My Spirit Is Heavy Quotes & Sayings

By daily contrition, and habitual mortification of the flesh, man is day by day RENEWED, bearing heavenly fruits and celestial graces, of an inexplicable sweetness. Contrariwise, the pleasure of the world bringeth heaviness of heart, vexation of spirit, and a wounded conscience: yea, so great hence is the calamity of the soul, and so heavy the loss of the heavenly gift (a loss which necessarily flows from the pleasures of the flesh, and from worldly delights) that he who duly calls the same to mind, cannot be exceedingly fear and dread any of the fleshly and worldly joys, which serve but to divert him from those that are spiritual and heavenly, and to quench in him the most sweet grace of devotion that brings the soul into the kingdom of God. — Johann Arndt

What is heavy? so asks the spirit that would bear much, and then kneels down like the camel, and wants to be well laden. — Friedrich Nietzsche

How is that for some people drinking is a short-term loan on the spirit, but for others a heavy mortgage on the soul? — Sebastian Barry

There is rampant among us a spirit of criticism. Men and women who carry heavy responsibility do not need criticism, they need encouragement. — Gordon B. Hinckley

For the Christian, the Bible, the Holy Spirit, guidance from trusted leaders and a revelation from your growing personal relationship with God go a long way to provide guidance. Learn to distinguish between spiritual blackmail and Godly Bible-based advice or warnings. Study your religion or belief and know it for yourself, heavy reliance on a third party for prolonged periods will sometimes open you up to possible abuse. — Archibald Marwizi

A weak soul does not have the endurance to resist the flesh for very long. It grows heavy, becomes flesh itself, and the contest ends. But among responsible men, men who keep their eyes riveted day and night upon the Supreme Duty, the conflict between flesh and spirit breaks out mercilessly and may last until death. — Nikos Kazantzakis

December 1931 was drawing to a close and Hollywood was aglow with Christmas spirit, undaunted by sizzling sunshine, palm trees, and the dry encircling hills that would never feel the kiss of snow. But the "Know-how" that would transform the Chaplin studio in the frozen Chilkoot Pass could easily achieve a white Christmas. In Wilson's Rolls-Royce convertible, we drove past Christmas trees heavy with fake snow. An entire estate on Fairfax Avenue had been draped in cotton batting; carolers straight out of Dickens were at its gate, perspiring under mufflers and greatcoats. The street signs on Hollywood Boulevard had been changed to Santa Claus Lane. They drooped with heavy glass icicles. A parade was led by a band blaring out "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," followed by Santa driving a sleigh. But Hollywood granted Santa the extra dimension of a Sweetheart and seated beside him was Clara Bow (or was it Mabel Normand?) — Anita Loos

My parents kept a small cabin the mountains. It was a simple thing, just four walls, and very dark inside. A heavy felt curtain blotted out whatever light made it through the canopy of huge pines and down into the cabin's only window. There was a queen-size bed in there, an armchair, and a wood-burning stove. It wasn't an old cabin. I think my parents built it in the seventies from a kit. In a few spots the wood beams were branded with the word HOME-RITE. But the spirit of the place me think of simpler times, olden days, yore, or whenever it was that people rarely spoke except to say there was a store coming or the berries were poisonous or whatnot, the bare essentials. It was deadly quiet up there. You could hear your own heart beating if you listened. I loved it, or at least I thought I ought to love it - I've never been very clear on that distinction. — Ottessa Moshfegh

A teachable spirit and a humbleness to admit your ignorance or your mistake will save you a lot of pain. However, if you're a person who knows it all, then you've got a lot of heavy-hearted experiences coming your way. — Ron Carpenter Jr.

When your heart is heavy and your spirit in distress,
Reach out your arms to Jesus, and sense his sweet caress.
He answers when we call him, our every prayer he hears,
Reach out your arms to Jesus, for he is always near. — Diane Goold

The transformation toward eternal life is gradual. The heavy gross energy of body, mind, and spirit must first be purified and uplifted. When the energy ascends ... then self mastery can be sought. — Laozi

When I am away from Liturgy for too long, I find I burn for it now, for the steadiness of the calendar, the words" that ring out in repetition, the heavy scented air. When I return each week, I am coming home again. Liturgy is written into my flesh, sinking into my skin and my spirit. — Angela Doll Carlson

First off, LARDASS, you neglected to include a sign-off, forcing me to create one for you. I tried to create one that captured the spirit and tone of your letter, and I think I did pretty well. [] I am thoroughly annoyed at having my tame statements of fact-being heavy is a health risk; rolls of exposed flesh are unsightly-characterized as "hate speech." — Dan Savage

