Genuine Soul Quotes & Sayings

His platform includes a prolife agenda, for instance, which "values the sanctity of every human soul," and also "believes in the greatness of the American family." The word family, on his glossy-but-down-home webpage in its hues of red, white and blue, is a code for you, where you also means right, deserving, genuine and better than those others, you know, the ones who aren't you. — Lydia Millet

... It is immensely moving when a mature man - no matter whether old or young in years - is aware of a responsibility with heart and soul. He then acts by following an ethic of responsibility and somewhere reaches the point where he says: 'Here I stand; I can do no other'. That is something genuinely human and moving. And every one of us who is not spiritually dead must realize the possibility of finding himself at some time in that position. In so far as this is true, an ethic of ultimate ends and an ethic of responsibility are not absolute contrasts but rather supplements, which only in unison constitute a genuine man - a man who can have the 'calling for politics'. — Max Weber

You are right, Steppenwolf, a thousand times right, and yet you must perish. You are far too demanding, too hungry for today's straightforward, cosy world, satisfied as it is with so little. You have one dimension too many for its liking, so it will spit you out. It is impossible for anyone wishing to live and enjoy life in today's world to be like you or me. It is no home, this fine world, for people like us who, instead of nonsensical noise, demand music; instead of pleasure, joy; instead of money, soul; instead of industrial production, genuine labour; instead of frivolity, genuine passion ... — Anonymous

Genuine laughing is the vent of the soul, the nostrils of the heart, and just as necessary for health and happiness as spring water is for a trout. — Josh Billings

God does not exist, as neither does our hereafter, that second bogey being as easily disposed of as the first. Indeed, imagine yourself just dead - and suddenly wide awake in Paradise where, wreathed in smiles, your dear dead welcome you.
Now tell me, please, what guarantee do you possess that those beloved ghosts are genuine; that it is really your dear dead mother and not some petty demon mystifying you, masked as your mother and impersonating her with consummate art and naturalness? There is the rub, there is the horror; the more so as the acting will go on and on, endlessly; never, never, never, never, never will your soul in that other world be quite sure that the sweet gentle spirits crowding about it are not fiends in disguise, and forever, and forever, and forever shall your soul remain in doubt, expecting every moment some awful change, some diabolical sneer to disfigure the dear face bending over you. — Vladimir Nabokov

More than food and shelter, the disabled crave love and compassion. They need to feel wanted. There is an Indian saying, "Not wealth, not food, but a little genuine comforting oomph can breathe life into a dead person." Caring and comforting love can heal the soul. It takes unconditional love to offer such comfort and care. — Bhupendra O. Khatri

The worst thing is to feel that as a photographer I'm benefiting from someone else's tragedy. This idea haunts me. It's something I have to reckon with every day, because I know that if I ever allow genuine compassion to be overtaken by personal ambition, I will have sold my soul. The only way I can justify my role is to have respect for the other person's predicament. The extent to which I do that is the extent to which I become accepted by the other and to that extent I can accept myself. — James Nachtwey

There are many excellent guitar players but I have to say Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton are still at the top! There are many imitators but very few genuine articles. There is so much more to playing than a fast blur of notes, like feeling and emotion from the soul. It's like punctuating a sentence and knowing when to lay back and not fill up all the space. Those are the things I tried to teach my son Tim when he began playing. — Merrell Fankhauser

I am not a Christian or a Jew or a Mohammedan, a Mormon, Polygamist, Homosexual, Anarchist or Boxer ... I do not believe that, in order to be religious in the good and genuine sense of the word, one has to ruin one's love life and has to become rigid and shrunken in body and soul. I know that what you call "God" actually exists, but in a different way from what you think: as the primal cosmic energy in the universe, as your love in your body, as your honesty and your feeling of nature in you and around you. — Wilhelm Reich

Regard as free not those whose status makes them outwardly free, but those who are free in their character and conduct. For we should not call men truly free when they are wicked and dissolute, since they are slaves to worldly passions. Freedom and happiness of soul consist in genuine purity and detachment from transitory things. — Anthony The Great

I do not believe that, in order to be religious in the good and genuine sense of the word, one has to ruin one's love life and has to become rigid and shrunken in body and soul. — Wilhelm Reich

