Spirit Songs Quotes & Sayings

In a society so estranged from animals as ours, we often fail to credit them with any form of language. If we do, it comes under the heading of communication rather than speech. And yet, the great silence we have imposed on the rest of life contains innumerable forms of expression. Where does our own language come from but this unfathomed store that characterizes innumerable species?
We are now more than halfway removed from what the unwritten word meant to our ancestors, who believed in the original, primal word behind all manifestations of the spirit. You sang because you were answered. The answers come from life around you. Prayers, chants, and songs were also responses to the elements, to the wind, the sun and stars, the Great Mystery behind them. Life on earth springs from a collateral magic that we rarely consult. We avoid the unknown as if we were afraid that contact would lower our sense of self-esteem. — John Hay

The singing of the songs of Zion, though imperfectly, with the inspiration of God, will touch the hearts of the honest more effectively than if sung well without the Spirit of God. — Heber J. Grant

When I sang my American folk melodies in Budapest, Prague, Tiflis, Moscow, Oslo, or the Hebrides or on the Spanish front, the people understood and wept or rejoiced with the spirit of the songs. I found that where forces have been the same, whether people weave, build, pick cotton, or dig in the mine, they understand each other in the common language of work, suffering, and protest. — Paul Robeson

From the '70s and '80s, the following songs immediately spring to my mind as candidates: "The Battle of Evermore," "Spirit of Eden," "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed," "Close to the Edge," "In Your Eyes," "Thick as a Brick," "Cinema Show," "Echoes," and "The Killing Moon. — Bradley J. Birzer

Mist lies over the river like the icy breath of winter angels. Darkness gathers round ... and it is beautiful.
Thank you for this life, this death, whatever it is you are
that makes us finally see. — Jay Woodman

So watch your step. Use your head. Make the most of every chance you get. These are desperate times! 17 Don't live carelessly, unthinkingly. Make sure you understand what the Master wants. 18-20 Don't drink too much wine. That cheapens your life. Drink the Spirit of God, huge draughts of him. Sing hymns instead of drinking songs! Sing songs from your heart to Christ. Sing praises over everything, any excuse for a song to God the Father in the name of our Master, Jesus Christ. — Eugene H. Peterson

Don't look to wine for your stimulation. That leads only in the direction of ruin. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. Let Him exhilarate your soul and even the excess will be turned to joy in the Lord! Then as you speak to one another, the ecstasy will rise still higher. Your tongues will be loosed in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, rather than carousing. — John Crowder

She once said her songs were "mostly about myths, spirits, that kind of thing. Not fairies, stronger than that." Not fairies. Stronger than that: there's a fine phrase to bear in mind. Her lyrics are about the things that drive, or repulse, or empower the human spirit. Not escapism, in fact, but its exact opposite. — Graeme Thomson

There is no end to the things you don't understand. The mind will search for a lie to give it an answer you can understand, but one song at the right time will challenge what you accept. — Shannon L. Alder

I am a shadow. I walk the wet roads under the dim light of the pale lamps, in the darkest hour of the cold dull nights.
I walk past the silent graveyard of the dead memories, towards the city of chaos plagued with gloom.
I do not exist, but in the eyes of the shattered souls. In the chapter of an old book. In the poem. In the smile of a wrecked and in the tear of a broken spirit.
Listen me in the songs told in the times long forgotten.
Search for me in the churchs and temples, bars and brothels,pitch black nights and the colorless days.
Dive down in your deepest part of your soul. And you will find my home.
I have many faces but I have no face of my own. I am a shadow. — Foaad Ahmad

When people come and see me, I want them to experience joy. I don't do any sad songs in my show. It's to lift the spirit. — Darlene Love

Music revived my spirit. — Lailah Gifty Akita

15 p Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, 16 p making the best use of the time, because q the days are evil. 17Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what r the will of the Lord is. 18And s do not get drunk with wine, for that is t debauchery, but u be filled with the Spirit, 19addressing one another in v psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, 20 w giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father x in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21 y submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. — Anonymous

When I started doing these advocacy groups, it sort of propelled and compelled me to write songs, because otherwise I wasn't really sure what I was going to do, music-wise. I wasn't particularly motivated to write songs. But this level of humanity and spirit that I witnessed greatly impacted and so inspired me, so that I felt this sort of renewed vigor to write music. As far as how grounding it is, yeah, it's the ultimate amount of perspective. — Thao Nguyen

