Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotations on Soul

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

A little body often harbors a great soul.
Common Proverb

I sought my soul, but my soul I could not see. I sought my God, but my God eluded me. I sought my brother and I found all three.
Unknown

The soul, like the body, lives by what it feeds on.
Josiah Gilbert Holland (1819–81) American Editor, Novelist

However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.
Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher

To expect a personality to survive the disintegration of the brain is like expecting a cricket club to survive when all of its members are dead.
Bertrand A. Russell (1872–1970) British Philosopher, Mathematician, Social Critic

Of the three prerequisites of genius; the first is soul; the second is soul; and the third is soul.
Edwin Percy Whipple (1819–86) American Literary Critic

I have to confess that I had gambled on my soul and lost it with heroic insouciance and lightness of touch. The soul is so impalpable, so often useless, and sometimes such a nuisance, that I felt no more emotion on losing it than if, on a stroll, I had mislaid my visiting card.
Charles Baudelaire (1821–67) French Poet, Art Critic, Essayist, Translator

Age wrinkles the body. Quitting wrinkles the soul.
Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) American Military Leader

Obey your soul, have perfect faith in yourself. Never think of yourself with doubt or distrust, or as one who makes mistakes.
Wallace Wattles (1860–1911) American New Thought Author

Each man has his own vocation. The talent is the call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him. He has faculties silently inviting him thither to endless exertion. He is like a ship in a river; he runs against obstructions on every side but one; on that side all obstruction is taken away, and he sweeps serenely over a deepening channel into an infinite sea. This talent and this call depend on his organization, or the mode in which the general soul incarnates itself in him. He inclines to do something which is easy to him, and good when it is done, but which no other man can do. He has no rival. For the more truly he consults his own powers, the more difference will his work exhibit from the work of any other. His ambition is exactly proportioned to his powers. The height of the pinnacle is determined by the breadth of the base. Every man has this call of the power to do somewhat unique, and no man has any other call. The pretence that he has another call, a summons by name and personal election and outward “signs that mark him extraordinary, and not in the roll of common men,” is fanaticism, and betrays obtuseness to perceive that there is one mind in all the individuals, and no respect of persons therein.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher

In childhood’s pride I said to Thee:
O Thou, who mad’st me of Thy breath,
Speak, Master, and reveal to me
Thine inmost laws of life and death.

Give me to drink each joy and pain
Which Thine eternal hand can mete,
For my insatiate soul can drain
Earth’s utmost bitter, utmost sweet.

Spare me no bliss, no pang of strife,
Withhold no gift or grief I crave,
The intricate lore of love and life
And mystic knowledge of the grave.

Lord, Thou didst answer stern and low:
Child, I will hearken to thy prayer,
And thy unconquered soul shall know
All passionate rapture and despair.

Thou shalt drink deep of joy and fame,
And love shall burn thee like a fire,
And pain shall cleanse thee like a flame,
To purge the dross from thy desire.

So shall thy chastened spirit yearn
To seek from its blind prayer release,
And spent and pardoned, sue to learn
The simple secret of My peace.

I, bending from my sevenfold height,
Will teach thee of My quickening grace,
Life is a prism of My light,
And Death the shadow of My face.
Sarojini Naidu (1879–1949) Indian Feminist, Poet, Political Leader

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 (1935–2023) American Rabbi, Author

Begin to do small things in a great way…You must put the whole power of your great soul into every act.
Wallace Wattles (1860–1911) American New Thought Author

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’s impurity consists in bad judgments, and purification consists in producing in it right judgments, and the pure soul is one which has right judgments.
Epictetus (55–135) Ancient Greek Philosopher

With all your science can you tell me how it is, and when it is, that light comes into the soul?
Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher

We know now that the soul is the body, and the body the soul. They tell us they are different because they want to persuade us that we can keep our souls if we let them make slaves of our bodies.
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright

Everything here, but the soul of man, is a passing shadow.—The only enduring substance is within.—When shall we awake to the sublime greatness, the perils, the accountableness, and the glorious destinies of the immortal soul?
William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) American Unitarian Theologian, Poet

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

Ahimsa is the attribute of the soul, and therefore, to be practiced by everybody in all affairs of life. If it cannot be practiced in all departments, it has no practical value.
Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948) Indian Hindu Political leader

It is the soul’s duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion.
Rebecca West (1892–1983) English Author, Journalist, Literary Critic

What is does a person profit if they gain the whole world and lose their soul.
The Holy Bible Scripture in the Christian Faith

No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, could ever compel the soul of man to believe or disbelieve.
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist

The soul, of origin divine, God’s glorious image, freed from clay, in heaven’s eternal sphere shall shine, a star of day!—The sun is but a spark of fire, a transient meteor in the sky; the soul immortal as its sire, shall never die.
James Montgomery (1771–1854) Scottish Poet, Journalist, Hymnist

The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and it’s overturned the order of the soul…
Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian Singer, Songwriter, Poet, 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

O, how wonderful is the human voice! It is indeed the organ of the soul! The intellect of man sits enthroned visibly upon his forehead and in his eye; and the heart of man is written upon his countenance. But the soul reveals itself in the voice only; as God revealed himself to the prophet of old in the still, small voice; and in a voice from the burning bush. The soul of man is audible, not visible. A sound alone betrays the flowing of the eternal fountain, invisible to man!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82) American Poet, Educator, Academic

To live happily is an inward power of the soul.
Marcus Aurelius (121–180) Emperor of Rome, Stoic Philosopher

Just imagine you’re four years old, and someone makes the following proposal: If you’ll wait until after he runs an errand, you can have two marshmallows for a treat. If you can’t wait until then, you can have only one—but you can have it right now. It is a challenge sure to try the soul of any four-year-old, a microcosm of the eternal battle between impulse and restraint, id and ego, desire and self-control, gratification and delay… There is perhaps no psychological skill more fundamental than resisting impulse. It is the root of all emotional self-control, since all emotions, by their very nature, led to one or another impulse to act.
Daniel Goleman (b.1946) American Psychologist, Author, Science Journalist

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