Ivanov: With a heavy head, with a slothful spirit, exhausted, overstretched, broken, without faith, without love, without a goal, I roam like a shadow among men and I don't know who I am, why I'm alive, what I want. And I now think that love is nonsense, that embraces are cloying, that there's no sense in work, that song and passionate speeches are vulgar and outmoded. And everywhere I take with me depression, chill boredom, dissatisfaction, revulsion from life ... I am destroyed, irretrievably! — Anton Chekhov

Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Humor: the divine flash that reveals the world in its moral ambiguity and man in his profound incompetence to judge others; humor: the intoxicating relativity of human things; the strange pleasure that conies of the certainty that there is no certainty.
But humor, to recall Octavio Paz, is "the great invention of the modern spirit." It has not been with us forever, and it won't be with us forever either.
With a heavy heart, I imagine the day when Panurge no longer makes people laugh. — Milan Kundera

When your spirit is heavy, when your heart is broken, when your burdens seem unbearable - trust Him. Look to Him. — Anne Graham Lotz

Then all the winds of Heaven ran to join hands and bend a shoulder, to bring down to me the sound of a noble hymn that was heavy with the perfume of Time That Has Gone.
The glittering multitudes were singing most mightily, and my heart was in blood to hear a Voice that I knew.
The Men of the Valley were marching again.
My Fathers were singing up there.
Loud, triumphant, the anthem rose, and I knew, in some deep place within, that in the royal music was a prayer to lift up my spirit, to be of good cheer, to keep the faith, that Death was only an end to the things that are made of clay, and to fight, without heed of wounds, all that brings death to the Spirit, with Glory to the Eternal Father, forever, Amen. — Richard Llewellyn

Besides the neutral expression that she wore when she was alone, Mrs. Freeman had two others, forward and reverse, that she used for all her human dealings. Her forward expression was steady and driving like the advance of a heavy truck. Her eyes never swerved to left or right but turned as the story turned as if they followed a yellow line down the center of it. She seldom used the other expression because it was not often necessary for her to retract a statement, but when she did, her face came to a complete stop, there was an almost imperceptible movement of her black eyes, during which they seemed to be receding, and then the observer would see that Mrs. Freeman, though she might stand there as real as several grain sacks thrown on top of each other, was no longer there in spirit. — Flannery O'Connor

They're telling me that grief naturally pools as rainwater does," I said. "If we have good drainage it moves through us; it fills up and drains away. But if we don't have energy moving through us it can pool up and get swampy and heavy. All we see is this pool of grief and we begin to stare into it as Narcissus did. It can become a little bit self-indulgent. We're not honoring the people we're missing, the times of our lives that have changed, or the future that's waiting for us." None of the spirit people suggested Crystal bury or deny her grief, but rather that she find a way to move through it. Knowing she would be honoring them more by expressing her grief and letting it pass, rather than keeping it alive as a memorial, Crystal felt refreshed and optimistic about letting her usually cheerful nature surface once more. — Priscilla Keresey

But the death of spirit goes by another name. It is usually called the birth of reason.
The dreams of reason are, at this late date, everywhere to be seen, much like headstones in a cemetery. The inertia of a standard which prunes every tree to the dimensions of a utility pole will, with the same determination, core the heart out of the human personality. This fermenting mind, intoxicated by its heady sobriety, methodically slits its own throat, all the while mistaking the elongating wound for a smile.
When the spirit is free, according to Nietzsche, the head will be the bowels of the heart. In these top heavy days that have turned life topsy-turvy the head has little appetite for freedom. Instead it has developed a taste for coprophagy. — Ed Lawrence

It was October again ... a glorious October, all red and gold, with mellow mornings when the valleys were filled with delicate mists as if the spirit of autumn had poured them in for the sun to drain - amethyst, pearl, silver, rose, and smoke-blue. The dews were so heavy that the fields glistened like cloth of silver and there were such heaps of rustling leaves in the hollows of many-stemmed woods to run crisply through. — Lucy Maud Montgomery

She did feel it. A dark hand had let go its lifelong hold upon her heart. But she did not feel joy, as she had in the mountains. She put her head down in her arms and cried, and her cheeks were salt and wet. She cried for the waste of her years in bondage to a useless evil. She wept in pain, because she was free. What she had begun to learn was the weight of liberty. Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveller may never reach the end of it. — Ursula K. Le Guin

I do feel there are countless people on earth who do not believe in the inner power, the inner life. They feel that the outer strength and the outer life are everything. I do not agree with them. There is an inner life; there is spirit, and my ability to lift these heavy weights proves that it can work in matter as well. — Sri Chinmoy

