Spirit Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

To a crisis of the spirit, we need an answer of the spirit.
To find that answer, we need only look within ourselves.
When we listen to the better angels of our nature, we find that they celebrate the simple things, the basic things--such as goodness, decency, love, kindness.
Greatness comes in simple trappings.

I've always said that idleness dulls the spirit. We have to keep the brain busy, or at least the hands if we don't have a brain.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón

If it is God who gives the spirit of power and strength, then it is also the same God who gives the spirt of self-control, and if ignoble cowardice and fear of people are just as detestable in any age, the excess of eager enthusiasm, zeal without wisdom, are no less corrupting and at times are fundamentally just as detestable, just as blasphemous.

Søren Kierkegaard

I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally.

George Washington

Tell me you stones, O speak, you towering palaces!
Streets, say a word! Spirit of this place, are you dumb?
All things are alive in your sacred walls
Eternal Rome, it's only for me all is still.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I do not know in the whole history of the world a hero, a worthy man, a prophet, a true Christian, who has not been the victim of the jealous, of a scamp, or of a sinister spirit.

Everything that emancipates the spirit without giving us control over ourselves is harmful.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

My spirits infallibly rise in proportion to the outward dreariness. Give me the ocean, the desert, or the wilderness!

Henry David Thoreau

The ghosts race towards the light, you can almost hear the heavy breathing spirits, all determined to get somewhere. New Orleans, unlike a lot of places you go back to and that don't have the magic anymore, still has got it. Night can swallow you up, yet none of it touches you. You can't see it, but you know it's here. Somebody's always sinking.

I deplore with you the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed, and the malignity, the vulgarity, and mendacious spirit of those who write for them.... This has in a great degree been produced by the violence and malignity of party spirit.

Thomas Jefferson

Of all writings I love only that which is written with blood. Write with blood: and you will discover that blood is spirit.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The winds are nothing else but good or bad spirits. Hark! how the Devil is puffing and blowing...

Madness is a special form of the spirit and clings to all teachings and philosophies, but even more to daily life, since life itself is full of craziness and at bottom utterly illogical. Man strives toward reason only so that he can make rules for himself. Life itself has no rules. That is its mystery and its unknown law. What you call knowledge is an attempt to impose something comprehensible on life.

Why, universal plodding poisons up The nimble spirits in the arteries, As motion and long-during action tires The sinewy vigor of the traveller.

William Shakespeare

If we mean to support the liberty and independence which has cost us so much blood and treasure to establish, we must drive far away the demon of party spirit and local reproach.

George Washington

I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit; and, upon this charge
Cry 'God for Harry! England and Saint George!'

William Shakespeare

There is a community of the spirit
Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street,
and being the noise.

The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.

Having encountered many setbacks, Havel lived with a spirit of hope, which he defined as the ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. His peaceful resistance shook the foundations of an empire, exposed the emptiness of a repressive ideology, and proved that moral leadership is more powerful than any weapon. He played a seminal role in the Velvet Revolution that won his people their freedom and inspired generations to reach for self-determination and dignity in all parts of the world.

Let me not live, after my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff of younger spirits.

William Shakespeare

Faith is an aptitude of the spirit. It is, in fact, a talent: you must be born with it.

Words are good, but there is something better. The best is not to be explained by words. The spirit in which we act is the chief matter. Action can only be understood and represented by the spirit.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The unity of a nation's spirit and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an individual; and that the higher interests involved in the life of the whole must here set the limits and lay down the duties of the interests of the individual.

Let us give to our republic a fourth power with authority over the youth, the hearts of men, public spirit, habits, and republican morality. Let us establish this Areopagus to watch over the education of the children, to supervise national education, to purify whatever may be corrupt in the republic, to denounce ingratitude, coldness in the country's service, egotism, sloth, idleness, and to pass judgment upon the first signs of corruption and pernicious example.

Simón Bolívar

Is the spirit of the people an infallible, a permanent reliance?...the spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless.

Thomas Jefferson