Spirit Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

If I had a humble spirit in my service who, when I asked for a glass of water, brought me the world's costliest wines blended in a chalice, I should dismiss him, in order to teach him that my pleasure consists, not in what I enjoy, but in having my own way.

Søren Kierkegaard

He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it.

G. K. Chesterton

We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.

G. K. Chesterton

If you are negotiating you must do so in a spirit of reconciliation, not from the point of view of issuing ultimatums.

Pure Spirit, one hundred degrees proof – that's a drink that only the most hardened contemplation-guzzlers indulge in. Bodhisattvas dilute their Nirvana with equal parts of love and work.

Soldiers are the foundation of an army; unless they are imbued with a progressive political spirit, and unless such a spirit is fostered through progressive political work, it will be impossible to achieve genuine unity between officers and men, impossible to arouse their enthusiasm for the War of Resistance to the full, and impossible to provide an excellent basis for the most effective use of all our technical equipment and tactics.

When Eve was brought unto Adam, he became filled with the Holy Spirit, and gave her the most sanctified, the most glorious of appellations. He called, her Eva--that is to say, the Mother of All. He did not style her wife, but simply mother--mother of all living creatures. In this consists the glory and the most precious ornament of woman.

In today's interconnected and globalized world, it is now commonplace for people of dissimilar world views, faiths and races to live side by side. It is a matter of great urgency, therefore, that we find ways to cooperate with one another in a spirit of mutual acceptance and respect.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

The water has a Water that is driving it;
The spirit has a Spirit that is Calling it.

Descartes constructed as noble a road of science, from the point at which he found geometry to that to which he carried it, as Newton himself did after him.... He carried this spirit of geometry and invention into optics, which under him became a completely new art.

To crave for happiness in this world is simply to be possessed by a spirit of revolt. What right have we to happiness?

While still in the cage of your being behold the spirit bird before it flies away.

Where is the "unexplored land" but in our own untried enterprises? To an adventurous spirit any place--London, New York, Worcester, or his own yard--is "unexplored land," to seek which Frémont and Kane travel so far. To a sluggish and defeated spirit even the Great Basin and the Polaris are trivial places.

Henry David Thoreau

We placed the wreaths upon the splendid granite sarcophagus, and at its feet, and felt that only the earthly robe we loved so much was there. The pure, tender, loving spirit which loved us so tenderly, is above us - loving us, praying for us, and free from all suffering and woe - yes, that is a comfort, and that first birthday in another world must have been a far brighter one than any in this poor world below!

It is a misfortune to human nature, when religion is given by a conqueror. The Mahometan religion, which speaks only by the sword, acts still upon men with that destructive spirit with which it was founded.

Mankind's history has proved from one era to another that the true criterion of leadership is spiritual. Men are attracted by spirit. By power, men are forced. Love is engendered by spirit. By power anxieties are created.

The facts of nature cannot in the long run be violated. Penetrating and seeping through everything like water, they will undermine any system that fails to take account of them, and sooner or later they will bring about its downfall. But an authority wise enough in its statesmanship to give sufficient free play to nature - of which spirit is a part - need fear no premature decline.

Let us open the doors to the Spirit, let ourselves be guided by him, and allow God's constant help to make us new men and women, inspired by the love of God which the Holy Spirit bestows on us! How beautiful it would be if each of you, every evening, could say: Today at school, at home, at work, guided by God, I showed a sign of love towards one of my friends, my parents, an older person! How beautiful!

These pictures are not occult, but they are psychic because everything that emanates from the human spirit or human brain is psychic. It is not supernatural; nothing is. It is preternatural in the sense that it is not known to our ordinary senses.

Arthur Conan Doyle

But curb thou the high spirit in thy breast, for gentle ways are best, and keep aloof from sharp contentions.

The spirit of rejection finds its support in the consciousness of separateness; the spirit of acceptance finds its base in the consciousness of unity.

Rabindranath Tagore

The tree of life is growing where the spirit never dies, and the bright light of salvation shines in dark and empty skies.

I see a woman may be made a fool, If she had not a spirit to resist.

William Shakespeare

Profounder, profounder, Man's spirit must dive; To his aye-rolling orbit No goal will arrive; The heavens that now draw him With sweetness untold, Once found - for new heavens He spurneth the old.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Common sense starts with the notion that there is matter where we can get sensations of touch, but not elsewhere. Then it gets puzzled by wind, breath, clouds, etc., whence it is led to the conception of "spirit" — I speak etymologically. After "spirit" has been replaced by "gas," there is a further stage, that of the aether.

Bertrand Russell