*It seems to me as if not only the form, but the soul of man was made to “walk erect, and look upon the stars.” Bulwer-Lytton.
*Life was intended to be so adjusted that the body should be the servant of the soul, and always subordinate to the soul. J.G. Holland.
*The soul has, living apart from its corporeal envelope, a profound habitual meditation which prepares it for a future life. Hippel.
*The soul is a temple; and God is silently building it by night and by day. Precious thoughts are building it; disinterested love is building it; all-penetrating faith is building it. Beecher.
*We all dread a bodily paralysis, and would make use of every contrivance to avoid it; but none of us is troubled about a paralysis of the soul. Epictetus.
*Our immortal souls, while righteous, are by God himself beautified with the title of his own image and similitude. Sir Walter Raleigh.
*Why should I start at the plough of my Lord, that maketh deep furrows on my soul? I know he is no idle husbandman; he purposeth a crop. Rutherford.
*Whatever that be, which thinks, which understands, which wills, which acts, it is something celestial and divine; and, upon that account, must necessarily be eternal. Cicero.
*A sublime soul can rise to all kinds of greatness, but by an effort; it can tear itself from all bondage, to all that limits and constrains it, but only by strength of will. Consequently the sublime soul is only free by broken efforts. Schiller.
*The only enduring substance is within. W.E. Channing.
*Go and try to save a soul and you will see how well it is worth saving, how capable it is of the most complete salvation. Not by pondering about it, nor by talking of it, but by saving it, you learn its preciousness. Phillips Brooks.
*As all curves have reference to their centres or foci, so all beauty of character has reference to the soul, and is a graceful gesture of recognition or waving of the body toward it. Thoreau.
*There are souls which fall from heaven like flowers; but ere the pure and fresh buds can open, they are trodden in the dust of the earth, and lie soiled and crushed under the foul tread of some brutal hoof. Richter.
*A soul which is conversant with virtue is like an ever flowing source, for it is pure and tranquil and potable and sweet and communicative (social) and rich and harmless and free from mischief. Epictetus.
*The action of the soul is oftener in that which is felt and left unsaid than in that which is said in any conversation. It broods over every society, and men unconsciously seek for it in each other. Emerson.
*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. Goethe.
*The mind is never right but when it is at peace within itself; the soul is in heaven even while it is in the flesh, if it be purged of its natural corruptions, and taken up with divine thoughts, and contemplations. Seneca.
*The little flower that opens in the meadows lives and dies in a season; but what agencies have concentrated themselves to produce it! So the human soul lives in the midst of heavenly help. Elizabeth Peabody.
*I consider the soul of man as the ruin of a glorious pile of buildings; where, amidst great heaps of rubbish, you meet with noble fragments of sculpture, broken pillars and obelisks, and a magnificence in confusion. Steele.
*Not all the subilties of metaphysics can make me doubt a moment of the immortality of the soul, and of a beneficent Providence. I feel it, I believe it, I desire, I hope it, and will defend it to my last breath. Rousseau. 1652. The sun meets not the springing bud that stretches towards him with half the certainty that God, the source of all good, communicates himself to the soul that longs to partake of him. William Law.
*What is the elevation of the soul? A prompt, delicate, certain feeling for all that is beautiful, all that is grand; a quick resolution to do the greatest good by the smallest means; a great benevolence joined to a great strength and great humility. Lavater.
*Never let man imagine that he can pursue a good end by evil means without sinning against his own soul! Any other issue is doubtful: the evil effect on himself is certain. Southey.
*It is certain that the soul is either mortal or immortal. The decision of this question must make a total difference in the principles of morals. Yet philosophers have arranged their moral system entirely independent of this. What an extraordinary blindness! Pascal.
*O, how much greater is the soul of one man than the vicissitudes of the whole globe! Child of heaven, and heir of immortality, how from some star hereafter wilt thou look back on the ant-hill and its commotions, from Clovis to Robespierrre, from Noah to the Final Fire! Bulwer-Lytton.
*Now, believe me, God hides some ideal in every human soul. At some time in our life we feel a trembling, fearful longing to do some good thing. Life finds its noblest spring of excellence in this hidden impulse to do our best. Robert Collyer.
*The more pure the soul becomes, it will, like certain precious stones that are sensible to the contact of poison, shrink from the fetid vapors of evil impressions. Richter.
*It is the Soul’s prerogative, its fate,/To shape the outward to its own estate./If right itself, then, all around is well;/If wrong, it makes of all without a hell./So multiplies the Soul its joys or pain,/Gives out itself, itself takes back again. /Transformed by thee, the world hath but one face. R.H. Dana.
