Incorporeal Quotes & Sayings

An angel is an intelligent essence, always in motion. It has free will, is incorporeal, serves God, and has been bestowed with immortality. Only the Creator understands its true nature. — John Of Damascus

How came the bodies of animals to be contrived with so much art, and for what ends were their several parts?
Was the eye contrived without skill in Opticks, and the ear without knowledge of sounds? ... and these things being rightly dispatch'd, does it not appear from phaenomena that there is a Being incorporeal, living, intelligent ... ? — Isaac Newton

To write incorporeal poems, almost without words. To approximate the impossible, where art disappears and the Word becomes. — Anna Kamienska

Early in "Postulates of Linguistics," Deleuze and Guattari claim that, "the elementary unit of language ... is the order-word," which "not to be believe but to be obeyed" (ATP, 76). Perhaps the starkest example is the judge's sentence that condemns a criminal to death (80-81; 94). But the French for order-word, mot d'ordre, also refers to the political slogan, which is substantiated by Deleuze and Guattari's reference to Lenin's pamphlet "On Slogans" (83). Both of these examples indicate how closely their linguistics aligns with the rhetorical theory of symbolic action. Rhetoric is excellent at studying those acts that cause incorporeal transformations, which as changes in a state of affairs that do not directly alter its materiality (80-88). — Anonymous

Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend. — Ludwig Van Beethoven

He sensed the presence of death, he sensed the presence of undying love: something broke open inside him, and he thought of the invisible woman, incorporeal and passionate, as one might think of distant music. — Stefan Zweig

What shall I say! And how shall I describe this Birth to you? For this wonder fills me with astonishment. The Ancient of Days has become an infant. He Who sits upon the sublime and heavenly Throne, now lies in a manger. And He Who cannot be touched, Who is simple, without complexity, and incorporeal, now lies subject to the hands of men. He Who has broken the bonds of sinners, is now bound by an infant's bands. But He has decreed that ignominy shall become honor, infamy be clothed with glory, and total humiliation the measure of His Goodness. — Saint John Chrysostom

Recite to yourself some of the traditional attributes of the word 'spiritual': mythic, magical, ethereal, incorporeal, intangible, nonmaterial, disembodied, ideal, platonic. Is that not a definition of the electronic-digital? — Timothy Leary

Later, early Christmas morning, I was still awake, and Susan was asleep, on her back, with her mouth open slightly. I looked at her face. Her eyes moved slightly behind her eyelids. I watched her sleep; watched her while she dreamed in some remote incorporeal place away from me; watched her with the growing certainty that some of her would always be remote, away from me, unknowable, unobtainable, never mine. Watched her and thought these things and knew, as I could know nothing else so surely, that it didn't matter. — Robert B. Parker

If man be solely a body, its loss indeed ends his identity. But if prophets down the millenniums spake with truth, man is essentially a soul, incorporeal and omnipresent. — Paramahansa Yogananda

Do not be despondent when fighting against the incorporeal enemy, but even in the midst of your afflictions and oppression praise the Lord, Who has found you worthy to suffer for Him, by struggling against the subtlety of the serpent, and to be wounded for Him at every hour; for had you not lived piously, and endeavored to become united to God, the enemy would not have attacked and tormented you. — John Of Kronstadt

Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. — Carl Sagan

The artist seeks contact with his intuitive sense of the gods, but in order to create his work, he cannot stay in this seductive and incorporeal realm. He must return to the material world in order to do his work. It's the artist's responsibility to balance mystical communication and the labor of creation. — Patti Smith

Belief in immortality is harmful because it is not in our power to conceive of the soul as really incorporeal. So this belief is in fact a belief in the prolongation of life, and it robs death of its purpose. — Simone Weil

[On Time] Men trifle with the most precious thing in the world; but they are blind to it because it is an incorporeal thing, because it does not come beneath the sight of the eyes, and for this reason it is counted a very cheap thing - nay, of almost no value at all. — Seneca.

He had no use for sensual gratification, unless that gratification consisted of pure, incorporeal odors. — Patrick Suskind

When I saw any external object, my consciousness that I was seeing it would remain between me and it, enclosing it in a slender, incorporeal outline which prevented me from ever coming directly in contact with the material form; for it would volatilise itself in some way before I could touch it, just as an incandescent body which is moved towards something wet never actually touches moisture, since it is always preceded, itself, by a zone of evaporation. — Marcel Proust

Contemplating the stars he has become accustomed to considering himself an anonymous and incorporeal dot, almost forgetting that he exists; to deal now with human beings, he cannot help involving himself, and he no longer knows where his self is to be found. — Italo Calvino

But they that hold God to be [an incorporeal substance]do absolutely make God to be nothing at all. But how? Were they atheists? No. For though by ignorance of the consequence they said that which was equivalent to atheism, yet in their hearts they thought God a substanceSo that this atheism by consequence is a very easy thing to be fallen into, even by the most godly men of the church. — Thomas Hobbes

