Function Of Soul Quotes & Sayings

Now I am alone.
Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wanned,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing
For Hecuba!
What's Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba
That he should weep for her? What would he do
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appall the free ... Hamlet Act II, Scene II — William Shakespeare

The attainment of truth is then the function of both the intellectual parts of the soul. Therefore their respective virtues are those dispositions which will best qualify them to attain truth. — Aristotle.

A lot of people are dissatisfied with their jobs. "Theologian" Drew Carey said, "You hate your job? There's a support group for that. It's called everybody. They meet at the bar." A research group affiliated with the University of Chicago recently listed the ten least happy jobs in the world and the ten happiest jobs in the world. What they found was the ten least happy jobs actually were more financially lucrative and offered higher status than the ten happiest jobs. The difference? People in the happiest jobs had a higher sense of meaning. Less money, less status, but a higher sense of meaning. The main thing you bring home from your work is not a paycheck. The main thing you bring home from work is your soul. Work is a soul function. We're made to create value. The writer of Ecclesiastes says, "There is nothing better for a person than that he should make his soul enjoy good in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God. — John Ortberg

Your soul has a single basic function-the act of valuing. — Ayn Rand

There is only one purpose for all of life, and that is for you and all that lives to experience fullest glory ... everything else you say, think, or do is attendant to that function. There is nothing else for your soul to do, and nothing else your soul wants to do. — Neale Donald Walsch

Good science and good art are always about a condition of awe ... I don't think there is any other function for the poet or the scientist in the human tribe but the astonishment of the soul. — Derek Walcott

So, try to figure out a way to exit your role in the capitalist representation of the writer and his function in the literary community. The events you ritualistically attend and the collaborations you're expected to be part of, are they good for your soul? If they deaden you, exit. If you feel a weakening of the spirit, exit from anything they call literary community. You'll be better off alone. In other words you have to find yourself first. — Anis Shivani

Doing is a function of the body. Being is a function of the soul. The body is always doing something. Every minute of every day it's up to something. It never stops, it never rests, it's constantly doing something. — Neale Donald Walsch

We must see that consciousness is neither an isolated soul nor the mere function of a single nervous system, but of that totality of interrelated stars and galaxies which makes a nervous system possible. — Alan Watts

If we state the function of man to be a certain kind of life, and this to be an activity or actions of the soul implying a rational principle, and the function of a good man to be the good and noble performance of these, and if any action is well performed when it is performed in accordance with the appropriate excellence human good turns out to be activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, and if there are more than one virtue, in accordance with the best and most complete. — Aristotle.

There are dons who care for the intellect and the imagination, and there are priests who care for the spirit; but broadly speaking the function of universities and churches alike is to trim and tame enthusiasm, to suppress curiosity, and, in short, to whittle immortal souls into serviceable props of the established order. — Hugh Kingsmill

There is Soul within you and if you have the faith in It; everything in this world will be available to you. — Dada Bhagwan

When the organization called soul is free, moving and operative, initial as well as terminal, it is spirit. Qualities are both static, substantial, and transitive. Spirit quickens; it is not only alive, but spirit gives life. Animals are spirited, but man is a living spirit. He lives in his works and his works do follow him. Soul is form, spirit informs. It is the moving function of that of which soul is the substance. Perhaps the words soul and spirit are so heavily laden with traditional mythology and sophisticated doctrine that they must be surrendered; it may be impossible to recover for them in science and philosophy the realities designated in idiomatic speech. But the realities are there, by whatever names they be called. — John Dewey

it seems to me that, on balance, soul/body dualism has been the enemy of compassion. For instance, the moral stigma that still surrounds disorders of mood and cognition seems largely the result of viewing the mind as distinct from the brain. When the pancreas fails to produce insulin, there is no shame in taking synthetic insulin to compensate for its lost function. — Sam Harris

But what is happiness? If we consider what the function of man is, we find that happiness is a virtuous activity of the soul. — Aristotle.

