Spirit Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

It appears to me impossible that I should cease to exist, or that this active, restless spirit, equally alive to joy and sorrow, should only be organised dust — ready to fly abroad the moment the spring snaps, or the spark goes out which kept it together. Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable, and life is more than a dream.

Mary Wollstonecraft

Americans are generous and strong and decent, not because we believe in ourselves, but because we hold beliefs beyond ourselves. When this spirit of citizenship is missing, no government program can replace it. When this spirit is present, no wrong can stand against it.

If you strike at, imprison, or kill us, out of our prisons or graves we will still evoke a spirit that will thwart you, and perhaps, raise a force that will destroy you! We defy you! Do your worst!

Born in iniquity and conceived in sin, the spirit of nationalism has never ceased to bend human institutions to the service of dissension and distress.

Thorstein Veblen

The tender heart, the broken and contrite spirit, are to me far above all the joys that I could ever hope for in this vale of tears.

Individual ambition is undoubtedly a strong motive in student work, but there is such a thing among students everywhere as ambition for others, call it class spirit, esprit de corps, good fellowship, or good will to men.

Herbert Baxter Adams

I know times have been challenging, especially the last several months. The grief, sorrow, and pain. The worries and the struggles. But we've also witnessed your courage, your resilience, and the generosity of your spirit. For four years, you marched and organized for equality and justice, for our lives, and for our planet. And then, you voted. You delivered a clear message. You chose hope, unity, decency, science, and, yes, truth.

Ah! what avail the largest gifts of Heaven,
When drooping health and spirits go amiss?
How tasteless then whatever can be given!
Health is the vital principle of bliss,
And exercise, of health.

James Thomson (poet)

Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them.

In America all too few blows are struck into flesh. We kill the spirit here, we are experts at that. We use psychic bullets and kill each other cell by cell.

Also there is a similitude of a Trinity shining in the body, soul and spirit.

George Ripley (transcendentalist)

Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread.

God is a spirit. A spirit is as much matter as oxygen or hydrogen

I have found adventure in flying, in world travel, in business, and even close at hand... Adventure is a state of mind and spirit.

Jacqueline Cochran

There is something of the freshness of mind, of the lightness of spirit in Linne which for centuries has been linked in people's minds with the mountains of Sweden and Swedish joy in nature.

Johannes V. Jensen

The main factor in any form of creativeness is the life of a human spirit, that of the actor and his part, their joint feelings and subconscious creation.

Konstantin Stanislavski

If wrinkles must be written upon our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should not grow old.

James A. Garfield

The philosophic spirit of inquiry may be traced to brute curiosity, and that to the habit of examining all things in search of food. Artistic genius is an expansion of monkey imitativeness.

William Winwood Reade

To bare our souls is all we ask, to give all we have to life and the beings surrounding us. Here the nature spirits are intense and we appreciate them, make offerings to them - these nature spirits who call us here - sealing our fate with each other, celebrating our love.

Every human being has, like Socrates, an attendant spirit; and wise are they who obey its signals. If it does not always tell us what to do, it always cautions us what not to do.

Lydia Maria Child

The spirit is at home, if not entirely satisfied, in America.

Your heart is full of fertile seeds, waiting to sprout. Just as a lotus flower springs from the mire to bloom splendidly, the interaction of the cosmic breath causes the flower of the spirit to bloom and bear fruit in this world.

Morihei Ueshiba

The universal principle of etymology in all languages: words are carried over from bodies and from the properties of bodies to express the things of the mind and spirit. The order of ideas must follow the order of things.

Giambattista Vico

Henceforth I will look upon all things with love and I will be born again. I will love the sun for it warms my bones; yet I will love the rain for it cleanses my spirit. I will love the light for it shows me the way; yet I will love the darkness for it shows me the stars. I will welcome happiness because it enlarges my heart; yet I will endure sadness because it opens my soul. I will acknowledge rewards because they are my due; yet I will welcome obstacles because they are my challenge.
I will greet this day with love in my heart.

It is the duty of the followers of Islam to spread through the civilised world, a knowledge of what Islam means - its spirit and message.