Soul That Is Struggling Quotes & Sayings

Modern society has not rid itself of religion, as it fondly believes; it has merely replaced the historical religions by a host of idolatrous cults struggling for possession of the soul of man. — Will Herberg

To say that Doctor Tenace loved death is probably too much, but decay, especially mental or soul decay fascinated him. He was hypnotised by the last minutes of all sorts of living creatures struggling with death. — Yves Bernas

For 13 years, I struggled with education and have only just realised that I was actually struggling to protect myself from it. I was trying to protect my soul. — Michael Leunig

True greatness demands humility; the journey draws it from your struggling soul. — Richelle E. Goodrich

But let us assume, for the moment, that every three-day-old human embryo has a soul worthy of our moral concern. Embryos at this stage occasionally split, becoming separate people (identical twins). Is this a case of one soul splitting into two? Two embryos sometimes fuse into a single individual, called a chimera. You or someone you know may have developed in this way. No doubt theologians are struggling even now to determine what becomes of the extra human soul in such a case. — Sam Harris

Certainly the determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and novel impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion. — George Eliot

O wretched state! O bosom black as death! O limed soul that, struggling to be free, art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay! Bow, stubborn knees! and, heart with strings of steel, be soft as sinews of the new-born babe! — William Shakespeare

What crushed my soul was hanging out with bitter, desperate comics backstage. They're a different breed than the bitter yet eager psyches in the wings of an improv theatre. Struggling stand-ups have externalized self-loathing into an art form. They're a hunching, quaking, unshaven lot. — Scott Adsit

It is the sincerest thing I have written, caught by the drama of a soul struggling in the contrary toils of love and religion - death brought them into harmony. — Laurence Housman

Alyosha, was not at all a fanatic, and, in my view at least, even not at all a mystic. I will give my full opinion beforehand: he was simply an early lover of mankind,1 and if he threw himself into the monastery path, it was only because it alone struck him at the time and presented him, so to speak, with an ideal way out for his soul struggling from the darkness of worldly wickedness towards the light of love. And this path struck him only because on it at that time he met a remarkable being, in his opinion, our famous monastery elder Zosima, to whom he became attached with all the ardent first love of his unquenchable heart. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

A Belgian journalist, struggling to describe the scene, had said that it resembled a cross between a permanent mass wake, an ongoing grad night for at least a dozen subcultures unheard of before the disaster, the black market cafes of occupied Paris, and Goya's idea of a dance party (assuming Goya had been Japanese and smoked freebase methamphetamine, which along with endless quantities of alcohol was clearly the Western World's substance of choice). It was, the Belgian said, as though the city, in its convolsion and grief, had spontaneously and necessarily generated this hidden pocket universe of the soul, its few unbroken windows painted over with black rubber aquarium paint. There would be no view of the ruptured city. As the reconstruction began around it, it had already become a benchmark in Tokyo's psychic history, an open secret, an urban legend. — William Gibson

He struggled with himself, too. I saw it
I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself. — Joseph Conrad

The small ember of warmth in Tarpa's soul that was struggling to become a fire was suddenly and painfully dashed out of existence by the joyful tears of the reunited couple, leaving only a tiny pile of soggy ash behind. — Brian Cramer

The picaresque path can probably also be a metaphor for the passage of the soul back to its creator. The thieves along the way
the thieves of money, of love, of magic, of time
are merely human obstacles to keep the traveller from perceiving that she herself is the path.
The path is as steep and as precipitous as we make it, as level and rolling as we can grade it, as steady as we are steady, as passable or impassable as our own will to pass.
In a true picaresque, the hero stops struggling and becomes the path.
At fifty, we need this knowledge most of all. — Erica Jong

A maze is a puzzle to be solved, with twists and turns and dead ends. It requires logical, analytical thinking and usually has a different way out than the way in. The maze could be a metaphor of struggling through life, going one way and then another until the exit takes your by surprise.

A maze signifies entrapment, while the labyrinth, with its unicursal path leading into the center and out again the same way, provides enlightenment. It's the process, the journey into your deepest self, your soul, the part where God abides. It's a passive path, a surrender even, to an order and design repeated through creation. A sacred geometry. — Kristen Heitzmann

Humans in love are terrible. You see them come hungering at one another like prehistoric wolves, you see something struggling for life in between them like a root or a soul and it flares for a moment, then they smash it. The difference between them smashes the bones out. So delicate the bones. — Anne Carson

I can't bear it that some man, even with a lofty heart and the highest mind, should start from the ideal of the Madonna and end with the ideal of Sodom. It's even more fearful when someone who already has the ideal of Sodom in his soul does not deny the ideal of the Madonna either, and his hear burns with it, verily, verily burns, as in his young, blameless years. No, man is broad, even too broad, I would narrow him down. Devil knows even what to make of him, that's the thing! What's shame for the mind is beauty all over for the heart. Can there be beauty in Sodom? Believe me, for the vast majority of people, that's just where beauty lies
did you know that secret? The terrible thing is that beauty is not only fearful but also mysterious. Here the devil is struggling with God, and the battlefield is the human heart. But, anyway, why kick against the pricks? — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Everything that we perceive around us is struggling towards freedom, from the atom to the man, from the insentient, lifeless particle of matter to the highest existence on earth, the human soul. The whole universe is in fact the result of this struggle for freedom. — Swami Vivekananda

