Sermon quotes on the soul
Augustine of Hippo
Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul.
Augustine of Hippo
Take care of your body as if you were going to live forever; and take care of your soul as if you were going to die tomorrow.
Augustine of Hippo
O Lord my God,
tell me what you are to me.
Say to my soul,
I am your salvation.
Say it so that I can hear it.
My heart is listening, Lord;
open the ears of my heart
and say to my soul,
I am your salvation.
Let me run toward this voice
and seize hold of you.
Do not hide your face from me:
let me die so that I may see it,
Prayers from the Confessions
Henry Ward Beecher
Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul.
Henry Ward Beecher
Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul.
Stephen Charnock
This boundless desire had not its original from man itself; nothing would render itself restless; something above the bounds of this world implanted those desires after a higher good, and made him restless in everything else. And since the soul can only rest is something infinite, there is something infinite for it to rest in.
Francis De Sales
Several times during the day, but especially in the morning and evening, ask yourself for a moment if you have your soul in your hands or if some passion or fit of anxiety has robbed you of it…. If you have gone astray, quietly bring your soul back to the presence of God, subjecting all your affections and desires to the obedience and direction of His Divine Will.
Introduction to a Devout Life
Emily Dickinson
Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.
Frederick Douglass
The soul that is within me no man can degrade.
Henry Drummond
So cultivate the soul that all its powers will open out to God, and in beholding God be drawn away from sin.
Alexandre Dumas
There are two ways of seeing: with the body and with the soul. The body’s sight can sometimes forget, but the soul remembers forever.
Jonathan Edwards
Every saint in heaven is as a flower in the garden of God, and holy love is the fragrance and sweet odor that they all send forth, and with which they fill the bowers of that paradise above. Every soul there is as a note in some concert of delightful music that sweetly harmonizes with every other note, and all together blend in the most rapturous strains in praising God and the Lamb forever.
Francois Fenelon
Peace does not dwell in outward things, but within the soul.
P.T. Forsythe
The first duty of every soul is to find not its freedom but its Master.
Victor Hugo
There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.
Les Misérables, Carleton Press.
C.S. Lewis
You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.
James Merritt
There is a spiritual hunger in the human heart and an eternal hunger in the human soul that can never be satisfied with anything other than Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life.
52 Weeks with Jesus, Harvest House Publishers.
Hannah More
The soul on earth is an immortal guest, compelled to starve at an unreal feast; a pilgrim panting for the rest to come; an exile, anxious for his native home.
John Newton
A soul may be in as thriving a state when thirsting, seeking and mourning after the Lord as when actually rejoicing in Him; as much in earnest when fighting in the valley as when singing upon the mount.
Blaise Pascal
Kind words produce their own image in men’s souls; and a beautiful image it is. They soothe and quiet and comfort the hearer. They shame him out of his sour, morose, unkind feelings. We have not yet begun to use kind words in such abundance as they ought to be used.
Richard Plass
The soul’s first task is to learn to trust, because our capacity to trust is our capacity to love and be loved, to give and to receive.
The Relational Soul: Moving from False Self to Deep Connection, InterVarsity Press.
Marcel Proust
Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
Pleasures and Days: and Other Writings
Edna St. Vincent Millay
The soul can split the sky in two and let the face of God shine through.
Theophan the Recluse
A soul untried by sorrows is good for nothing.
Teresa of Avila
The soul of the just man is but a paradise, in which, God tells us, He takes His delight. What do you imagine, must that dwelling be in which a King so mighty, so wise, and so pure, containing in Himself all good, can delight to rest? Nothing can be compared to the great beauty and capabilities of a soul; however keen our intellects may be, they are as unable to comprehend them as to comprehend God, for, as He told us, He created us in his own image and likeness.
The Interior Castle: or the Mansions, 2011, p.32, TAN Books.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
It is God’s earth out of which man is taken. From it he has his body. His body belongs to his essential being. Man’s body is not his prison, his shell his exterior, but man himself. Man does not “have” a body; he does not “have” a soul; rather he “is” body and soul. Man in the beginning is really his body. He is one. He is his body, as Christ is completely his body, as the Church is the body of Christ”
P.T. Forsythe
The first duty of every soul is to find not its freedom but its Master.
George Wharton James
But silence speaks of solitude, and to some persons there is an oppressive sense of sadness wherever human beings are absent. Solitude is so awful to them. . . . Some men flee to solitude through bitterness of spirit, through hatred of the world, because of disappointment, blight, or sorrow. Others go because in the vastness of the desert the spirit finds freedom and enlargement, and hence, peace.
Parker Palmer
The soul is like a wild animal—tough, resilient, resourceful, savvy, self-sufficient. It knows how to survive in hard places. But it is also shy. Just like a wild animal, it seeks safety in the dense underbrush. If we want to see a wild animal, we know that the last thing we should do is go crashing through the woods yelling for it to come out. But if we will walk quietly into the woods, sit patiently by the base of the tree, and fade into our surroundings, the wild animal we seek might put in an appearance.
Michael Wear
Politics is causing great spiritual harm and a big reason for that is people are going to politics to have their inner needs met. Politics does a poor job of meeting inner needs, but politicians will suggest they can do it if it will get them votes. The state of our politics is a reflection of the state of our souls.
Stephen W. Smith
We can prostitute our very souls in our attempts to be successful. We can sell out, cave in and go morally bankrupt chasing the god of success. Knowing this perilous potential, Jesus himself warns us that we can lose our souls by too much gaining, saying, “What kind of deal is it to get everything you want but lose yourself? What could you ever trade your soul for?” (Matthew 16:26). It is no deal at all to lose our soul in striving after the goddess of success. In doing so we pay the ultimate price—a price we do not, in fact, need to pay.
Taken from Inside Job by Stephen W. Smith (c) 2009 by Stephen W. Smith. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Vincent van Gogh
I prefer painting people’s eyes to cathedrals. For there is something in the eyes that is not in the cathedral, however solemn and imposing the latter may be — a human soul, be it that of a poor beggar or of a street walker, is more interesting to me.
Vincent van Gogh
I prefer painting people’s eyes to cathedrals. For there is something in the eyes that is not in the cathedral, however solemn and imposing the latter may be — a human soul, be it that of a poor beggar or of a street walker, is more interesting to me.
John O’Donohue
When we devote no time to the inner life, we lose the habit of soul. If we fail to acquaint ourselves with soul, we will remain strangers in our own lives.
Gilbert Highet
The real duty of man is not to extend his power or multiply his wealth beyond his needs, but to enrich and enjoy his imperishable possession: his soul.
Mark Twain
Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.
Following the Equator (1897)
Still Looking for inspiration?
Consider checking out our illustrations page on the Soul.