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The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond; and must be polished, or the lustre of it will never appear.
DANIEL DEFOE, The Education of Women
The soul that has conceived one wickedness can nurse no good thereafter.
In culture after culture, people believe that the soul lives on after death, that rituals can change the physical world and divine the truth, and that illness and misfortune are caused and alleviated by spirits, ghosts, saints ... and gods.
STEVEN PINKER, How the Mind Works
- Dear Night! this world's defeat;
- The stop to busy fools; care's check and curb;
- The day of spirits; my soul's calm retreat
- Which none disturb!
- Christ's progress, and His prayer-time;
- The hours to which high Heaven doth chime.
HENRY VAUGHAN, Silex Scintillans
Everywhere and always, since its very inception, Christianity has turned the earth into a vale of tears; always it has made of life a weak, diseased thing, always it has instilled fear in man, turning him into a dual being, whose life energies are spent in the struggle between body and soul. In decrying the body as something evil, the flesh as the tempter to everything that is sinful, man has mutilated his being in the vain attempt to keep his soul pure, while his body rotted away from the injuries and tortures inflicted upon it.
EMMA GOLDMAN, Mother Earth, April 1913
I do not want to live with a soul without a body. Nudity is the reflection of innocence.
KAMALA SURAYYA, Sify News & Info, Jan. 1, 2003
- And when life's sweet fable ends,
- Soul and body part like friends;
- No quarrels, murmurs, no delay;
- A kiss, a sigh, and so away.
RICHARD CRASHAW, Temperance
There's no such thing as a soul. It's just something they made up to scare kids, like the boogeyman or Michael Jackson.
Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them. Some minds are incapable of skepticism.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON, "Montaigne; or, the Skeptic," Representative Men
A good book is the purest essence of a human soul.
THOMAS CARLYLE, speech in support of the London Library, 1840
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
Negativity is an addiction to the bleak shadow that lingers around every human form ... you can transfigure negativity by turning it toward the light of your soul.
JOHN O'DONOHUE, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
Art is a microscope which the artist fixes on the secrets of his soul, and shows to people these secrets which are common to all.
Ambition is a Dead Sea fruit, and the greatest peril to the soul is that one is likely to get precisely what he is seeking.
EDWARD DAHLBERG, Alms for Oblivion
The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens to that primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach.
CARL JUNG, The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man
The desire accomplished is sweet to the soul.
Reincarnation is essential to enable the soul to evolve to its Divine right.
R.F. GOUDEY, Reincarnation: A Universal Truth
Imagination is the eye of the soul.
- I count life just a stuff
- To try the soul's strength on.
ROBERT BROWNING, In a Balcony
The only beautiful thing in the world whose beauty lasts for ever is a pure, fair soul.
BRAM STOKER, "The Rose Prince"
Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened.
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
The soul of the just man is but a paradise, in which, God tells us, He takes His delight. What do you imagine, must that dwelling be in which a King so mighty, so wise, and so pure, containing in Himself all good, can delight to rest? Nothing can be compared to the great beauty and capabilities of a soul; however keen our intellects may be, they are as unable to comprehend them as to comprehend God, for, as He told us, He created us in his own image and likeness.
TERESA OF AVILA, The Interior Castle
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
- The soul is kissed by God in its innermost regions.
- With interior yearning, grace and blessing are bestowed.
- It is a yearning to take on God's gentle yoke,
- It is a yearning to give one's self to God's Way.
HILDEGARD OF BINGEN, attributed, Soul Weavings
Christ asks for a home in your soul, where he can be at rest with you, where he can talk easily to you, where you and he, alone together, can laugh and be silent and be delighted with one another.
CARYLL HOUSELANDER, This War is the Passion
Soul. The word rebounded to me, and I wondered, as I often had, what it was exactly. People talked about it all the time, but did anybody actually know? Sometimes I'd pictured it like a pilot light burning inside a person--a drop of fire from the invisible inferno people called God. Or a squashy substance, like a piece of clay or dental mold, which collected the sum of a person's experiences--a million indentations of happiness, desperation, fear, all the small piercings of beauty we've ever known.
SUE MONK KIDD, The Mermaid Chair
Emotions are the colors of the soul.
WM. PAUL YOUNG, The Shack
- Strong souls
- Live like fire-hearted suns to spend their strength
- In farthest striving action; breathe more free
- In mighty anguish than in trivial ease.
GEORGE ELIOT, The Spanish Gypsy
Men possessing small souls are generally the authors of great evil.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY, Proverbs
The soul is healed by being with children.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY, The Idiot
- The Soul can hear the violets grow!
- It can hear the throbbing heart of God!
EDWIN LEIBFREED, "The Song of the Soul"
You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.
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