So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it and give it expressive meaning. — Aaron Copland

Hold your hands out over the earth as over a flame. To all who love her, who open to her the doors of their veins, she gives of her strength, sustaining them with her own measureless tremor of dark life. Touch the earth, love the earth, honour the earth, her plains, her valleys, her hills, and her seas; rest your spirit in her solitary places. For the gifts of life are the earth's and they are given to all, and they are the songs of birds at daybreak, Orion and the Bear, and dawn seen over ocean from the beach. — Henry Beston

One of the marks of a godly woman is that she takes responsibility for her soul's need for joy and delight. A woman is a conductor, who leads the orchestra of her surroundings in the songs and music of her life. God is a God of creativity and dimension, and so He is pleased when we we co-create beauty in our own realm, through the power of His Spirit.
It was a profound realization when I understood that I could become an artist with my very life. — Sally Clarkson

Troubled times do call for troubled songs, songs that unsettle our souls and our spirits unapologetically. — Tavis Smiley

It's funny when you start writing an album and then recording - the songs begin to take on a spirit of their own. Once you start to perform it live, this happens even more so than in the studio. They really start to develop a personality that takes shape over time with the audience. — Matt Shultz

But when it came to jamming and writing songs like we used to, we realized Brandon was a huge spirit in the band. Who knew? It was just something we had to learn. — Edie Brickell

I've always gravitated towards those ultimate lines in songs, the line you grab on to. That line in 'Smells Like Teen Spirit,' 'Here we are now/Entertain us' - the irony, the antagonism; that's always stuck with me. — Corey Taylor

Ka was the essence of teh person: spirit, intelligence, feelings and passions, humor, grudges, annoying television theme songs, all the things that make a person a person and not a nematode. — Mary Roach

I noticed with older songs that I perform that I'm coming from a different place with them now ... it mutates the vibe and even the meaning of the same words when you have a different spirit, if the person singing is different. I like that, to be able to sing an emotionally wrought song from a more centered place, or to sing an eager, youthful song from a more experienced place. It kind of colors the songs differently, and it keeps them fresh. — Ani DiFranco

The modern world has created airports and hospitals and put 10,000 songs in our pocket. It has built gleaming buildings and computers and advances and innovations that blow our minds. But we have soul, and spirit, and consciousness, and the modern world hasn't done so well at helping us name and understand what it means to be thriving and fully alive with a full heart. — Rob Bell

Songs and hymns refresh the body. Hymns invoke the spirit to rise to its maker for strength. When we live in a day without a hymn or a song, we disregard the essence of the day — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Who will sing today?
Who will sing today?
A dear full heart untold awaits
A sinful mind unchanged rests ajar; to hear the sweat salvation in Christ Jesus through hymns and praise amass
Who will sing today?
Who will sing today?


Who will sing today?
Who will sing today?

A spirit to rise
A body to uplift
A soul to change
The lost to seek
Who will sing today?
Who will sing today? — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

I had just made this album called 'Mind Blow,' a CD-R release on Spirit of Orr. This was in 2003. Quite a few of the songs from 'Was Dead' were actually on that. — King Tuff

When the songs of your heart start singing, you should listen ... for its harmony will bring you happiness and the melody is the voice of your true spirit. — Paulo Coelho

Art, if it can be ascribed value, is most valuable when its beauty (and the beauty of the truth it tells) bewilders, confounds, defies evil itself; it does so by making what has been unmade; it subverts the spirit of the age; it mends the heart by whispering mysteries the mind alone can't fathom; it fulfills its highest calling when into all the clamor of Hell it tells the unbearable, beautiful, truth that Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again. None of these songs and stories matter if the beauty they're adding to isn't the kind of beauty that redeems and reclaims. — Andrew Peterson

For what St. Augustine said is true, that one can sing nothing worthy of God save what one has received from Him. Wherefore though we look far and wide we will find no better songs nor songs more suitable to that purpose than the Psalms of David, which the Holy Spirit made and imparted to him. Thus, singing them we may be sure that our words come from God just as if He were to sing in us for His own exaltation. Wherefore, Chrysostom exhorts men, women, and children alike to get used to singing them, so as through this act of meditation to become as one with the choir of angels. — William Romaine

