C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Soul
’T is the Divinity that stirs within us.
Vital spark of heav’nly flame!
There is a divinity within our breast.
The soul is one with its faith.
The temples perish, but the God still lives.
The soul, immortal as its sire, shall never die.
A soul as white as Heaven.
The soul never grows old.
The soul knows no persons.
A single soul is richer than all the worlds.
The soul has more diseases than the body.
And her immortal part with angels lives.
The dome of Thought, the palace of the Soul.
Life is the soul’s nursery.
There are no twin souls in God’s universe.
Silence and solitude, the soul’s best friends.
Grief dejects and wrings the tortured soul.
The soul, like the body, lives by what it feeds on.
A noble soul has no other merit than to be a noble soul.
And keeps that palace of the soul serene.
The one thing in the world of value is the active soul.
Think’st thou I’ll endanger my soul gratis?
Above the vulgar flight of common souls.
The feast of reason and the flow of soul.
A corporation has no soul.
Oh! how seldom the soul is silent, in order that God may speak.
The gods approve the depth, and not the tumult of the soul.
In the scenes of moral life the soul is at once actor and spectator.
The want of goods is easily repaired, but the poverty of the soul is irreparable.
Ah, could the soul, like the body, have a mirror! It has,—a friend.
The production of souls is the secret of unfathomable depth.
There is a remedy for every wrong and a satisfaction for every soul.
Souls are dangerous things to carry straight through all the spilt saltpetre of this world.
Men possessing small souls are generally the authors of great evils.
The countenance is the portrait of the soul, and the eyes mark its intentions.
Christ bounds and terminates the vast desires of the soul; He is the very Sabbath of the soul.
The imaginative faculty of the soul must be fed with objects immense and eternal.
The body,—that is dust; the soul,—it is a bud of eternity.
From the looks—not the lips, is the soul reflected.
The heart may be broken, and the soul remain unshaken.
The soul on earth is an immortal guest, compelled to starve at an unreal feast.
Every subject’s duty is the king’s; but every subject’s soul is his own.
The faculties of our souls differ as widely as the features of our faces and the forms of our frame.
The limbs will quiver and move after the soul is gone.
And the weak soul, within itself unblessed, leans for all pleasure on another’s breast.
A soul,—a spark of the never-dying flame that separates man from all the other beings of earth.
The wealth of a soul is measured by how much it can feel; its poverty, by how little.
Gravity is the ballast of the soul, which keeps the mind steady.
A man’s possessions are just as large as his own soul. If his title-deeds cover more, the surplus acres own him, not he the acres.
Not in the knowledge of things without, but in the perfection of the soul within, lies the empire of man aspiring to be more than man.
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.”
Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness; on the confines of two everlasting hostile empires, Necessity and Free Will.
I am positive I have a soul; nor can all the books with which materialists have pestered the world ever convince me to the contrary.
Some men have a Sunday soul, which they screw on in due time, and take off again every Monday morning.
Alas! alas! why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once; and he that might the vantage best have took found out the remedy.
There is nothing that is so wonderfully created as the human soul. There is something of God in it. We are infinite in the future, though we are finite in the past.
Life was intended to be so adjusted that the body should be the servant of the soul, and always subordinate to the soul.
The soul has, living apart from its corporeal envelope, a profound habitual meditation which prepares it for a future life.
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.
The strongest love which the human heart has ever felt has been that for its Heavenly Parent. Was it not then constituted for this love?
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.
Our souls must become expanded by the contemplation of Nature’s grandeur, before we can fully comprehend the greatness of man.
The saddest of all failures is that of a soul, with its capabilities and possibilities, failing of life everlasting, and entering upon that night of death upon which morning never dawns.
There is a god within us, and we have intercourse with heaven. That spirit comes from abodes on high.
If our souls be immortal, this makes amends for the frailties of life and the sufferings of this state.
It is the soul itself which sees and hears, and not those parts which are, as it were, but windows to the soul.
What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind. What is the soul? It is immaterial.
The Egyptians, by the concurrent testimony of antiquity, were among the first who taught that the soul was immortal.
Our immortal souls, while righteous, are by God himself beautified with the title of his own image and similitude.
The human soul is hospitable, and will entertain conflicting sentiments and contradictory opinions with much impartiality.
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.
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.
Nothing gives us a greater idea of our soul, than that God has given us, at the moment of our birth, an angel to take care of it.
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.
Every thing 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?
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.
Some of our philosophizing divines have too much exalted the faculties of our souls, when they have maintained that by their force mankind has been able to find out God.
What came from the earth returns to the earth, and the spirit that was sent from heaven, again carried back, is received into the temple of heaven.
The most regular and most perfect soul in the world has but too much to do to keep itself upright from being overthrown by its own weakness.
“No doubt,” replied Scipio, “those are alive who have broken loose from the chains of the body as from a prison; it is yours, that is called life, that is really death.”
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.
The image of God was no less resplendent in man’s practical understanding,—namely, that storehouse of the soul in which are treasured up the rules of action and the seeds of morality.
The human soul is like a bird that is born in a cage. Nothing can deprive it of its natural longings, or obliterate the mysterious remembrance of its heritage.
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.
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.
We may compare the soul to a linen cloth; it must be first washed to take off its native hue and color, and to make it white; and afterwards it must be ever and anon washed to preserve it white.
I hardly know a sight that raises one’s indignation more than that of an enlarged soul joined to a contracted fortune; unless it be that so much more common one, of a contracted soul joined to an enlarged fortune.
Embellish the soul with simplicity, with prudence, and everything which is neither virtuous nor vicious. Love all men. Walk according to God; for, as a poet hath said, his laws govern all.
