Soul

"There is a remedy for every wrong and a satisfaction for every soul."

"I reflected how soon in the cup of desire The pearl of the soul may be melted away; How quickly, alas, the pure sparkle of fire We inherit from heaven, may be quenched in the clay."

"A fiery soul, which, working out its way, Fretted the pygmy-body to decay, And oer-informd the tenement of clay."

"A mermaid has not an immortal soul, nor can she obtain one unless she wins the love of a human being. On the power of another hangs her eternal destiny. But the daughters of the air, although they do not possess an immortal soul, can, by their good deeds, procure one for themselves. We fly to warm countries, and cool the sultry air that destroys mankind with the pestilence. We carry the perfume of the flowers to spread health and restoration. After we have striven for three hundred years to all the good in our power, we receive an immortal soul and take part in the happiness of mankind. You, poor little mermaid, have tried with your whole heart to do as we are doing; you have suffered and endured and raised yourself to the spirit-world by your good deeds; and now, by striving for three hundred years in the same way, you may obtain an immortal soul."

"For Plato, the soul was something that entered the body and left it at the moment of death. For the pre-Socratics, it was a kind of spectre. Aristotle, as many know, defines the soul as the form, or the first act of the body. We need to reflect on the concept of form; form is not a part of the organism, which has its own unity. Organisms are bodies capable of performing certain functions; these capacities are obviously reduced in plants, while in animals they are already more complex. In human beings, we find activities that we call superior, such as thinking and willing. The soul is the possession of these capacities."

"Animus hoc habet argumentum divinitatis suæ, quod ilium divina delectant."

"And I have written three books on the soul, Proving absurd all written hitherto, And putting us to ignorance again."

"An event rather than an entity, the soul defines our deepest depths, oblivious of sensation, thought, and feeling—touching bottom in our simple existence."

"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."

"A rich and powerful soul not only gets over painful and even terrible losses, deprivations, robberies, and insults: it actually leaves such dark infernos in possession of still greater plenitude and power; and, what is most important of all, in possession of an increased blissfulness in love. I believe that he who has divined something of the most fundamental conditions of love, will understand Dante for having written over the door of his Inferno: "I also am the creation of eternal love."

"Antony ... used to say that it behooved a man to give all his time to his soul rather than his body, yet to grant a short space to the body through its necessities; but all the more earnestly to give up the whole remainder to the soul and seek its profit, that it might not be dragged down by the pleasures of the body, but, on the contrary, the body might be in subjection to the soul."

"SOCRATES: The shoemaker, for example, uses a square tool, and a circular tool, and other tools for cutting?"