quotations about the soul
Whoever saw his own soul? No man. Yet what is there more present, or what to each man nearer, than his own soul?
EDWARD VI
attributed, Day's Collacon
The soul is healed by being with children.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
The Idiot
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
Within the human soul lie depths as deep
As ever slept within the ocean's breast,
And heights that rise beyond the breaker's crest
In the vain wish to pass their narrow bound.
MARTHA LAVINIA HOFFMAN
"The Depths"
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
Feeble souls are like those tracks of land which have neither depth nor richness of soil.
DAVID THOMAS
The Homilist
Life, with the Soul predominant,
Is a noble mosaic, a bewitching arabesque.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"The Song of the Soul"
We must never stop dreaming. Dreams provide nourishment for the soul, just as a meal does for the body.
PAULO COELHO
The Pilgrimage
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 of Man must quicken to creation.
T. S. ELIOT
The Rock
Trouble is, most times, when you go looking to sell your soul, nobody's buying.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
Radiance
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
The soul is often hungrier than the body, and no shops can sell it food.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Every soul is a battlefield.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
The body is our dwelling-place, and the soul the immortal guest which lodges there.
MENCIUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
"The Philosophy of Composition", The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Volume 3
The fire that burns in the soul is of the same essential nature as the stars.
GEORG LUKACS
attributed, "Can Poetry Change Your Life?", The New Yorker, July 31, 2017
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
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"