Soul Stirring Quotes & Sayings

The soul-stirring image of death is no bugbear to the sage, and is looked on without despair by the pious. It teaches the former to live, and it strengthens the hopes of the latter in salvation in the midst of distress. Death is new life to both. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Man has created some lovely dwellings, some soul-stirring literature. He has done much to alleviate physical pain. But he has not ... created a substitute for a sunset, a grove of pines, the music of the winds, the dank smell of the deep forest, or the shy beauty of a wildflower. — Harvey Broome

Writer's Disease: About ninety per cent of your time is wasted on totally pointless and distracting activity, and only about ten per cent is actually spent dreaming up and composing and shaping and honing all those wonderful, exciting, soul-stirring excuses for not having got anything written. — Jem Roberts

He felt that the world that had been shattered was once more stirring to life in his soul, in new beauty and on new and steadfast foundations. — Leo Tolstoy

He'd fought demons before. Deep down in his soul, something was stirring. Something that made the seraph blade blaze brighter in his hand. Something that made him understand the look on Diego's face as he turned to Diana and said, 'Orders?'
'Kill them all, obviously,' Diana said, and the Centurions began to pour down the stairs. — Cassandra Clare

There is a crack in my soul, and I can hear it trembling, quivering, stirring deep inside me. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

He felt a happiness stirring deep inside him, shining a light into recesses of his soul that had long been devoured by darkness. — Erik Tomblin

But out of all secrets of the river, he today only saw one, this one touched his soul. He saw: this water ran and ran, incessantly it ran, and was nevertheless always there, was always at all times the same and yet new in every moment! Great be he who would grasp this, understand this! He understood and grasped it not, only felt some idea of it stirring, a distant memory, divine voices. — Hermann Hesse

The author of the quaint old English classic, The Cloud of Unknowing, teaches us how to do this. Lift up thine heart unto God with a meek stirring of love; and mean Himself, and none of His goods. And thereto, look thee loath to think on aught but God Himself. So that nought work in thy wit, nor in thy will, but only God Himself. This is the work of the soul that most pleaseth God. — A.W. Tozer

I doubt whether the world holds for any one a more soul-stirring surprise than the first adventure with ice-cream. — Heywood Broun

Those slight words and looks and touches are part of the soul's language; and the finest language, I believe, is chiefly made up of unimposing words, such as "light," "sound," "stars," "music" - words really not worth looking at, or hearing, in themselves, any more than "chips" or "sawdust." It is only that they happen to be the signs of something unspeakably great and beautiful. I am of opinion that love is a great and beautiful thing too, and if you agree with me, the smallest signs of it will not be chips and sawdust to you: they will rather be like those little words, "light" and "music," stirring the long-winding fibres of your memory and enriching your present with your most precious past. — George Eliot

The doctors are busy with the repulsive but beneficent work of amputation. You see the sharp, curved knife enter the healthy, white body, you see the wounded man suddenly regain consciousness with a piercing cry and curses, you see the army surgeon fling the amputated arm into a corner, you see another wounded man, lying in a litter in the same apartment, shrink convulsively and groan as he gazes at the operation upon his comrade, not so much from physical pain as from the moral torture of anticipation. - You behold the frightful, soul-stirring scenes; you behold war, not from its conventional, beautiful, and brilliant side, with music and drum-beat, with fluttering flags and galloping generals, but you behold war in its real phase - in blood, in suffering, in death. — Leo Tolstoy

I've been to Cannes 15 or 16 times, and every time I go, there's a kind of soul-stirring feeling. — Gong Li

Other dancers weave through our lives, sometimes stirring our deep soul's fires. — Jay Woodman

My favorite duo since Thelma and Louise. They got chops, heart, and soul stirring harmonies. — David Massengill

Peter the Great was probably the equal, in dedication, power and ruthlessness, of many of the most successful revolutionary or nationalist leaders. Yet he failed in his chief purpose, which was to turn Russia into a Western nation. And the reason he failed was that he did not infuse the Russian masses with some soul-stirring enthusiasm. He either did not think it necessary or did not know how to make of his purpose a holy cause. It is not strange that the Bolshevik revolutionaries who wiped out the last of the Czars and Romanovs should have a sense of kinship with Peter - a Czar and a Romanov. For his purpose is now theirs, and they hope to succeed where he failed. The Bolshevik revolution may figure in history as much an attempt to modernize a sixth of the world's surface as an attempt to build a Communist economy. The — Eric Hoffer