Solomon resumes talking to

the envoys of Sheba: "Go back and tell her what you have seen, how the rare substance she

thinks we value can be scraped up anywhere as soil. Tell her the elaborate throne she loves

looks more like a bandage over a hurt place. We admire Ibrahim, who left his kingdom so

quickly. With us, one genuine kneeling down in total humility would buy hundreds

of governments. Our currency is an eagerness to accept the gift of soul change. Nothing

else. Sheba's sumptuous life is just a hole in the ground with children playing in it,

pretending to be kings and prime ministers. We perform reverse alchemy, transmuting

gold mines into abandoned sites! — Jalaluddin Rumi

Honesty is proportional to clarity of soul and brightness of consciousness. Being honest allows your soul to be clear and your consciousness to be bright. Genuine honesty, therefore, is not for winning recognition from others, but for getting recognition from ourselves and for recognizing our conscience within. Honesty makes us honorable in our own eyes. — Ilchi Lee

Only a woman can carry in her body an eternal being which bears the very image of God. Only she is the recipient of the miracle of life. Only a woman can conceive and nurture this life using her own flesh and blood, and then deliver a living soul into the world. God has bestowed upon her alone a genuine miracle - the creation of life, and the fusing of an eternal soul with mortal flesh. This fact alone establishes the glory of motherhood.
Despite the most creative plans of humanist scientists and lawmakers to redefine the sexes, no man will ever conceive and give birth to a child. The fruitful womb is a holy gift given by God to women alone. This is one reason why the office of wife and mother is the highest calling to which a woman can aspire.
This is the reason why nations that fear the Lord esteem and protect mothers. They glory in the distinctions between men and women, and attempt to build cultures in which motherhood is honored and protected. — Douglas W. Phillips

All social intercourse between human beings is a response of personality to personality, grading upward from the most casual brush between man and man to the fullest, most intimate communion of which the human soul is capable. Religion, so far as it is genuine, is in essence the response of created personalities to the Creating Personality, God. This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. — A.W. Tozer

I'd rather be befriended as an aimless lost soul than be befriended for adornment, gain or goal. — Donna Lynn Hope

Where do you find hope, and in what shape or form does it rest?
I say to you now that absolute and genuine hope is found only in Christ Jesus. He is never far way and always within your grasp. He expects you to seek Him, but when you do He is quickly found. Only upon your discovery of Christ will you recognize the desperate condition of your soul, and through glorious and supernatural revelation comprehend that it was this living Hope who graciously discovered and delivered you. — Cheryl Zelenka

The Cameroonian soul is genuine. It is noble, and it embodies humanism. — Janvier Chouteu-Chando

A certain kind of courage is required to follow what truly calls to us; why else would so many choose to live within false certainties and pretensions of security? If genuine treasures were easy to find this world would be a different place. If the path of dreams were easy to walk or predictable to follow many more would go that route. The truth is that most prefer the safer paths in life even if they know that their souls are called another way. — Michael Meade

It was funny, what friendship meant in Rebecca's world. It mainly meant lunch, twice a year, and the occasional dinner party, except for Dorothea, who was an old school friend, a genuine friend. Rebecca had realized, ruefully, that she should have made more friends in school; they seemed to be the only ones women really talked to honestly because the shared history meant fewer lies were available to them. With the others shared meals had become a substitute for intimacy, but not the kind of substitute that allowed for dark nights of the soul, calls at 1:00 A.M., tears and drinking and despair in pajamas. — Anna Quindlen

Stone knew more about Death than most. He knew of delusions that could plague the soul at such a time. It was a time of transition, consciousness shifted dimensions and delusions were common. He knew of the nature of reality, the impermanence of perception, and he was not perturbed, at least not completely. This delusion was sweet and genuine and urged him to follow his soul's purpose. — Shradhdha. S

I didn't really know Kurt that well, but there was a guy I always admired. We didn't spend much time together, but the few times we did spend together, you know, were times I'll always remember. You know, he was a really sweet guy, and a really genuine soul, you know, and an incredibly talented artist. — Jerry Cantrell

A genuine fast cleanses the body, mind and soul. It crucifies the flesh and to that extent sets the soul free. — Mahatma Gandhi

A heart has its multiple facets of daily music. Respect a genuine good heart. — Angelica Hopes

It was such an unexpected and genuine smile that if I only had a soul I'm sure I would have felt quite guilty. — Jeff Lindsay

Nothing beats having a genuine compassion for human souls. If there is one thing I know, it's that people want to be acknowledged; they want to be heard; and above all, they want to be appreciated. — Sasha Azevedo

To every person who has never experienced genuine love and kindness, may you still have the strength to find the love and light that exists within your soul to give, thrive, and shine. — Leta B.

