I call it the golden eternity. It is perfect. We were never really born, we will never really die. It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere: Self is only an idea, a mortal idea. That which passes into everything is one thing. It’s a dream already ended. There’s nothing to be afraid of and nothing to be glad about. I know this from staring at mountains months on end. They never show any expression, they are like empty space. Do you think the emptiness of space will ever crumble away? Mountains will crumble, but the emptiness of space, which is the one universal essence of mind, the vast awakenerhood, empty and awake, will never crumble away because it was never born. Jack Kerouac, The Portable Jack Kerouac
Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else’s music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul. ibid.
Out of its secret hiding-place had crept his Soul, and Desire had come to meet it on the way. ibid.
The final mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul? Oscar Wilde, De Profundis
Perhaps I should nail my soul to the devil’s altar. Dorian Gray 2009 starring Ben Barnes & Colin Firth & Ben Chaplin & Rachel Hurd-Wood & Johnny Harris & Rebecca Hall & Emilia Fox & Fiona Shaw & Maryan d'Abo & Caoline Goodall et al, director Oliver Parker, Dorian
If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans. James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small
Everyone, either from modesty or egotism, hides away the best and most delicate of his soul’s possessions; to gain the esteem of others, we must only ever show our ugliest sides; this is how we keep ourselves on the common level. Gustave Flaubert, November
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come. William Wordsworth
It is very hard for evil to take hold of the unconsenting soul. Ursula K Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea
So the unwanting soul
sees what’s hidden,
and the ever-wanting soul
sees only what it wants. Lao Tzu
Charisma is the fragrance of soul. Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
The torture of a bad conscience is the hell of a living soul. John Calvin
The soul ... has a slow and dark birth, more mysterious than the birth of the body. When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets. James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
He tried to weigh his soul to see if it was a poet’s soul. Melancholy was the dominant note of his temperament, he thought, but it was a melancholy tempered by recurrences of faith and resignation and simple joy. If he could give expression to it in a book of poems perhaps men would listen. James Joyce, Dubliners: A Little Cloud
I have said that the soul is not more than the body,
And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,
And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s-self is. Walt Whitman
Man has no Body distinct from his Soul; for that called Body is a portion of a Soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age. William Blake
The soul that has conceived one wickedness can nurse no good thereafter. Sophocles, Philoctetes
He that has light within his own clear breast
May sit i’ the centre, and enjoy bright day,
But he that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughts
Benighted walks under the midday sun;
Himself is his own dungeon. John Milton, Comus, 1637
Only in the firm foundation of unyielding despair can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built. Bertrand Russell, Philosophical Essays, 1910
Faustus: Stay, Mephistopheles, and tell me, what good will my soul do thy lord?
Mephistopheles: Enlarge his kingdom.
Faustus: Is that the reason he tempts us thus?
Mephistopheles: It is a comfort to the wretched to have companions in misery. Christopher Marlowe, Dr Faustus
Anger is one of the sinews of the soul. Thomas Fuller
There is no need to invoke the material soul. 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God, Steven Pinker
Whose soul is it and what good is it? ibid. George Lakoff
There is no non-physical mind or soul. ibid. Patricia Churchland
His face bespoke his soul. Voltaire
Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. Marcel Proust
Sell me your soul. Acknowledge my power and I’ll give you eternity at my side. Le Moine [The Monk] 2011 starring Vincent Cassel & Deborah Francois & Josephine Japy & Sergi Lopez & Catherine Mouchet & Jordi Dauder & Frederic Noaille & Roxane Duran & Javivi et al, director Dominik Moll, Devil
The heart was the centre of wisdom to the Egyptians and the dwelling place of the soul. In death the heart of an ordinary man is weighed before Osiris. It’s the ultimate test of purity. Egypt: Secrets of the Dead
(The Naassenes) say that the soul is very hard to find and to perceive; for it does not continue in the same fashion or shape or in one emotion so that one can either describe it or comprehend its essence. And they have these various changes of the soul, set forth in the Gospel entitled according to the Egyptians. Hippolytus against Heresies v7: The Gospel of the Egyptians
Leave those vain moralists, my friend, and return to the depth of your soul: that is where you will always rediscover the source of the sacred fire which so often inflamed us with love of the sublime virtues; that is where you will see the eternal image of true beauty, the contemplation of which inspires us with a holy enthusiasm. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, La Nouvelle Heloise 1761
What of my soul. Do I have one? Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein 1994 starring Robert deNiro & Kenneth Branagh & Helena Bonham Carter & Ian Holm & Rory Jennings & Tom Hulce & John Cleese & Aidan Quinn & Richard Briers & Robert Hardy & Christina Cutall & Celia Imrie & Cherie Lunghi & Charles Wyn-Davies & Richard Bonneville et al, director Kenneth Branagh
Sri Krishna said: The soul is never born nor dies at any time. Soul has not come into being, does not come into being, and will not come into being. Soul is unborn, eternal, ever-existing and primeval. Soul is not slain when the body is slain. Bhagavad Gita 2:20
Sri Krishna said: The soul can never be cut to pieces by any weapon, nor burned by fire, nor moistened by water, nor withered by the wind. ibid. 2:23
Why art thou cast down, O my soul? And why art thou disquieted in me? Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.
O my God, my soul is cast down within me: therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar. Psalms 42:5&6
I shall go softy all my years in the bitterness of my soul. Isaiah 38:15
For I have satiated the weary soul, and I have replenished every sorrowful soul. Jeremiah 31:25
Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die. Ezekiel 18:4
Laugh no man to scorn in the bitterness of his soul. Ecclesiasticus 7:11
For what profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Mark 8:36
Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also. Luke 2:35