No amount of scholastic attainment, of able and profound exposition of brilliant and stirring eloquence can atone for the absence of a deep impassioned sympathetic love for human souls. — David Brainerd

Have you ever felt a stirring in your heart as a touching story brought tears to your eyes or as you heard a soaring symphony or a captivating song on the radio that opened a new window in your soul? Maybe you have felt a similar exhilaration while watching a sunset, camping out under the night sky, or holding a newborn babe. Something inside of you quickened, and for a moment, some heavenly beauty connected your inner self with the divine. C. S. Lewis referred to such experiences as joy. These are remnants and reminders of the perfect world God designed for us to live in - the shadow of places He longs to take us to, the reality of the other world He's preparing for us. — Sally Clarkson

One deceives oneself and unconsciously believes that real true passion is stirring one's soul; one unconsciously believes that there is something living, tangible in one's immaterial dreams! And is it delusion? — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

There are many soul-stirring things in this world, but not many as profound as watching the beautiful man you love holding the baby you created together. No, not many. — Mia Sheridan

He peered into the night-dark windows of the afflicted girls, whispering names and stirring fits into their dreams until their own screams awakened them. The girls concocted fantastic stories of witches and curses and torture at the hands of specters. More accusers joined their ranks without his nurturing, puppets of their own envy. Such imagination, such dedication to the destruction of their own. And all in his name. It touched his dark soul. — Susan Catalano

Coquettes are, but too rare. It is a career that requires great abilities, infinite pains, a gay and airy spirit. 'T is the coquette who provides all the amusements,
suggests the riding-party, plans the picnic, gives and guesses charades, acts them. She is the stirring element amid the heavy congeries of social atoms,
the soul of the house, the salt of the banquet. — Benjamin Disraeli

He felt the inspirations of his youth, which had been dissipated by a frivolous life, stirring again in him, but they all bore now the reflection, the stamp of a particular being; and during the long hours which he now found a subtle pleasure in spending at home, alone with his convalescent soul, he became gradually himself again, but himself in thraldom to another. He — Marcel Proust

I am afraid I am one of those people who continues to read in the hope of sometime discovering in a book a single - and singular - piece of wisdom so penetrating, so soul stirring, so utterly applicable to my own life as to make all the bad books I have read seem well worth the countless hours spent on them. My guess is that this wisdom, if it ever arrives, will do so in the form of a generalization. — Joseph Epstein

Michael John's music is soul-stirring. It gets inside the deepest part of you; it's almost a chemical reaction. — Kate Baldwin

The love of talk distracts all the powers of our soul from God, and fills them with earthly objects and impressions, like a vessel of water that cannot be settled while you are continualy stirring the earthly particles from the bottom. — Elizabeth Ann Seton

It rasped her, though, to have stirring about in her this brutal monster! to hear twigs cracking and feel hooves planted down in the depths of that leaf-encumbered forest, the soul; never to be content quite, or quite secure, for at any moment the brute would be stirring, this hatred ... — Virginia Woolf

Every time I meet a tree, if I am truly awake, I stand in awe before it. I listen to its voice, a silent sermon moving me to the depths, touching my heart, and stirring up within my soul a yearning to give my all. — Mary Webb

When you throw a rock into the water, it will speed on the fastest course to the bottom of the water. This is how it is when Siddhartha has a goal, a resolution. Siddhartha does nothing, he waits, he thinks, he fasts, but he passes through the things of the world like a rock through water, without doing anything, without stirring; he is drawn, he lets himself fall. His goal attracts him, because he doesn't let anything enter his soul which might oppose the goal. This is what Siddhartha has learned among the Samanas. This is what fools call magic and which they think is effected by demons. Nothing is effected by demons, there are no demons. Everyone can perform magic, everyone can reach his goals, if he is able to think, if he is able to wait, if he is able to fast. — Hermann Hesse