Because you are an energetic being and your thoughts and feelings are energy, your journey may be compared to an intricately woven fabric. As the weaver of the fabric of your life, you alone decide whether your life will be beautifully intertwined with threads of gold and silver and blended with the colors of the rainbow, or made with strands of straw and cotton in shades of grays, browns, and other dark, heavy colors. — Susan Barbara Apollon

I believe international work is a heavy task, but that it is nevertheless indispensable to go through an apprenticeship in it, at the cost of many efforts and also of a real spirit of sacrifice: however imperfect it may be, the work of Geneva has a grandeur that deserves our support. — Marie Curie

His thinking was a dusk of doubt and selfmistrust lit up at moments by the lightnings of intuition, but lightnings of so clear a splendour that in those moments the world perished about his feet as if it had been fireconsumed: and thereafter his tongue grew heavy and he met the eyes of others with unanswering eyes for he felt that the spirit of beauty had folded him round like a mantle and that in revery at leas he had been acquainted with nobility. — James Joyce

Rational free spirits are the light brigade who go on ahead and reconnoiter the ground which the heavy brigade of the orthodox will eventually occupy. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

At age 43, when I decided to run again, I realized that the images used to describe runners didn't fit me. I wasn't a rabbit. I wasn't a gazelle or a cheetah or any of the other animals that run fast and free. But I wasn't a turtle or a snail either. I wasn't content anymore to move slowly through my life and hide in my shell when I was scared.
I was a round little man with a heavy heart but a hopeful spirit. I didn't really run, or even jog. I waddled. I was a Penguin. This was the image that fit. Emperor-proud, I stand tallto face the elements of my life. Yes, I am round. Yes, I am slow. Yes, I run as thought my legs are tied together at the knees. But I am running. And that is all that matters. — John Bingham

The Sessions becomes a dance of joy in the midst of severe challenge, and a movie with a light spirit that lifts a tale of heavy fate. — Lisa Schwarzbaum

Water is also one of the four elements, the most beautiful of God's creations. It is both wet and cold, heavy, and with a tendency to descend, and flows with great readiness. It is this the Holy Scripture has in view when it says, "And the darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." Water, then, is the most beautiful element and rich in usefulness, and purifies from all filth, and not only from the filth of the body but from that of the soul, if it should have received the grace of the Spirit. — John Of Damascus

There is a part of me that no one ever sees.
I hide behind a mask of heavy make-up and ever-changing hair and clothing. I try to reinvent myself. It doesn't work. There are times when I am bone-crushingly sad. I just want to curl into a ball and hide from the rest of the world. But, I plaster on a smile and play the game for my family and friends. They call me a free spirit.
I wish I were free. I feel like I am imprisoned by my own mind. — Julia Crane

Hatred and greed are heavy loads. Your motive, on the other hand, is love. And instead of priding yourselves on your cunning, you recognize how weak you are ... so weak that you must depend totally on the Spirit of God. — Brother Andrew

I always try to balance the light with the heavy - a few tears of human spirit in with the sequins and the fringes. — Bette Midler

I became aware that there was no barrier between what was inside and what was outside. My body was illuminated by a bright light. I heard with my eyes and saw with my ears. I used my nose as mouth and my mouth as nose. I experienced the world with the totality of my senses as my spirit gathered and my form dissolved. There was no distinction between muscles and bones. My body stopped being heavy and I felt like a floating leaf. Without knowing it, I was being carried by the wind. Drifting here and there, I did not know whether I rode on the wind or the wind rode on me. — Liezi

Notwithstanding the trouble, notwithstanding the argument, notwithstanding the increasingly heavy hand of government, notwithstanding the spirit of arrogance we so often display, notwithstanding the growing tide of pornography and permissiveness, notwithstanding occasional corruption in public office and betrayal of sacred trust-I marvel at the miracle of America ... — Gordon B. Hinckley

In a heavy oppressive atmosphere, when the spirits sink too low, the best cordial is to read over all the letters of one's friends. — William Shenstone

It is with great sadness and a heavy heart that I have decided to end my six-year marriage to Ashton. As a woman, a mother and a wife there are certain values and vows that I hold sacred, and it is in this spirit that I have chosen to move forward with my life. — Demi Moore