No one with a body full of aliments can have a luminous soul and other intellectual faculties. It is necessary to care for the body if we wish the spirit to function normally. — Michael Servetus

I see it as my duty to stimulate reflection on what is essentially human and eternal in each individual soul, and which all too often a person will pass by, even though his fate lies in his hands. He is too busy chasing after phantoms and bowing down to idols. In the end, everything can be reduced to the one simple element which is all a person can count upon in his existence: the capacity to love. That element can grow within the soul to become the supreme factor which determines the meaning of a person's life. My function is to make whoever sees my films aware of his need to love and to give his love, and aware that beauty is summoning him. — Andrei Tarkovsky

Thus science strips off, one after the other, the more or less gross materialisations by which we endeavour to form an objective image of the soul, till men of science, speculating, in their non-scientific intervals, like other men on what science may possibly lead to, have prophesied that we shall soon have to confess that the soul is nothing else than a function of certain complex material systems. — James Clerk Maxwell

I realized the true function of a lawyer was to unite parties riven asunder. The lesson was so indelibly burnt into me that a large part of my time during the twenty years of my practice as a lawyer was occupied in bringing about private compromises of hundreds of cases. I lost nothing thereby
not even money, certainly not my soul. — Mahatma Gandhi

The name of happiness is but a wider termfor the unalloy'd conditions of the Pleasur of Life,attendant on all function, and not to be deny'dto th' soul, unless forsooth in our thought of naturespiritual is by definition unnatural. — Robert Bridges

The allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as an example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good. — Andrei Tarkovsky

Then the highest state of love is prayerfulness. In prayerfulness there is communion. In sex there is the I/it relationship, in love the I/thou relationship. Martin Buber stops there; his Judaic tradition won't allow him to go further. But one step more has to be taken that is neither 'I' nor 'thou' - a relationship where I and thou disappear, a relationship where two persons no longer function as two but function as one. A tremendous unity, a harmony, a deep accord - two bodies but one soul. That is the highest quality of love. I call it prayerfulness. — Rajneesh

The function of the artist is to disturb. His duty is to arouse the sleeper, to shake the complacent pillars of the world.In a world terrified of change, he preaches revolution-the principle of life. He is an agitator, a disturber of the peace-quick, impatient, positive, restless and disquieting. He is the creative spirit of life working in the the soul of man. — Norman Bethune

The function of violence is to obtain reform by external means, the function of passive resistance, that is, soul-force, is to obtain it by growth from within, which, in its turn, is obtained by self-suffering, self-purification. — Mahatma Gandhi

It is a fact that the human heart differs from all other species. While its function to the body is the same of all animals, its participation with human soul is both rhapsodic and fatal. -Rose — Kristen Heitzmann

That Spanish woman who lived three hundred years ago, was certainly not the last of her kind. Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet and sank unwept into oblivion. With dim lights and tangled circumstance they tried to shape their thought and deed in noble agreement; but after all, to common eyes their struggles seemed mere inconsistency and formlessness; for these later-born Theresas were helped by no coherent social faith and order which could perform the function of knowledge for the ardently willing soul. Their ardor alternated between a vague ideal and the common yearning of womanhood; so that the one was disapproved as extravagance, and the other condemned as a lapse. — George Eliot

The law of gratitude is universal. It is a natural function of the soul. All things upon this earth or in the universe operate and respond to love and praise. — Robert Scheid

When there is no overt [outward] or subtle inner restlessness, it is indeed the state of internal peace. If the chit (inner component of knowledge and vision) concentrates on the external, inner peace breaks down. It is because of the external focus that this world has arisen. — Dada Bhagwan

Why? Why was it that in cases of real love the one who is left does not more often follow the beloved by suicide? Only because the living must bury the dead? Because of the measured rites that must be fulfilled after a death? Because it is as though the one who is left steps for a time upon a stage and each second swells to an unlimited amount of time and he id watched by many eyes? Because there is a function he must carry out? Or perhaps, when there is love, the widowed must stay for the resurrection of the beloved - so that the one who has gone is not really dead, but grows and is created for a second time in the soul of the living? Why? — Carson McCullers

It is thinkable to think that A is not-A; to reverse this is but to revert to the normal. Yet by forcing the brain to accept propositions of which one set is absurdity, the other truism, a new function of the brain is established. Vague and mysterious and all indefinite are the contents of this new consciousness; yet they are somehow vital. Unreason becomes experience. This lifts the leaden-footed Soul to the Experience of THAT of which Reason is the blasphemy. But without that Experience these words are the Lies of a Looby. — Aleister Crowley

Storytelling, you know, has a real function. The process of the storytelling is itself a healing process, partly because you have someone there who is taking the time to tell you a story that has great meaning to them. They're taking the time to do this because your life could use some help, but they don't want to come over and just give advice. They want to give it to you in a form that becomes inseparable from your whole self. That's what stories do. Stories differ from advice in that, once you get them, they become a fabric of your whole soul. That is why they heal you."

