Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. - Soul Quotes

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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 art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Take a music-bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water-bath is to the body.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Call him not old whose visionary brain
Holds o'er the post its undivided reign,
For him in vain the envious seasons roll,
Who bears eternal summer in this soul.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
You know well enough what I mean by youth and age;—something in the soul, which has no more to do with the color of the hair than the vein of gold in a rock has to do with the grass a thousand feet above it.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Beliefs must be lived in for a good while, before they accommodate themselves to the soul's wants, and wear loose enough to be comfortable.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Every language is a temple, in which the soul of those who speak it is enshrined.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
The soul of a man has a series of concentric envelopes round it, like the core of an onion, or the innermost of a nest of boxes. First he has his natural garment of flesh and blood. Then, his artificial integuments, with their true skin of solid stuffs, their cuticle of lighter tissues, and their variously tinted pigments. Thirdly, his domicile, be it a single chamber or a stately mansion. And then, the whole visible world, in which Time buttons him up as in a loose outside wrapper.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Lord of all being, thronèd afar,
Thy glory flames from sun and star;
Center and soul of every sphere,
Yet to each loving heart how near!
Sun of our life, Thy quickening ray,
Sheds on our path the glow of day;
Star of our hope, Thy softened light
Cheers the long watches of the night.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Poets are never young, in one sense. Their delicate ear hears the far-off whispers of eternity, which coarser souls must travel towards for scores of years before their dull sense is touched by them. A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
The real religion of the world comes from women much more than from men—from mothers most of all, who carry the key of our souls in their bosoms.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
It is by little things that we know ourselves; a soul would very probably mistake itself for another, when once disembodied, were it not for individual experiences which differ from those of others only in details seemingly trifling.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.