Soul quotes
Ady Thomas fl. 1655
A Candle in the Dark
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,
The bed be blest that I lie on,
Four angels round my head,
One to watch, and one to pray,
And two to bear my soul away.
Anonymous
(song)
John Brown's body lies a mould' ring in the grave
His soul is marching on.
The Bible (Authorized Version)
New Testament: St Mark ch.8 v.36 St
Matthew ch.16 v.26
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain
the whole world, and lose his own soul?
Bolt Robert 1924-1995
A Man for All Seasons
It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world ... But for Wales - !
The Book of Common Prayer
The Burial of the Dead, Interment
Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself
the soul of our dear brother here departed, we therefore commit his body to the
ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of
the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Browning Robert 1812-1889
‘In a Balcony'
I count life just a stuff
To try the soul's strength on, educe the man.
Carlyle Thomas 1795-1881
A good book is the purest essence of a human soul.
Charlemagne 742-814
To have another language is to possess a second soul.
Clare John 1793-1864
(attributed)
Language has not the power to speak what love indites:
The soul lies buried in the ink that writes.
Coleridge Samuel Taylor 1772-1834
What is an epigram? A dwarfish whole,
Its body brevity, and wit its soul.
Defoe Daniel 1660-1731
An Essay Upon Projects
The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond, and
must be polished, or the lustre of it will never appear.
Dickinson Emily 1830-1886
‘Elysium is as far as to'
What fortitude the Soul contains,
That it can so endure
The accent of a coming Foot -
The opening of a Door.
Dickinson Emily 1830-1886
‘Hope' is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without words
And never stops - at all.
Dimnet Ernest 1866-1954
What We Live By
Architecture, of all the arts, is the one which acts the
most slowly, but the most surely, on the soul.
Dryden John 1631-1700
An Essay of Dramatic Poesy (of Shakespeare)
He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had
the largest and most comprehensive soul ... he is always great.
Emerson Ralph Waldo 1803-1882
The eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul.
Gilbert W.S. 1836-1911
The Yeoman of the Guard
It's a song of a merryman, moping mum,
Whose soul was sad, and whose glance was glum,
Who sipped no sup, and who craved no crumb,
As he sighed for the love of a ladye.
Haldane J.B.S. 1892-1964
I have never yet met a healthy person who worries very much his health,
or a really good person who worries much about his own soul.
Johnson Samuel 1709-1784
Boswell - Life (on the death of Mr Levett)
Then with no throbs of fiery pain,
No cold gradations of decay,
Death broke at once the vital chain,
And freed his soul the nearest way.
Jonson Ben c.1573-1637
‘To William Shakespeare'
Soul of the Age!
The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!
Joubert Joseph 1754-1824
Imagination is the eye of the soul.
Jowett Benjamin 1817-1893
The lie in the soul is a true lie.
Joyce James 1882-1941
Dubliners
His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and
faintly falling, like the decent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
Keats John 1795-1821
Letter to J.H. Reynolds
A man should have the fine point of his soul taken off to become fit for this world.
Keats John 1795-1821
‘O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell'
Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind,
Whose words are images of thoughts refined,
Is my soul's pleasure; and it sure must be
Almost the highest bliss of human-kind,
When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.
Keble John 1792-1866
The Christian Year ‘Blessed are the pure ...'
Blessed are the pure in heart,
For they shall see our God,
The secret of the Lord is theirs,
Their soul is Christ's abode.
Langland William c.1330-1400
The Vison of Piers Plowman
For if heaven be on this erthe, and ese to any soule,
It is in cloistre or in scole.
Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm 1646-1716
The Monadology
It is the knowledge of necessary and eternal truths which distinguishes us from
mere animals, and gives us Reason and the sciences, raising us to knowledge of
ourselves and of God. It is this in us which we call the rational soul or Mind.
Longfellow Henry Wadsworth 1807-1882
„A Psalm of Life"
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Lydgate John c.1370-c.1451
The Fall of Princes
Sithe he off Inglissh in makyng was the beste,
Preie onto God to yiue his soul good reste.
Marlowe Christopher 1564-1593
Doctor Faustus
O lente lente currite noctis equi.
The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
The devil will come, and Faustus must be damned.
O I'll leap up to my God: who pulls me down?
See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament.
One drop would save my soul, half a drop, ah my Christ.
Marlowe Christopher 1564-1593
Doctor Faustus
O soul, be changed into little water drops,
And fall into the ocean, ne'er be found:
My God, my God, look not so fierce on me.
Marvell Andrew 1621-1678
‘The Garden'
Here at the fountain's sliding foot,
Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,
Casting the body's vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide.