The health of the soul is as precarious as that of the body; for when we seem secure from passions, we are no less in danger of their infection than we are of falling ill when we appear to be well.
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.
To me the external existence of my soul is proved from my idea of activity. If I work incessantly until my death, nature will give me another form of existence when the present can no longer sustain my spirit.
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.
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.
The soul languishing in obscurity contracts a kind of rust, or abandons itself to the chimera of presumption; for it is natural for it to acquire something, even when separated from any one.
The soul may be compared to a field of battle, where the armies are ready every moment to encounter. Not a single vice but has a more powerful opponent, and not one virtue but may be overborne by a combination of vices.
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.
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 or sculpture, broken pillars and obelisks, and a magnificence in confusion.
Not all the subtilties 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 it, I hope it, and will defend it to my last breath.
There are some men’s souls that are so thin, so almost destitute of what is the true idea of soul, that were not the guardian angels so keen-sighted, they would altogether overlook them.
To whatever world He carries our souls when they shall pass out of these imprisoning bodies, in those worlds these souls of ours shall find themselves part of the same great temple; for it belongs not to this earth alone.
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.
No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, could ever compel the soul of man to believe or to disbelieve: it is his own indefeasible light, that judgment of his; he will reign and believe there by the grace of God alone!
What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.
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.
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.
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!
Making one object, in outward or inward nature, more holy to a single heart is reward enough for a life; for the more sympathies we gain or awaken for what is beautiful, by so much deeper will be our sympathy for that which is most beautiful,—the human soul!
The soul of man is not a thing which comes and goes, is builded and decays like the elemental frame in which it is set to dwell, but a very living force, a very energy of God’s organic will, which rules and moulds this universe.
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 Robespierre, from Noah to the Final Fire!
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.
The soul is a fire that darts its rays through all the senses; it is in this fire that existence consists; all the observations and all the efforts of philosophers ought to turn towards this Me, the centre and moving power of our sentiments and our ideas.
Alas! while the body stands so broad and brawny, must the soul lie blinded, dwarfed, stupefied, almost annihilated? Alas! this was, too, a breath of God, bestowed in heaven, but on earth never to be unfolded!
If self-knowledge be a path to virtue, virtue is a much better one to self-knowledge. 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.
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.
If I am mistaken in my opinion that the human soul is immortal, I willingly err; nor would I have this pleasant error extorted from me; and if, as some minute philosophers suppose, death should deprive me of my being, I need not fear the raillery of those pretended philosophers when they are no more.
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.
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.
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.
Philosophers have widely differed as to the seat of the soul, and St. Paul has told us that out of the heart proceed murmurings; but there can be no doubt that the seat of perfect contentment is in the head, for every individual is thoroughly satisfied with his own proportion of brains.
For it is unknown what is the real nature of the soul, whether it be born with the bodily frame or be infused at the moment of birth, whether it perishes along with us, when death separates the soul and body, or whether it visits the shades of Pluto and bottomless pits, or enters by divine appointment into other animals.
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 made him restless in everything else. And since the soul can only rest in that which is infinite, there is something infinite for it to rest in.
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.
With what astonishment and veneration may we look into our own souls, where there are such hidden stores of virtue and knowledge, such inexhaustible sources of perfection. We know not yet what we shall be, nor will it ever enter into the heart to conceive the glory that will be always in reserve for it.
After all, let a man take what pains he may to hush it down, a human soul is an awful, ghostly, unquiet possession for a bad man to have. Who knows the metes and bounds of it? Who knows all its awful perhapses,—those shudderings and tremblings, which it can no more live down than it can outlive its own eternity?
The soul, considered with its Creator, is like one of those mathematical lines that may draw nearer to another for all eternity without a possibility of touching it; and can there be a thought so transporting as to consider ourselves in these perpetual approaches to Him, who is not only the standard of perfection, but of happiness?
The soul of a true Christian appears like such a little white flower as we see in the spring of the year, low and humble on the ground, opening its bosom to receive the pleasant beams of the sun’s glory, rejoicing, as it were, in a calm rapture, diffusing around a sweet fragrancy, standing peacefully and lovingly in the midst of other flowers round about, all in like manner opening their bosoms to drink in the light of the sun.
You can throw yourselves away. You can become of no use in the universe except for a warning. You can lose your souls. Oh, what a loss is that! The perversion and degradation of every high and immortal power for an eternity! And shall this be true of any one of you? 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?
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.
Two things a master commits to his servant’s care—the child and the child’s clothes. It will be a poor excuse for the servant to say, at his master’s return, “Sir, here are all the child’s clothes, neat and clean, but the child is lost.” Much so of the account that many will give to God of their souls and bodies at the great day. “Lord, here is my body; I am very grateful for it; I neglected nothing that belonged to its contents and welfare; but as for my soul, that is lost and cast away forever. I took little care and thought about it.”
Either we have an immortal soul, or we have not. If we have not, we are beasts,—the first and the wisest of beasts, it may be, but still true beasts. We shall only differ in degree and not in kind,—just as the elephant differs from the slug. But by the concession of the materialists of all the schools, or almost all, we are not of the same kind as beasts, and this also we say from our own consciousness. Therefore, methinks, it must be the possession of the soul within us that makes the difference.
We cannot describe the natural history of the soul, but we know that it is divine. All things are known to the soul. It is not to be surprised by any communication. Nothing can be greater than it, let those fear and those fawn who will. The soul is in her native realm; and it is wider than space, older than time, wide as hope, rich as love. Pusillanimity and fear she refuses with a beautiful scorn; they are not for her who putteth on her coronation robes, and goes out through universal love to universal power.