But now, before that new birth take place in the spirit of man, it wants, but knows not what, craves indeterminately (who will shew us any good?) not fixing upon any particular good that is sufficient and finite, and labouring under an ignorance of the infinite, together with a disaffection thereunto. Its wants and cravings are beyond the measure of all finite good; for suppose it to have never so large a share, nay, could it grasp and engross the whole of it, an unsatisfiedness and desire of more would still remain: but that more is somewhat indeterminate and merely imaginary, an infinite nothing, an idol of fancy, a god of its own making. God it must have; but what a one he is, it misapprehends, and, wherein it rightly apprehends him, likes and loves him not, will by no means choose, desire, or take complacency in him. So that an unregenerate soul is, while it is such, necessarily doomed to be miserable. It cannot be happy in any inferior good; and in the supreme, it will not. What the real wants and just cravings of a man’s spirit therefore are, is not to be understood by considering it in that state. And if the work of the new creature were perfected in it, it would want and crave no more, but would be satisfied fully, and at perfect rest.
—John Howe (b.1957) Canadian Artist
You can’t change the music of your soul.
—Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) American Actor, TV Personality
The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life. And the body is born young and grows old. That is life’s tragedy.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
I am fully convinced that the soul is indestructible, and that its activity will continue through eternity. It is like the sun, which, to our eyes, seems to set in night; but it has in reality only gone to diffuse its light elsewhere.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
Genius is the union of man and God in the acts of the soul. Great men are always greater than their deeds. They are in connection with a reserve power that is without limit.
—Wallace Wattles (1860–1911) American New Thought Author
The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948) Indian Hindu Political leader
As it is not proper to cure the eyes without the head, nor the head without the body, so neither is it proper to cure the body without the soul.
—Plato (428 BCE–347 BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Mathematician, Educator
It’s impossible to invest your soul in a compromise.
—David Emerald
The problem of restoring to the world original and eternal beauty is solved by the redemption of the soul.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
He who commends the nature of the soul as the supreme good, and condemns the nature of the flesh as evil, at once both carnally desires the soul, and carnally flies the flesh, because he feels thus from human vanity, not from divine truth.
—Augustine of Hippo (354–430) Roman-African Christian Philosopher
Go, Soul, the body
—Walter Raleigh (1552–1618) English Courtier, Navigator, Poet
The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Try to keep your soul young and quivering right up to old age, and to imagine right up to the brink of death that life is only beginning. I think that is the only way to keep adding to one’s talent, and one’s inner happiness.
—George Sand (1804–76) French Novelist, Dramatist
How strange a thing this is! The Priest telleth me that the Soul is worth all the gold in the world, and the merchants say that it is not worth a clipped piece of silver.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
The downside, of course, is that over time religions become encrusted with precepts and ideas that are the antithesis of soul, as each faith tries to protect its doctrines and institution instead of nurturing the evolution of consciousness. If one is not careful to distinguish the genuine insights of a religion from its irrelevant accretions, one can go through life following an inappropriate moral compass.
—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1934–2021) Hungarian-American Psychologist
Our souls are not hungry for fame, comfort, wealth or power. Those rewards create almost as many problems as they solve. Our souls are hungry for meaning, for the sense that we have figured out how to live so that our lives matter, so that the world will be at least a little bit different for our having passed through it.
—Harold Kushner (b.1935) American Jewish Religious Leader, Priest
This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say.
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
There is only one purpose for all of life, and that is for you and all that lives to experience fullest glory…everything else you say, think, or do is attendant to that function. There is nothing else for your soul to do, and nothing else your soul wants to do.
—Neale Donald Walsch (b.1943) American Spiritual Writer
The destiny of man is in his own soul.
—Herodotus (c.485–425 BCE) Ancient Greek Historian
One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
Secrecy has been well termed the soul of all great designs. Perhaps more has been effected by concealing our own intentions, than by discovering those of our enemy. But great men succeed in both.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
In the dark night of the soul, bright flows the river of God.