But the World being once fram'd, and the course of Nature establish'd, the Naturalist, (except in some few cases, where God, or Incorporeal Agents interpose), has recourse to the first Cause but for its general and ordinary Support and Influence, whereby it preserves Matter and Motion from Annihilation or Desition; and in explicating particular phenomena, considers onely the Size, Shape, Motion, (or want of it) Texture, and the resulting Qualities and Attributes of the small particles of Matter. — Robert Boyle

Hemingway used to write an ending to his novel only to delete it, asserting that it made the story stronger because the reader would always be able to intuit the ghost of that final, incorporeal passage. — Jessica Knoll

Painting is ... a richer language than words ... Painting operates through signs which are not abstract and incorporeal like words. The signs of painting are much closer to the objects themselves. — Jean Dubuffet

I believe that we traverse this Earth, to find the missing materials that we need, for building our eternal homes in the world that is adjacent to this one. Adjacent and unseen; but not undetectable. But then during our lives here, we also utilise materials from our eternal space, for using as we build our lives here in our corporeal space. It is a give-and-take relationship. A give-and-take relationship between our bodies and our souls, between our minds and our spirits. — C. JoyBell C.

But when the web is pulled askew, hooked up at the edge, torn in the middle, one remembers that these webs are not spun in mid-air by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in. — Virginia Woolf

I now understood the secret of music and knew what makes it so infinitely superior to all the other arts: its incorporeality. Once it has left an instrument it becomes its own master, a free and independent creature of sound, weightless, incorporeal and perfectly in tune with the universe. — Walter Moers

The term "incorporeal" is properly applied only to the void, which cannot act or be acted on. Since the soul can act and be acted upon, it is corporeal. — Epicurus

God is incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, life, Truth, Love. — Mary Baker Eddy

The essences of the Gods never came into existence (for that which always is never comes into existence; and that exists for ever which possesses primary force and by nature suffers nothing): neither do they consist of bodies; for even in bodies the powers are incorporeal. Neither are they contained by space; for that is a property of bodies. Neither are they separate from the first cause nor from one another, just as thoughts are not separate from mind nor acts of knowledge from the soul. — Sallust

I told myself 'Everything is a being! The shout that passes into the air is an entity like an animal, since it is born, produces a movement, and is again transformed, in order to die. So the fearful mind that believes in incorporeal beings is not wrong. What are they? — Guy De Maupassant

There are so many tender and holy emotions flying about in our inward world, which, like angels, can never assume the body of an outward act; so many rich and lovely flowers spring up which bear no seed, that it is a happiness poetry was invented, which receives into its limbs all these incorporeal spirits, and the perfume of all these flowers. — Jean Paul

Worry is the secret weapon perpetrated upon us by the dark forces of the world that lurk in the shape of fear, uncertainty, confusion, and loss.
We, on the other hand, have our own secret weapon against these incorporeal fiends.
It is laughter. — Vera Nazarian

What is modern art but the attempt to pinpoint vague, incorporeal, inexpressible sensations? What is modern art, I would add, but the most solemn pile of nonsense that ever appeared on Earth? — Italo Calvino

But this is my contentment, that I've lost what I never needed and what I need I can never lose: these two things, universal nature and one's personal virtue.
For this is the intention of the creator of the world, whatever he may be - whether an all-powerful Deity, or some incorporeal Reason contriving vast works, or a divine Spirit pervading all things from the least to the largest with a uniform energy, or Fate, or an inalterable sequence of Causes clinging one to another - whatever the Intender, I say, this is his intention: that nothing of ours can fall under the control of others except that which is finally and truly worthless to us.
The best of any man lies beyond the power of other men, either to give it or take it away. — Walter Wangerin Jr.

We are aberrations - beings born undead, neither one thing nor another, or two things at once ... uncanny things that have nothing to do with the rest of creation, horrors that poison the world by sowing our madness everywhere we go, glutting daylight and darkness with incorporeal obscenities. From across an immeasurable divide, we brought the supernatural into all that is manifest. Like a faint haze it floats around us. We keep company with ghosts. Their graves are marked in our minds, and they will never be disinterred from the cemeteries of our remembrance. Our heartbeats are numbered, our steps counted. Even as we survive and reproduce, we know ourselves to be dying in a dark corner of infinity. Wherever we go, we know not what expects our arrival but only that it is there. — Thomas Ligotti

Of the eternal incorporeal substance nothing is changed, is formed or deformed, but there always remains only that thing which cannot be a subject of dissolution, since it is not possible that it be a subject of composition, and therefore, either of itself or by accident, it cannot be said to die . — Giordano Bruno

It can be shown that an incorporeal and reasonable being has life in itself independently of the body ... then it is beyond a doubt bodies are only of secondary importance and arise from time to time to meet the varying conditions of reasonable creatures. Those who require bodies are clothed with them, and contrariwise, when fallen souls have lifted themselves up to better things their bodies are once more annihilated. They are ever vanishing and ever reappearing. — Origen

To say that God is an incorporeal substance, is to say in effect there is no God at all. What alleges he against it, but the School-divinity which I have already answered? Scripture he can bring none, because the word incorporeal is not found in Scripture. — Thomas Hobbes