~Alice Walker, in an interview about her work in Common Boundary, 1990 — Alice Walker

The first question here, then, is not "What is best for my soul?" nor is it even "What is most useful to humanity?" But-transcending both these limited aims-what function must this life fulfill in the great and secret economy of God? — Evelyn Underhill

The virtue of a faculty is related to the special function which that faculty performs. Now there are three elements in the soul which control action and the attainment of truth: namely, Sensation, Intellect, and Desire. Of these, Sensation never originates action, as is shown by the fact that animals have sensation but are not capable of action. — Aristotle.

Happiness is a quality of the soul ... not a function of one's material circumstances. — Aristotle.

What is the nature of the Self (Soul)? To 'see' the dharma (function) of everything, to see 'who is performing what function, and how that function is being performed.' To 'see' it, is called the function of the Self (Soul). — Dada Bhagwan

A Soul Knowing: You are the sum total of the Body, Mind, and Soul, and each of these aspects of you has a purpose and a function, but only one has an agenda: the Soul. — Neale Donald Walsch

Perhaps the best function of parenthood is to teach the young creature to love with safety, so that it may be able to venture unafraid when later emotion comes; the thwarting of the instinct to love is the root of all sorrow and not sex only but divinity itself is insulted when it is repressed. To disapprove, to condemn the human soul shrivels under barren righteousness. — Freya Stark

The function of music is to liberate in the soul those feelings which normally we keep locked up in the heart. — Sebastian Faulks

Why ... do the myths of America the Hateful take such powerful hold? Because anti-Americanism provides a useful emotional function which goes beyond logic and reaches deep into the darker recesses of the European soul. In centuries past those on the Left who wished to personalise their hatred of capitalism, who sought to make it emotionally resonant by fastening an envious political passion on to a blameless scapegoat people, embraced anti-Semitism. It was the socialism of fools. Which is what anti-Americanism is now. — Michael Gove

I'd more than missed him, I needed him. It wasn't a dependency, it wasn't a weakness or a failure, he was an addition to my very soul. And I laughed into our kiss as I realized that this was what love was. I could live without him, of course I could, and I could function and get on with my days if he wasn't here, but I didn't want to. I wanted him right where he was, in my space and in my life. — Shelly Crane

But a spiritual fever, like a physical fever, actually has a productive function: it burns up disease. Think of your pain as a feverish burning up of fear. As you heal physically, extreme fever can lead to delirium. And as you heal spiritually, your fever can lead to delirium as well - a quiet delirium of the soul. But this too shall pass. — Marianne Williamson

Before all it's necessary to look after the Soul, if you want the head and the rest of the body to function correctly. — Plato

Man is not distinguished from [the animals] by a special kind of soul, or by any peculiar and exclusive psychic function, but only by a higher degree of psychic activity, a superior stage of development. — Ernst Haeckel

Gods, like humans," he said, "are order imposed on chaos. With humans, the imposition is easy to see. Millions of cells, long twisted chains of atoms, so much bone and blood and juice, every piece performing its function. When one of those numberless pumps refuses to beat, when one of those infinitesimal pipes gets blocked, all the pent-up chaos springs forward like a bent sword, and the soul is lost to the physical world unless something catches it first. — Max Gladstone

Hostage? She's holding me hostage. She has my guts in her hands. I don't care about the company, I care about her. She's my life, do you understand? Have you ever loved a woman? Have you ever held her at night so tight because you couldn't sleep thinking something might happen to her? Have you ever built a future around a woman? Ever thought of every tomorrow, every year, every decade with her? Dreamed of your old age holding her hand? I can only function with her in my life. I can only breathe if I know she's there. I gave her my fucking soul and she threw it away. Months ago, maybe years ago. She made a decision to throw me away. She's prepared for this divorce, and I'm swinging in the wind. Raw. With nothing. No defenses. Now what am I supposed to do?" I stood and threw my coat over my shoulders. "This is not about money. It's not about some publishing company. Not for me. If I don't do this, I have no chance of recovery. I'm as good as dead." ~Adam — C.D. Reiss

All goes to show that the soul in man is not an organ, but animates and exercises all the organs; is not a function, like the power of memory, of calculation, of comparison, but uses these as hands and feet; is not a faculty, but a light, is not the intellect or the will, but the master of the intellect and the will; is the background of our being, in which they lie,
an immensity not possessed and that cannot be possessed. — Ralph Waldo Emerson