These seem to me so ambiguous, so vague, so easily misunderstood in comparison to genuine music, which fills the soul with a thousand things better than words. — Felix Mendelssohn

After days of feasting, fast.
After days of sleeping, stay awake one night.
After these times of bitter storytelling, joking,
and serious considerations, we should give ourselves
two days between layers of baklava in the quiet seclusion
where soul sweetens and thrives more than with language.

I hear nothing in my ear but your voice.
Heart has plundered mind of its eloquence.

Love writes a transparent calligraphy, so on
the empty page my soul can read and recollect.

Which is worth more, a crowd of thousands,
or your own genuine solitude?
Freedom, or power over an entire nation?

A little while alone in your room
will prove more valuable than anything else
that could ever be given you.

Rumi, Two days of silence — Jalaluddin Rumi

The downside, of course, is that over time religions become encrusted with precepts and ideas that are the antithesis of soul, as each faith tries to protect its doctrines and institution instead of nurturing the evolution of consciousness. If one is not careful to distinguish the genuine insights of a religion from its irrelevant accretions, one can go through life following an inappropriate moral compass. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Every soul seeks happiness, Socrates believes, and there is a clearly defined path to achieving happiness, though many don't choose to take it. The only people who are truly happy are those who are virtuous and wise, who live reflective, "examined" lives and strive to behave rightly and justly in every area of their lives. These people create souls that are good, wise, and courageous and as a result they achieve genuine and lasting happiness. — Pearson

The Romans construed Jesus Chris's crucifixion as a defeat, but what do we have today? Christianity triumphed. Jesus Christ never betrayed himself, he never betrayed his mission and he never corrupted the ideas that God wants us to live by. The Cameroonian soul is genuine. It is noble, and it embodies humaneness. There is no reason to try to kill it because it will triumph ultimately. — Janvier Chouteu-Chando

Free will exists so free will can be given up freely. Such a person feels

no genuine delight if he or she is not drained empty. With all the delicious food and drink

in the world, true pleasure comes only with the extinction of pleasure and its replacement by

soul delight.

Those who have gone through fana into baqa, through annihilation into

that which has always been, become all body and all consciousness. With dissolving

begins some overwhelming joy. — Jalaluddin Rumi

Because I believe that love is an overwhelming, all-consuming force, and when its genuine you can't really ignore it. No matter how long it takes. It knocks down your door by force. It keeps you awake at night. It plagues your thoughts and burns your soul. — Jessica Thompson

A genuine odyssey is not about piling up experiences. It is a deeply felt, risky, unpredictable tour of the soul. — Thomas Moore

Positive vibrations and a genuine smile on your lips can heal the most distraught soul. — Sanchita Pandey

States of soul rightly expressed, as the poet expresses them in moments of pure inspiration, retain forever the power of creating like states. It is this that makes genuine literature a vital force. — John Lancaster Spalding

One could accept Muhammad as a genuine mystic - just as one could accept Joan of Arc's voices as having genuinely been heard by her, or the revelations of Saint John the Divine as being that troubled soul's 'real' experiences - without needing also to accept that, had one been standing next to the Prophet of Islam on Mount Hira that day, one would also have seen the Archangel. — Salman Rushdie

Like imperfect sleep which, instead of giving more strength to the head, doth but leave it the more exhausted, the result of mere operations of the imagination is but to weaken the soul. Instead of nourishment and energy she reaps only lassitude and disgust: whereas a genuine heavenly vision yields to her a harvest of ineffable spiritual riches, and an admirable renewal of bodily strength. I alleged these reasons to those who so often accused my visions of being the work of the enemy of mankind and the sport of my imagination ... . I showed them the jewels which the divine hand had left with me: - they were my actual dispositions. — William James

