumerable branches. Knowledge is limitless and so also the application of truth. Everyday we add to our knowledge of the power of Atman (soul) and we shall keep on doing so.

35. Fate gave, what Chance shall not control, His sad lucidity of soul.

36. O strong soul, by what shore Tarriest thou now? For that force, Surely, has not been left vain!

37. If we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls.

38. I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.

39. Three kinds of souls, three prayers: 1) I am a bow in your hands, Lord. Draw me, lest I rot. 2) Do not overdraw me, Lord. I shall break. 3) Overdraw me, Lord, and who cares if I break.

40. Every word is an adamantine shell which encloses a great explosive force. To discover its meaning you must let it burst inside you like a bomb and in this way liberate the soul which it imprisons.

41. We do not want nowadays temples of worship and outward rites and ceremonies. What we really want is an Asram. We want a place where the beauty of nature and the noblest pursuits of man are in a sweet harmony. Our temple of worship is there where outward nature and human soul meet in union.

42. Far or forgot to me is near; Shadow and sunlight are the same; The vanished gods to me appear; And one to me are shame and fame.

43. Moreover, nothing is so rare as to see misfortune fairly portrayed; the tendency is either to treat the unfortunate person as though catastrophe were his natural vocation, or to ignore the effects of misfortune on the soul, to assume, that is, that the soul can suffer and remain unmarked by it, can fail, in fact, to be recast in misfortune's image. [p.193]

44. To believe blindly is to degenerate the human soul. Be an atheist if you want, but do not believe in anything unquestioningly.

45. Worship of society and popular opinion is idolatry. The soul has no sex, no country, no place, no time.

46. If I were personally to define religion, I would say that it is a bandage that man has invented to protect a soul made bloody by circumstance.

47. Colour is a power which directly influences the soul.Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammer, the soul is the strings.The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.

48. When you are old and gray and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face. And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

49. All hatred driven hence, The soul recovers radical innocence And learns at last that it is self-delighting, Self-appeasing, self-affrighting, And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will; She can, though every face should scowl And every windy quarter howl Or every bellows burst, be happy still.

50. If soul may look and body touch, Which is the more blest?

51. There is in souls a sympathy with sounds; And as the mind is pitched the ear is pleased With melting airs or martial, brisk, or grave: Some chord in unison with what we hear Is touched within us, and the heart replies.

52. For the gods approve The depth, and not the tumult, of the soul.

53. Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy.

54. I think it is interesting that God designed people to need other people. We see those cigarett advertisements with the rugged cowboy riding around alone on a horse, and we think that is strength, when, really, it is like setting your soul down on a couch and not exercising it. The soul needs to interact with other people to be healthy.

55. Soul meets soul on lovers' lips.

56. Disappointments are to the soul what a thunderstorm is to the air.

57. The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond; and must be polished, or the lustre of it will never appear. And 'tis manifest, that as the rational soul distinguishes us from brutes; so education carries on the distinction, and makes some less brutish than others.

58. Ultimately, the basic issue is whether America will provide global leadership that springs from the unity and the integrity of the American people, or whether extremist doctrines, the manipulation of the truth, will define America's role in the world. At stake is nothing less than our nation's soul. But I am not discouraged. I really am not. I do not despair for our country. I never do. I believe, as I always have, the essential decency and compassion and common sense of the American people will prevail.

59. Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul; on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful, or of him who is ill-educated ungraceful; and also because he who has received this education of the inner being will most shrewdly perceive omissions or faults in art and nature, and with a true taste, while he praises and rejoices over and receives into his soul the good, and becomes noble and good, he will justly blame and hate the bad, now in the days of his youth, even before he is able to know the reason why; and when reason comes he will recognise and salute the friend with whom his education has made him long familiar.

60. The progress of our soul is like a perfect poem. It has an infinite idea which once realised makes all movements full of meaning and joy. But if we detach its movements from that ultimate idea, if we do not see the infinite rest and only see the infinite motion, then existence appears to us a monstrous evil., impetuously rushing towards an unending aimlessness.