I know that I shall die struggling for breath, and I know that I shall be horribly afraid. I know that I shall not be able to keep myself from regretting bitterly the life that has brought me to such a pass; but I disown that regret. I now, weak, old, diseased, poor, dying, hold still my soul in my hands, and I regret nothing. — W. Somerset Maugham

It was always a dream as I was growing up. I would watch movies, mostly American movies, and be so engrossed in those stories, all I wanted to do was be there. I wanted to be part of that romance or that fantasy or be that warrior or that struggling soul who finally makes it good. — Gerard Butler

We listened, as all boys in their better moods will listen (ay, and men too for the matter of that), to a man whom we felt to be, with all his heart and soul and strength, striving against whatever was mean and unmanly and unrighteous in our little world. It was not the cold, clear voice of one giving advice and warning from serene heights to those who were struggling and sinning below, but the warm, living voice of one who was fighting for us and by our sides, and calling on us to help him and ourselves and one another. — Thomas Hughes

I am but a poor struggling soul yearning to be wholly good, wholly truthful and wholly non-violent in thought, word and deed, but ever failing to reach the ideal which I know to be true. It is a painful climb, but each step upwards makes me feel stronger and fit for the next. — Mahatma Gandhi

Our pets love us unconditionally. Because they are conscious but not "self-conscious," it's impossible for them to judge. They do not see us through the warped lens of our self-perceptions. They see us as courageous protectors and loving providers. They see in us all the qualities that really matter. What difference does it make to them if you got fired from your job? None. What difference does it make to them if you gained 20 lbs. back from your last diet? None. That's because our pets love and accept us at the soul level, in a way that's primal and simple - just like the universe itself. So, as silly as it might seem, the next time you're struggling with accepting an issue in your life, ask yourself: Will this matter to my dog? If not, then it shouldn't matter to you. — Habib Sadeghi

Ah, kindness. What a simple way to tell another struggling soul that there is love to be found in the world. — Alison Malee

Paul and I were both struggling actors. One night he would serve me in a restaurant, and the next night I would serve him. It was what out of work actors did. — David Soul

My soul is nothing now but the dream dreamt by matter struggling with itself! — Paul Valery

No alarm clock in the world works quite as well as a hungry wolf in your bed. Struggling to breathe, I shoved at the giant oaf lying across my chest, but he staunchly refused to move. Despite his human soul, I was pretty sure — Alexis Kade

God is very merciful to those whom He sees struggling heart and soul for spiritual realization. But remain idle, without any struggle, and you will see that His grace will never come. — Swami Vivekananda

Writing is the silence of the soul struggling to be heard — GBickle

The conception of each star was at the point of no return; of a desperate soul struggling to master the winds! — C. JoyBell C.

You necessarily have to be lost, before you're found. — T. Scott McLeod

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

And there came to him a feeling which he had often had before in many different places--that he himself was a part of all this, the great, blind, wistful soul of mankind, which had been here before he was born and would be here when he was dead--still groping, yearning, struggling upward, on and on--to something distant as the sun. And still would he be part of it all, through the eager lives of his children. — Ernest Poole

There is in stillness oft a magic power To calm the breast when struggling passions lower, Touched by its influence, in the soul arise Diviner feelings, kindred with the skies. — John Henry Newman

He was simply an early lover of humanity, and that he adopted the monastic life was simply because at that time it struck him, so to say, as the ideal escape for his soul struggling from the darkness of worldly wickedness to the light of love. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Where the mind is without pain Where knowledge is gain; With you, life is not vain Where hate is a burden
Faith in humanity is not entwine The traces of you is me
I am you and you are me Where dreams are not met
Where the sun set and yet;
we still strive towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of democracy
has not lost its way into a struggling nation frozen snow of dead end;
The traces of you is found with in young soul that rise up with faith and knowing that positive activism is the way to create a just society. — Henry Johnson Jr

He always carried the feeling that he was struggling toward some kind of resolution and knowledge of purpose. That there was something good in him or about him. It was the waiting that was so hard. The waiting often left a hollow feeling in his soul. And he believed people could see this, that they knew when they looked at him that he was empty. — Michael Connelly

The intensity of her religious disposition, the coercion it exercised over her life, was but one aspect of a nature altogether ardent, theoretic, and intellectually consequent: and with such a nature struggling in the bands of a narrow teaching, hemmed in by a social life which seemed nothing but a labyrinth of petty courses, a walled-in maze of small paths that led no whither, the outcome was sure to strike others as at once exaggeration and inconsistency. The thing which seemed to her best, she wanted to justify by the completest knowledge; and not to live in a pretended admission of rules which were never acted on. Into this soul-hunger as yet all her youthful passion was poured; the union which attracted her was one that would deliver her from her girlish subjection to her own ignorance, and give her the freedom of voluntary submission to a guide who would take her along the grandest path. — George Eliot