Through the forest have I gone. But Athenian found I none, On whose eyes I might approve This flower's force in stirring love. Night and silence.
Who is here? Weeds of Athens he doth wear: This is he, my master said, Despised the Athenian maid; And here the maiden, sleeping sound, On the dank and dirty ground. Pretty soul! she durst not lie Near this lack-love, this kill-courtesy. Churl, upon thy eyes I throw All the power this charm doth owe. When thou wakest, let love forbid Sleep his seat on thy eyelid: So awake when I am gone; For I must now to Oberon. — William Shakespeare

Siddhartha does nothing, he waits, he thinks, he fasts, but he passes through the things of the world like a rock through water, without doing anything, without stirring; he is drawn, he lets himself fall. His goal attracts him, because he doesn't let anything enter his soul which might oppose the goal. — Hermann Hesse

To be strong, and beautiful, and go round making music all the time. Yes, she could do that, and with a very earnest prayer Polly asked for the strength of an upright soul, the beauty of a tender heart, the power to make her life a sweet and stirring song, helpful while it lasted, remembered when it died. — Louisa May Alcott

She feels him scoot closer, the heat of him radiating off his chest and absorbing into her skin. His legs straddle her from behind, and he places delicate kisses along her shoulder, her back, the very center of her spine. Each time is like an electric current surging through her, soul stirring and lovely. — Laura Kreitzer

All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair -
The bees are stirring - birds are on the wing -
And Winter, slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
And I, the while, the sole unbusy thing,
Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.
Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow,
Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow.
Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may,
For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away!
With lips unbrighten'd, wreathless brow, I stroll:
And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul?
Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And Hope without an object cannot live. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The man who is bigger than his job keeps cool. He does not lose his head, he refuses to become rattled, to fly off in a temper. The man who would control others must be able to control himself. There is something admirable, something inspiring, something soul-stirring about a man who displays coolness and courage under extremely trying circumstances. A good temper is not only a business asset. It is the secret of health. The longer you live, the more you will learn that a disordered temper breeds a disordered body. — B.C. Forbes

Recognizes ever and anon The breeze of Nature stirring in his soul. — William Wordsworth

There is a certain period of the soul-culture when it begins to interfere with some of characters of typical beauty belonging to the bodily frame, the stirring of the intellect wearing down the flesh, and the moral enthusiasm burning its way out to heaven, through the emaciation of the earthen vessel; and there is, in this indication of subduing the mortal by the immortal part, an ideal glory of perhaps a purer and higher range than that of the more perfect material form. We conceive, I think, more nobly of the weak presence of Paul than of, the fair and ruddy countenance of David. — John Ruskin

How peaceful it was, with the light evening breeze stirring the small leaves of the grapevine that clustered around the electric bulb, making the shadows move and change on the yellow mat below. For a moment he pushed aside the thought of money. From time to time the dark water beside them rippled audibly, as if a tiny fish had come to the surface for an instant and then darted beneath. It was in peaceful moments such as this, his father had said, that men were given to know just a little of what paradise was like, so that they might yearn for it with all their soul,and strive during their time on earth to be worthy of going there. — Paul Bowles

Hemingway, damn his soul, makes everything he writes terrifically exciting (and incidentally makes all us second-raters seem positively adolescent) by the seemingly simple expedient of the iceberg principle - three-fourths of the substance under the surface. He comes closer that way to retaining the magic of the original, unexpressed idea or emotion, which is always more stirring than any words. But just try and do it! — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

But I was immobilized - less by another's static imposition than by my own static will. For the enemy had in thrall my power to choose, which he had used to make a chain for binding me. From bad choices an urge arises; and the urge, yielded to, becomes a compulsion; and the compulsion, unresisted, becomes a slavery - each link in this process connected with the others, which is why I call it a chain - and that chain had a tyrannical grip around me. The new will I felt stirring in me, a will to 'give you free worship' and enjoy what I yearned for, my God, my only reliable happiness, could not break away from the will made strong by long dominance. Two wills were mine, old and new, of the flesh, of the spirit, each warring on the other, and between their dissonances was my soul disintegrating. — Augustine Of Hippo

There is in St. Paul's definite, soul-stirring assertion of the wrath of God and the reality of the judgment at hand, a truth more profound than any that underlies our somewhat enfeebled ideas of universal benevolence and the determined progress of the race. — Roland Allen

Business leaders must find ways to infuse mundane business activities with deeper, soul-stirring ideals, such as honor, truth, love, justice, and beauty. — Gary Hamel