61. 'In the end, we should simply imagine a joke; a long joke that's being continually retold in an accent too thick and too strange to ever be completely understood. Life is that joke. The soul is its punchline.'

62. Go for souls and go for the worst.

63. I am restless. I am athirst for faraway things. My soul goes out in a longing to touch the skirt of the dim distance. O Great Beyond, O the keen call of thy flute! I forget, I ever forget, that I have no wings to fly, that I am bound in this spot evermore. ~ 5

64. Oh dear Pan and all the other Gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside. Let all my external possessions be in friendly harmony with what is within. May I consider the wise man rich. As for gold, let me have as much as a moderate man could bear and carry with him.

65. It is manifest... that every soul and spirit hath a certain continuity with the spirit of the universe, so that it must be understood to exist and to be included not only there where it liveth and feeleth, but it is also by its essence and substance diffused throughout immensity... The power of each soul is itself somehow present afar in the universe... Naught is mixed, yet is there some presence. Anything we take in the universe, because it has in itself that which is All in All, includes in its own way the entire soul of the world, which is entirely in any part of it.

66. He tried to weigh his soul to see if it was a poet's soul. Melancholy was the dominant note of his temperament, he thought, but it was a melancholy tempered by recurrences of faith and resignation and simple joy. If he could give expression to it in a book of poems perhaps men would listen.

67. The soul is subject to dollars.

68. I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.

69. You take the way from man, not to man. All persons that ever existed are its forgotten ministers. Fear and hope are alike beneath it. There is somewhat low even in hope. In the hour of vision, there is nothing that can be called gratitude, nor properly joy. The soul raised over passion beholds identity and eternal causation, perceives the self-existence of Truth and Right, and calms itself with knowing that all things go well.

70. Every pitifulest whipster that walks within a skin has had his head filled with the notion that he is, shall be, or by all human and divine laws ought to be, 'happy.' His wishes, the pitifulest whipster's, are to be fulfilled for him; his days, the pitifulest whipster's, are to flow on in an ever-gentle current of enjoyment, impossible even for the gods. The prophets preach to us, Thou shalt be happy; thou shalt love pleasant things, and find them. The people clamor, Why have we not found pleasant things? ...God's Laws are become a Greatest Happiness Principle. There is no religion; there is no God; man has lost his soul.

71. I built my soul a lordly pleasure-house, Wherein at ease for aye to dwell. I said, 'O Soul, make merry and carouse, Dear soul, for all is well.'

72. Meet is it changes should control Our being, lest we rust in ease. We all are changed by still degrees, All but the basis of the soul.

73. The poet in a golden clime was born, With golden stars above; Dower'd with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, The love of love. He saw thro' life and death, thro' good and ill, He saw thro' his own soul. The marvel of the everlasting will, An open scroll, Before him lay; with echoing feet he threaded The secretest walks of fame: The viewless arrows of his thoughts were headed And wing'd with flame, Like Indian reeds blown from his silver tongue...

74. O saisons, o chateaux, Quelle ame est sans defauts?

75. He founded a religion, of which the main tenets were transmigration of souls and the sinfulness of eating beans.

76. L'ame est une chose si impalpable, si souvent inutile et quelquefois si genante, que je n'eprouvai, quant a cette perte, qu'un peu moins d'emotion que si j'avais egare, dans une promenade, ma carte de visite.

77. C'est a la fois par la poesie et a travers la poesie, par et a travers la musique, que l'ame entrevoit les splendeurs situees derriere le tombeau; et, quand un poeme exquis amene les larmes au bord des yeux, ces larmes ne sont pas la preuve d'un exces de jouissance, elles sont bien plutot le temoignage d'une melancolie irritee, d'une postulation des nerfs, d'une nature exilee dans l'imparfait et qui voudrait s'emparer immediatement, sur cette terre meme, d'un paradis revele.

78. 'When you are dead your spirit will find my spirit, And then we shall die no more.'

79. Thou fill'st from the winged chalice of the soul Thy lamp, O Memory, fire-winged to its goal.

80. Here once, through an alley Titanic, Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul - Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.