It was a cruel world though. More than half of all children died before they could reach maturity, thanks to chronic epidemics and malnutrition. People dropped like flies from polio and tuberculosis and smallpox and measles. There probably weren't many people who lived past forty. Women bore so many children, they became toothless old hags by the time they were in their thirties. People often had to resort to violence to survive. Tiny children were forced to do such heavy labor that their bones became deformed, and little girls were forced to become prostitutes on a daily basis. Little boys too, I suspect. Most people led minimal lives in worlds that had nothing to do with richness of perception or spirit. City streets were full of cripples and beggars and criminals. Only a small fraction of the population could gaze at the moon with deep feeling or enjoy a Shakespeare play or listen to the beautiful music of Dowland. — Haruki Murakami

When words are too heavy for the mouth, the soul weeps in agony — Ikechukwu Izuakor

Lord Jesus, master of both the light and the darkness, send your Holy Spirit upon our preparations for Christmas. We whose hearts are heavy seek the joy of your presence. We are your people, walking in darkness, yet seeking the light. To you we say, 'Come Lord Jesus!' — Henri Nouwen

I call the high and light aspects of my being SPIRIT and the dark and heavy aspects SOUL.
Soul is at home in the deep shaded valleys.
Heavy torpid flowes saturated with black grow there.
The rivers flow like arm syrup. They empty into huge oceans of soul.
Spirit is a land of high,white peaks and glittering jewel-like lakes and flowers.
Life is sparse and sound travels great distances.
There is soul music, soul food, and soul love.
People need to climb the mountain not because it is there
But because the soulful divinity need to be mated with the Spirit.
Deep down we must have a rel affection for each other, a clear recognition of our shared human status. At the same time we must openly accept all ideologies and systems as means of solving humanity's problems. No matter how strong the wind of evil may blow, the flame of truth cannot be extinguished. — Dalai Lama XIV

Immature is the love of the youth, and immature his hatred of man and earth. His mind and the wings of his spirit are still tied down and heavy. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Once I started trying to give positive reviews, though, I began to understand how much happiness I took from the joyous ones in my life
and how much effort it must take for them to be consistently good=tempered and positive. It is easy to be heavy; hard to be light. We nonjoyous types suck energy and cheer from the joyous ones; we rely on them to buoy us with their good spirit and to cushion our agitation and anxiety. At the same time, because of a dark element in human nature, we're sometimes provoked to try to shake the enthusiastic, cheery folk out of their fog of illusion
to make them see that the play was stupid, the money was wasted, the meeting was pointless. Instead of shielding their joy, we blast it. — Gretchen Rubin

Spiritual power is generated within temple walls, and sent out to bless the world ... Every home penetrated by the temple spirit enlightens, cheers, and comforts every member of the household. The peace we covet is found in such homes. Indeed, when temples are on earth, the whole world shares measurably in the issuing light; when absent, the hearts of men become heavy, as if they said, with the people of Enoch's day, 'Zion is fled' (See Moses 7:69). — John Andreas Widtsoe

When we observe trials and tribulations in our world, there's even more reason to lighten the heavy load. Sometimes life gets tough and it's disheartening. Never mind happiness; what we genuinely need is joy! God didn't intend for us to be sad or serious all of the time. His word in Proverbs 17:22 (ESV) says, A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. — Dana Arcuri

Is it thy will, thy image should keep open
My heavy eyelids to the weary night?
Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,
While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?
Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee
So far from home into my deeds to pry,
To find out shames and idle hours in me,
The scope and tenor of thy jealousy?
O, no! thy love, though much, is not so great:
It is my love that keeps mine eye awake:
Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,
To play the watchman ever for thy sake:
For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,
From me far off, with others all too near. — William Shakespeare

I think the word despair is much too small to encompass the magnitude of all it defines. For me, right then, despair meant that everything within me-my organs, my spirit, my hope-plunged down into a place of utter density, of blackness so heavy and bleak I had no idea how to lift any of it up again.
I can't do this. I'm just Lora Jones. I can't even remember how to tell a shrimp fork from an oyster fork. I can barely find middle C. I can't save Jesse and Armand and the castle. I can't defeat them all.
But I had to. We were going to die unless I did. — Shana Abe

Dr. Y. Hiraiwa, professor of Hiroshima University of Literature and Science, and one of my church members, was buried by the bomb under the two storied house with his son, a student of Tokyo University. Both of them could not move an inch under tremendously heavy pressure. And the house already caught fire. His son said, 'Father, we can do nothing except make our mind up to consecrate our lives for the country. Let us give Banzai to our Emperor.' Then the father followed after his son, 'Tenno-heika, Banzai, Banzai, Banzai!' . . . In thinking of their experience of that time Dr. Hiraiwa repeated, 'What a fortunate that we are Japanese! It was my first time I ever tasted such a beautiful spirit when I decided to die for our Emperor. — John Hersey

I call the light and high aspects of my being spirit and the dark and heavy aspects soul. — Dalai Lama