The inner boy in a messed-up family may keep on being shamed, invaded, disappointed, and paralyzed for years and years. "I am a victim," he says, over and over; and he is. But that very identification with victimhood keeps the soul house open and available for still more invasions. Most American men today do not have enough awakened or living warriors inside to defend their soul houses. And most people, men or women, do not know what genuine outward or inward warriors would look like, or feel like. — Robert Bly

I've never seen myself as a pop singer. I grew up listening to gospel, soul and rock. My approach to pop is that, when I was doing my album, I wanted to have raw, genuine lyrics, but wanted it to be easy to process. — Tori Kelly

The process of self-healing is the privilege of every being. Self-healing is not a miracle, nor is self-healing a dramatization of the personality as though you could do something superior. Self-healing is a genuine process of the relationship between the physical and the infinite power of the soul. — Harbhajan Singh Yogi

Genuine asceticism for finding one's own soul and for the good of humanity is worthy of reverence. — Rama Swami

Genuine religion is not about speculating about God or the soul or about what happened in the past or will happen in the future; it cares only about one thing finding out exactly what should or should not be done in this lifetime. — Leo Tolstoy

Genuine sorrows are very tranquil in appearance in the deep bed they have dug for themselves. But, seeming to slumber, they corrode the soul like that frightful acid which penetrates crystal. — Honore De Balzac

Humility does not disturb or disquiet or agitate, however great it may be; it comes with peace, delight, and calm ... The pain of genuine humility doesn't agitate or afflict the soul; rather, this humility expands it and enables it to serve God more. — Teresa Of Avila

Saudade is presented as the key feeling of the Portuguese soul. The word comes from the Latin plural solitates, "solitudes," but its derivation was influenced by the idea and sonority of the Latin salvus, "in good health," "safe." A long tradition that goes back to the origins of Lusophone language, to the thirteenth-century cantiga d'amigo, has repeatedly explored, in literature and philosophy, the special feeling of a people that has always looked beyond its transatlantic horizons. Drawn from a genuine suffering of the soul, saudade became, for philosophical speculation, particularly suitable for expressing the relationship of the human condition to temporality, finitude, and the infinite. — Barbara Cassin

But if it is love, real love, then I want them to find each other. Because I believe that love is an overwhelming, all-consuming force, and when it's genuine you can't really ignore it. No matter how long it takes. It knocks down your door by force. It keeps you awake at night. It plagues your thoughts and burn your soul. If it is love, they won't need me at all. By telling my daughter that the man of her dreams loves her too, would I not be getting in the way? Meddling with fate? — Jessica Thompson

Visionary feminism is a wise and loving politics. It is rooted in the love of male and female being, refusing to privilege one over the other. The soul of feminist politics is the commitment to ending patriarchal domination of women and men, girls and boys. Love cannot exist in any relationship that is based on domination and coercion. Males cannot love themselves in patriarchal culture if their very self-definition relies on submission to patriarchal rules. When men embrace feminist thinking and preactice, which emphasizes the value of mutual growth and self-actualization in all relationships, their emotional well-being will be enhanced. A genuine feminist politics always brings us from bondage to freedom, from lovelessness to loving. — Bell Hooks

Saloons provide moments of genuine ecstasy - but only if your soul is at peace and the rest of your life bears contemplating. Otherwise, they are palaces of misery. — Wilfrid Sheed

Zenia has stolen something from him, the one thing he always kept safe before, from all women, even from Roz. Call it his soul. She slipped it out of his breast pocket when he wasn't looking, easy as rolling a drunk, and looked at it, and bit it to see if it was genuine, and sneered at it for being so small after all, and then tossed it away, because she's the kind of woman who wants what she doesn't have and gets what she wants and then despises what she gets. What — Margaret Atwood

And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don't have genuine souls. — Gillian Flynn

Insight into soul-action, ability to discriminate the genuine from the sham and capacity to further one and discourage the other. — John Dewey

Caring for the soul requires that we be fully present in situations we cannot control and patient as a genuine meaning and a direction unfold. It means seeing familiar things in new ways, listening rather than speaking, learning from patients rather than teaching them, and cultivating the capacity to be amazed. It means recognizing the power of our own humanity to make a difference in the lives of others and valuing it as highly as our expertise. Finally, it means discovering that health care is a front-row seat on mystery and sitting in that seat with open eyes. — Christina M. Puchalski