*The soul that lives, ascends frequently, and runs familiarly through the streets of the heavenly Jerusalem, visiting the patriarchs and prophets, saluting the apostles, and admiring the army of martyrs. So do thou lead on thy heart, and bring it to the palace of the Great King. Richard Baxter.
*As the flowers follow the sun, and silently hold up their petals to be tinted and enlarged by its shining, so must we, if we would know the joy of God, hold our souls, wills, hearts, and minds, still before Him, whose voice commands, whose love warns, whose truth makes fair our whole being. God speaks for the most part in such silence only. If the soul be full of tumult and jangling voices, His voice is little likely to be heard. Alexander Maclaren.
*This is my firm persuasion, that since the human soul exerts itself with so great activity, since it has such a remembrance of the best, such a concern for the future, since it is enriched with so many arts, sciences, and discoveries, it is impossible but the being which contains all these must be immortal. Cato.
*In the darkest hour through which a human soul can pass, whatever else is doubtful, this at least is certain. If there be no God and no future state, yet even then it is better to be generous than selfish, better to be chaste than licentious, better to be true than false, better to be brave than to be a coward. F.W. Robertson.
*This boundless desire had not its original from man itself; nothing would render itself restless; something above the bounds of this world implanted those desires after a higher good, and make him restless in everything else. And since the soul can only rest is something, there is something infinite for it to rest in. Charnock.
*Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,/As the swift seasons roll! /Leave thy low-vaulted past!/Let each new temple, nobler than the last,/Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,/Till thou at length are
free,/Leaving thine outgrown shell by Life’s unresting sea! O.W. Holmes.
*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. Addison.
*Will you be lost when One has come from heaven, traveling in the greatness of His strength, and with garments dyed in blood, on purpose to guide you home–home to a Father’s house–to an eternal home? Mark Hopkins.
*Where are Shakespeare’s imagination, Bacon’s learning, Galileo’s dream? Where is the sweet fancy of Sidney, the airy spirit of Fletcher, and Milton’s thought severe? Methinks such things should not die and dissipate, when a hair can live for centuries, and a brick of Egypt will last three thousand years. I am content to believe that the mind of man survives, somehow or other, his clay. Barry Cornwall.
*Our thoughts are boundless, though our frames are frail,/Our souls immortal, though our limbs decay;/Though darken’d in this poor life by a veil/Of suffering, dying matter, we shall play/In truth’s eternal sunbeams; on the way/To heaven’s high capitol our cars shall roll;/The temple of the Power whom all obey,/That is the mark we tend to, for the soul/Can take no lower flight, and seek no meaner goal. Percival’s Prometheus.
*There is no adaption or universal applicability in men, but each has his special talent, and the mastery of successful men consists in adroitly keeping themselves where and when that turn shall be oftenest to be practised. Emerson.
*Conjecture as to things useful is good; but conjecture as to what it would be useless to know, such as whether man went upon all-fours, is very idle. Johnson.
*The besetting evil of our age is the temptation to squander and dilute thought on a thousand different lines of inquiry. Sir John Herschel.
*Speech is but the incorporation of thought. Joubert.
*In man speaks God. Hesiod.
*Thou speakest a word of great moment calmly. Goethe.
*His speech was a fine sample, on the whole,/Of rhetoric, which the learn’d call “rigmarole.” Byron.
*Seldom is there much spoke, but something or other had better not been spoke. South.
*Speech that leads not to action, still more that hinders it, is a nuisance on the earth. Carlyle.
*A superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his action. Confucius.
*I have often regretted having spoken, never having kept silent. Syrus.
*Let no one be willing to speak ill of the absent. Propertius.
*We rarely repent of speaking little, but often of speaking too much. Bruyere.
*It is a tiresome way of speaking, when you should despatch the business, to beat about the bush. Plautus.
*The speech of the tongue is best known to men; God best understands the language of the heart. Warwick.
*Man is born with the faculty of speech. Who gives it to him? He who gives the bird its song. Joubert.
*Speech was made to open man to man, and not to hide him; to promote commerce, and not betray it. David Lloyd.
*Speak gently! ’tis a little thing /Dropp’d in the heart’s deep well;/The good, the joy, that it may bring/Eternity shall tell. G.W. Langford.
*Sheridan once said of some speech, in his acute, sarcastic way, that “it contained a great deal both of what was new and what was true; but that unfortunately what was new was not true, and what was true was not new.” Hazlitt. (Ha!)
*God, that all-powerful Creator of nature and Architect of the world, has impressed man with no character so proper to distinguish him from other animals, as by the faculty of speech. Quintilian.