81. He was an adventurer into the vaults and cellars and horrible underground passages of the human soul. He sounded the horror and the warning of his own doom.

82. 'Presley brought an excitement to singing, in part because rock and roll was greeted as his invention, but for other reasons not so widely reflected on: Elvis Presley had the most beautiful singing voice of any human being on earth. Presley, for some fans, was primarily a balladeer. 'Don't Leave Me Now' (1957), is a love song given distinctiveness by Presley's twangy enunciations, and sustained by the guitar and rhythm sections designed perfectly to complement the balladeer, filled out towards the song's end - as with so much of Presley- , with what one conveniently calls the heavenly choir, which wafts him home but never overwhelms the country lilt Presley gives his music.'

83. If then all things that grow, nay, our own bodies, are thus bound up with the whole, is not this still truer of our souls? And if our souls are bound up and in contact with God, as being very parts and fragments plucked from Himself, shall He not feel every movement of theirs as though it were His own, and belonging to His own nature? (36)

84. Where shalll I find God? In myself. That is the true Mystical Doctrine. But then I myself must be in a state for Him to come and dwell in me. This is the whole aim of the Mystical Life: and all Mystical Rules in all times and countries have been laid down for putting the soul in such a state.

85. I call on Fate to give me back my soul.

86. There are two struggles - inner-world struggle and outer-world struggle, but never can these two make contact, to make data for the third world. Not even God gives this possibility for contact between inner- and outer-world struggles; not even your heredity. Only one thing - you must make intentional contact between outer-world struggle and inner-world struggle; only then can you make data for the Third World of Man, sometimes called World of the Soul.

87. What is soul? I don't know! Soul is a hamhock in your cornflakes... Soul is a joint rolled in toilet paper.

88. The widow of an insight lost she lives, with aim Now known and hand at work now never wrong. Sweet fire the sire of muse, my soul needs this; I want the one rapture of an inspiration.

89. It is manifest that every soul has a certain continuity with the soul of the Universe, so that it must be understood to exist and to be included not only there where it liveth and feeleth, but it is also by its essence and substance diffused throughout immensity. The power of each soul is itself somehow present afar in the Universe. It is not mixed, yet is there in some presence.

90. If he is not Nature herself, he is certainly the nature of Nature, and is the soul of the Soul of the world, if he is not the soul herself.

91. His rage had sent him into Latin: he would have spouted Chinese or Greenlandic had he been able to, for he was in the throes of one of those crises in which the soul lays bare its every last corners, just as the ocean, in the travail of a storm, splits open to display everything from the seaweed on its shores to the sand of its deepest bottom.

92. She was to me, and still is, the greatest person I have known - one who can truly be called a 'devoted' soul. I owe her everything.

93. They tell me thou art rich, my country: gold In glittering flood has poured into thy chest; Thy flocks and herds increase, thy barns are pressed With harvest, and thy stores can hardly hold Their merchandise; unending trains are rolled Along thy network rails of East and West; Thy factories and forges never rest; Thou art enriched in all things bought and sold! But dost thou prosper? Better news I crave. O dearest country, is it well with thee Indeed, and is thy soul in health? A nobler people, hearts more wisely brave, And thoughts that lift men up and make them free,- These are prosperity and vital wealth!

94. Le bonheur ne vient-il donc pas de l'ame?

95. La vie habituelle fait l'ame, et l'ame fait la physionomie.

96. Cinema is a language that literally is spoken from soul to soul in expressions that,almost senuously,escape the restricted control of the intellect.

97. Ladies and Gentlemen, money beats soul every time, C'mon! (11/4/69 Takes 13-15)

98. 'When you die you're just getting rid of that old body.'

99. Seraphs and saints with one great voice Welcomed that soul that knew not fear. Amazed to find it could rejoice, Hell raised a hoarse, half-human cheer.

100. There is no rope can strangle song And not for long death takes his toll. No prison bars can dim the stars Nor quicklime eat the living soul.