God welcomes genuine service, and that is the service of a soul that offers the bare and simple sacrifice of truth; but from false service, the mere display of material wealth, He turns away. — Philo

If there is a true measure of a person's soul, if there is a single gauge of real divinity, of how beautifully a fellow human honors this life, has genuine spiritual fire and is full of honest love and compassion, it has to be right there, in the eyes.
The Dalai Lama's eyes sparkle and dance with laughter and unbridled love. The Pope's eyes are dark and glazed, bleak as obsidian marbles. Pat Robertson's eyes are rheumy and hollow, like tiny potholes of old wax. Goldman Sachs cretins, well, they don't use their own eyes at all; they just steal someone else's. — Mark Morford

We are all hungry for genuine connection and caring, and we will not get this unless we find our Soul's tribe.

If we don't find this, we'll kill ourselves, either by finding an addiction to mask the pain or by ignoring what we need to stay healthy. — Christiane Northrup

Rather than seek to be squired and dated by their rivals why should it not be possible for women to find relaxation and pleasure in the company of their 'inferiors'? They would need to shed their desperate need to admire a man, and accept the gentler role of loving him. A learned woman cannot castrate a truck-driver like she can her intellectual rival, because he has no exaggerated respect for her bookish capacities. The alternative to conventional education is not stupidity, and many a clever girl needs the corrective of a humbler soul's genuine wisdom. — Germaine Greer

When a tree is polled, it will sprout new shoots nearer its roots. A soul that is ruined in the bud will frequently return to the springtime of its beginnings and its promise-filled childhood, as though it could discover new hopes there and retie the broken threads of life. The shoots grow rapidly and eagerly, but it is only a sham life that will never be a genuine tree. — Hermann Hesse

Every genuine confession humbles the soul. When it takes the form of thanksgiving, it teaches the soul that it has been delivered by the grace of God. — Maximus The Confessor

We hope to help you discover Your Self; inspire you to live more passionate and sensitive life; helping you listen to your Soul, finding your-own space in this matrix of life, making a genuine contribution to humanity. — Natasa Nuit Pantovic

In the end, what we fear will not go away, for it indicates what we must go through in order to awaken, become more genuine, and live more fully. The problem is that we tend to be most afraid of what our own souls require of us. Often our deepest fear is that we might become who we are intended to be, who we already are at our core. For becoming who we truly are requires the greatest amount of change. — Michael Meade

The difference between genuine poetry and the poetry of Dryden, Pope, and all their school, is briefly this: their poetry is conceived and composed in their wits, genuine poetry is conceived and composed in the soul. — Matthew Arnold

The great anxious focus on the minutiae of appetite - on calories and portion size and what's going into the body versus what's being expended, on shoes and hair and abs of steel - keeps the larger, more fearsome questions of desire blurred and out of focus. American women spend approximately $1 million every hour on cosmetics. This may or may not say something about female vanity, but it certainly says something about female energy, where it is and is not focused. Easier to worry about the body than the soul, easier to fit the self into the narrow slots of identity our culture offers to women than to create one ... that allows for the expression of all passions, the satisfaction of all appetites. The great preoccupation with things like food and shopping and appearance, in turn, is less of a genuine focus on hunger - indulging it, understanding it, making decisions about it - than it is a monumental distraction from hunger. — Caroline Knapp

Part of her soul ... gloried in the sheer bodacious unnaturalness of it. Putting a great blue-green water park smack down in the red desert complete with cactus, trading posts, genuine Navajo Indians, and five kinds of rattlesnakes was theater of the absurd at its most outrageous. — Nevada Barr

I am not interested in anything that doesn't have a genuine heart to it. You've got to have soul in the hole. If that isn't there, I don't see the point. — Nick Cave

What was the point of spelling out the details? And anyway, wasn't a poor soul allowed to have a little genuine lovesickness to cope with on top of everything else? Without further ado, Rolandsen went up to his office, straight to the instrument, and asked one of the operators at the Rosengaard telegraph station to send him half a cask of cognac at the first opportunity. There was no sense in carrying on like this forever. — Knut Hamsun