Spirit Quotes

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There is one living spirit prevalent over this world, (subject to certain contingencies of organic matter & chiefly heat), which assumes a multitude of forms each having acting principle according to subordinate laws. — There is one thinking sensible principle (intimately allied to one kind of organic matter—have & which thinking principle seems to be given a assumed according to a more extended relations of the individuals, whereby choice with memory or reason? is necessary—which is modified into endless forms bearing a close relation in degree & kind to the endless forms of the living beings.

No man has greater confidence than I have in the spirit of the people, to a rational extent. Whatever they can, they will.

Thomas Jefferson

No greater blessing could come to our land today than a revival of the spirit of religion. I doubt if there is any problem in the world today -- social, political, or economic -- that would not find happy solution if approached in the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Ah, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever! Let the bell toll!-a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river; And, Guy de Vere, hast thou no tear?-weep now or nevermore!

Edgar Allan Poe

Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned,
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
Thou com'st in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee: I'll call thee Hamlet,
King, father; royal Dane, O! answer me.

William Shakespeare

The strongest wind cannot stagger a Spirit; it is a Spirit's breath. A just man's purpose cannot be split on any Grampus or material rock, but itself will split rocks till it succeeds.

Henry David Thoreau

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 After "spirit" has been replaced by "gas," there is a further stage, that of the aether.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

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.

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

A bat is beautifully soft and silky; I do not know any creature that is pleasanter to the touch or is more grateful for caressings, if offered in the right spirit.

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

Yet time and space are but inverse measures of the force of the soul. The spirit sports with time.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

And for all his life it would be kindness and love that made him cry, never pain or persecution, which on the contrary only reinforced his spirit and his resolution.

I believe that uncertainty is really my spirit's way of whispering, "I'm in flux. I can't decide for you. Something is off-balance here."

The spirit of the individual is determined by his dominating thought habits.

A people... who are possessed of the spirit of commerce, who see and who will pursue their advantages may achieve almost anything.

George Washington

Vain are the beliefs and teachings that make man miserable, and false is the goodness that leads him into sorrow and despair, for it is man's purpose to be happy on this earth and lead the way to felicity and preach its gospel wherever he goes. He who does not see the kingdom of heaven in this life will never see it in the coming life. We came not into this life by exile, but we came as innocent creatures of God, to learn how to worship the holy and eternal spirit and seek the hidden secrets within ourselves from the beauty of life. This is the truth which I have learned from the teachings of the Nazarene.

Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The quality and spirit of our own society must justify and support our efforts abroad.

John F. Kennedy

There is little of the true philosophic spirit in Aquinas. He does not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the argument may lead.

Bertrand Russell

Personally I do not believe in a national agency devoted only to the negro blind because in spirit and principle I am against all segregation, and the blind already have difficulties enough without being cramped and harassed by social barriers.

No, in country money, the country scale of gain,
The requisite lift of spirit has never been found....