Masefield John 1878-1967
‘The Everlasting Mercy'
The corn that makes the holy bread
By which the soul of man is fed,
The holy bread, the food unpriced,
Thy everlasting mercy, Christ.
Meredith George 1828-1909
Diana of the Crossways
There is nothing the body suffers the soul may not profit by.
Milton John 1608-1674
Areopagitica
Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life
in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are.
Mollineux Mary 1651-1695
‘Solitude'
How sweet is harmless solitude!
What can its joys control?
Tumults and noise may not intrude,
To interrupt the soul.
Montaigne Michel de 1533-1592
Essays
To make judgements about great and lofty things, a soul of the same stature
is needed; otherwise we ascribe to them that vice which is our own.
Montaigne Michel de 1533-1592
Essays
Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of soul, impossible.
Moore Thomas 1779-1852
‘The harp that once through Tara's halls'
The harp that once through Tara's halls
The soul of music shed,
Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls
As if that soul were fled.
So sleeps the pride of former days,
So glory's thrill is o'er;
And hearts, that once beat high for praise,
Now feel that pulse no more.
Picasso Pablo 1881-1973
Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
Pindar 518-438 BC
Pythian Odes
My soul, do not seek immortal life, but exhaust the realm of the possible.
Pope Alexander 1688-1744
Eloisa to Abelard
See my lips tremble, and my eyeballs roll,
Suck my last breath, and catch my flying soul!
Pope Alexander 1688-1744
An Essay on Man
All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body, Nature is, and God the soul.
Pope Alexander 1688-1744
Light quirks of music, broken and uneven,
Make the soul dance upon a jig of heaven.
Quarles Francis 1592-1644
Emblems
My soul, sit thou a patient looker-on;
Judge not the play before the play is done:
Her plot hath many changes; every day
Speaks a new scene; the last act crowns the play.
Rolfe Frederick William (‘Baron Corvo')
Hadrian VII
Pray for the repose of His soul. He was so tired.
Rossetti Dante Gabriel 1828-1882
The House of Life
A sonnet is a moment's monument -
Memorial from the Soul's eternity
To one dead deathless hour.
Santayana George 1863-1952
Each religion, by the help of more or less myth which it takes more or less
seriously, proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and
enabling it to make its peace with destiny.
Schauble Wolfgang 1942-
The soul of Germany is Europe, it is not the D. Mark.
Scott Sir Walter 1771-1832
The Lay of the Last Minstrel
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Shakespeare William 1564-1616
Henry V
Every subject's duty is the king's; but every subject's soul is his own.
Shakespeare William 1564-1616
King John
Heaven take my soul, and England keep my bones!
Shakespeare William 1564-1616
Richard II
Mount, mount, my soul! thy seat is up on high;
Whilst my gross flesh sinks downwards, here to die.
Shaw George Bernard 1856-1950
Saint Joan
If ever I utter an oath again may my soul be blasted to eternal damnation!
Shelley Mary 1797-1851
Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady
purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
Smith James and Horace 1775-1839 and 1779-1849
Rejected Addresses ‘Cui Bono?'
Sated with home, of wife, of children tired.
The restless soul is driven abroad to roam;
Sated abroad, all senn and all admired,
The restless soul is driven to ramble home.
Spark Muriel 1918-
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul.
To Miss mackay it is a putting in of something that is not there, and that is
not what I call education, I call it intrusion.
Tennyson Alfred Lord 1809-1892
‘Fatima'
O Love, O fire! once he drew
With one long kiss my whole soul through
My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew.
Tennyson Alfred Lord 1809-1892
In Memoriam A.H.H.
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul Within.
Tennyson Alfred Lord 1809-1892
‘The Princess'
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow for ever and for ever.
Thurlow Edward 1731-1806
(attributed)
Dit you ever expect a corporation to have a conscience,
when it has no soul to be damned, and no body to be kicked.
Traherne Thomas c.1637-1674
Centuries of Meditations ‘First Century'
An empty book is like an infant's soul, in which anything may
be written. It is capable of all things, but containeth nothing.
Travis Merle 1917-1983
‘Sixteen Tons'
Sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Say brother, don't you call me ‘cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store.
Updike John 1932-
Assorted Prose ‘More Love ... Western World'
The heart prefers to move against the grain of circumstance; perversity is the soul's very life.
Van Gogh Vincent 1853-1890
One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul,
and yet no one ever comes to sit by it.
Vaughan Henry 1622-1695
Silex Scintillans ‘Peace'
My soul, there is a country
Far beyond the stars,
Where stands a wingèd sentry
All skilful in the wars;
There, above noise and danger,
Sweet Peace is crowned with smiles,
And One born in a manger
Commands the beauteous files.