—John of the Cross (1542–1591) Spanish Roman Catholic Mystic
Whatever that be which thinks, which understands, which wills, which acts, it is something celestial and divine, and on that account must necessarily be eternal.
—Cicero (106BCE–43BCE) Roman Philosopher, Orator, Politician, Lawyer
The soul refuses limits and always affirms an optimism, never a pessimism.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
To live happily is an inward power of the soul.
—Marcus Aurelius (121–180) Emperor of Rome, Stoic Philosopher
The man who is always worrying whether or not his soul would be damned generally has a soul that isn’t worth a damn.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–94) American Physician, Essayist
I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.
—William Faulkner (1897–1962) American Novelist
There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, that can circumvent or hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919) American Poet, Journalist
If we expended all our energies solely on taking care of our own needs we would stop growing. In that respect what we call “soul” can be viewed as the surplus energy that can be invested into change and transformation. As such, it is the cutting edge of evolution.
—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1934–2021) Hungarian-American Psychologist
Most people sell their souls, and live with a good conscience on the proceeds.
—Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) American-British Essayist, Bibliophile
The soul on earth is an immortal guest, compelled to starve at an unreal feast; a pilgrim panting for the rest to come; an exile, anxious for his native home.
—Hannah More
Man is so made that when anything fires his soul, impossibilities vanish
—Jean de La Fontaine (1621–95) French Poet, Short Story Writer
The soul is not where it lives, but where it loves.
—Common Proverb
Great souls endure in silence.
—Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) German Poet, Dramatist
When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flown at it to hold it back from flight.
—James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish Novelist, Poet
The soul, like the body, lives by what it feeds on.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland (1819–81) American Editor, Novelist
Four thousand volumes of metaphysics will not teach us what the soul is.
—Voltaire (1694–1778) French Philosopher, Author
From the looks not the lips the soul speaks.
—Unknown
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbow’d.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Lies but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
—William Ernest Henley (1849–1903) English Poet, Critic, Editor
What is does a person profit if they gain the whole world and lose their soul.
—The Holy Bible Scripture in the Christian Faith
Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
Nothing can so pierce the soul as the uttermost sigh of the body.
—George Santayana (1863–1952) Spanish-American Poet, Philosopher
I promise to keep on living as though I expected to live forever. Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old only by deserting their ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul.
—Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) American Military Leader
If you purify your soul of attachment to and desire for things, you will understand them spiritually. If you deny your appetite for them, you will enjoy their truth, understanding what is certain in them.
—John of the Cross (1542–1591) Spanish Roman Catholic Mystic
To look upon the soul as going on from strength to strength, to consider that she is to shine forever with new accessions of glory, and brighten to all eternity; that she will be still adding virtue to virtue, and knowledge to knowledge,—carries in it something wonderfully agreeable to that ambition which is natural to the mind of man.
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719) English Essayist, Poet, Playwright, Politician
Little, indeed, does it concern us in this our mortal stage, to inquire whence the spirit hath come; but of what infinite concern is the consideration whither it is going. Surely such consideration demands the study of a life.
—Robert South (1634–1716) English Theologian, Preacher
The countenance is the portrait of the soul, and the eyes mark its intentions.
—Cicero (106BCE–43BCE) Roman Philosopher, Orator, Politician, Lawyer
The soul that is attached to anything however much good there may be in it, will not arrive at the liberty of divine union. For whether it be a strong wire rope or a slender and delicate thread that holds the bird, it matters not, if it really holds it fast; for, until the cord be broken the bird cannot fly.
—John of the Cross (1542–1591) Spanish Roman Catholic Mystic
You must lay aside your greed; have no unworthy motive in your desire to become rich and powerful. It is legitimate and right to desire riches, if you want them for the sake of your soul, but not if you desire them for the lists of the flesh.
—Wallace Wattles (1860–1911) American New Thought Author