quotations about the soul
The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.
FERDINAND FOCH
attributed, The 32d Infantry Division in World War II
I don't deserve a soul, yet I still have one. I know because it hurts.
DOUGLAS COUPLAND
The Gum Thief
The living soul of man, once conscious of its power, cannot be quelled.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
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
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
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
Our souls, shame-wounded by our sins, cling to us yet more, a woman to her lover clinging, the more the more.
JAMES JOYCE
Ulysses
The eyes ... are the windows of the soul.
PLATO
Phaedrus
A man can be compelled to do anything, but his soul cannot be forced.
SIMON SOLOVEYCHIK
"Parenting for Everyone"
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
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
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
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
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
My mind is incapable of conceiving such a thing as a soul. I may be in error, and man may have a soul; but I simply do not believe it. What a soul may be is beyond my understanding.
THOMAS EDISON
"Do We Live Again?", The Illustrated London News, May 3, 1924
Soul is what you've been through
What's true for you
Where you going to
What you're gonna do
VAN MORRISON
"Soul"
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
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
Good men study to spiritualize their bodies; bad men to incarnate their souls.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul.
CHARLES DICKENS
A Tale of Two Cities