Praise and worship go way beyond the songs we're familiar with, songs we dislike or songs we disapprove. It's all about any type of songs that touch God's heart because He's the creator of nations and tribes and His desire is for every nation and every tribe to praise and worship Him in spirit and in truth. That's the God we serve. — Euginia Herlihy

And what we learn in the Song of Songs is that a marriage shaped according to this gospel of grace, forged over years of hard-earned trust and forgiveness, can be an unsafe place for sin but a very safe place for sinners. In a gospel-centered marriage, when two souls are mingled together with the Holy Spirit's leading, we find confirmation after confirmation that grace is true, that grace is real - that we can be really, truly, deeply known and at the same time really, truly, deeply loved. — Matt Chandler

All of our saddest songs have somewhere in them at least a glimmer of resolve - Street Spirit has no resolve. It is the dark tunnel without the light at the end. — Thom Yorke

There was a natural resource in the affective devotion to the saints and to Jesus, and a similar intensity of devotion inevitably became directed to the ordinary human.7 Eleanor of Aquitaine, the paragon of courtly love at the courts of Angers and Poitiers, was a grandchild of Guillaume, duke of Aquitaine, the first known troubadour. In many of Guillaume's love songs 'the vocabulary and emotional fervor hitherto ordinarily used to express man's love for God are transferred to the liturgical worship of woman, and vice versa.'8 The layering of Christian feeling and the new romantic spirit is also witnessed in the roman courtois, the epic stories filled with legendary material and hinged on figures of woman, mystery and quest. — Anthony Bartlett

Though the Earth is touched by everything alive, it never stops turning around the fire at its center, and though we are touched by the stories of strangers and the far-off songs of birds lost in wind, we find our way by following the spirit's voice at our center. Too much is lost in waiting for someone else to tell us that what moves us is real. — Mark Nepo

Our spirit is connected to the heavens by God as the Spirit. In spirit we are therefore in the heavens, in ascension. To live in ascension requires that we live, act, move, and do everything in our spirit. Thus, we must learn how to discern our spirit. If we do not know our spirit, if we do not know how to discern our spirit from our soul, we cannot be a spiritual person. When we live in our spirit, we are in ascension as the new creation in resurrection. We are a new person living in a new universe. (Life-study of Song of Songs, pp. 36-38) — Witness Lee

As artists, we belong to an ancient and holy tribe. We are the carriers of the truth that spirit moves through us all. When we deal with one another, we are dealing not merely with our own human personalities but also with the unseen but ever-present throng of ideas, visions, stories, poems, songs, sculptures, art-as-facts that crowd the temple of consciousness waiting their turn to be born. — Julia Cameron

Music is soul of the spirit. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Love is the dance of the spirit on a stage called heart with the songs of mind to satisfy our eternal desires to belong. — Debasish Mridha

I truly believe that if we keep telling the Christmas story, singing the Christmas songs, and living the Christmas spirit, we can bring joy and happiness and peace to this world. — Norman Vincent Peale

Our stories are timeless and tested. They are about us, a people of tremendous strength.Our songs are full of love and life - and the ups and downs of both. They are soulful with the rhythms of a heart that is in sync with nature and wonderment. Our struggles are real and rugged. They beckon our memory to the highest callings of the spirit, to help us rejoice and to overcome. — Deborah L. Parker

Music brings relief! Hymns change mood! Songs empower the downhearted. Sing songs always! When all things seem down, sing a good and an inspiring song! When you seem to be wasting your energy on toxic thoughts, invoke your spirit with an amazing song! Songs have power! Empower your life with good songs! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Writing in English was a major challenge. I didn't want other songwriters to write for me. I wanted to preserve the spirit of my songs in Spanish. I am the same Shakira in English as I am in Spanish. — Shakira

And even to me, one who likes life, it seems butterflies and soap bubbles and whatever is of their kind among human beings know most about happiness.
To see these light, foolish, delicate, sensitive little souls fluttering
that seduces Zarathustra to tears and songs.
I would only believe in a god who knew how to dance.
And when I saw my devil, there I found him earnest, thorough, deep, somber; it was the spirit of gravity
through him all things fall.
Not by wrath does one kill, but by laughing. Up, let us kill the spirit of gravity! — Friedrich Nietzsche

With Salvage the Bones, Jesmyn Ward has written the best sort of novel-a beautiful, important book that's both unflinching and tender, heartbreaking and triumphant. A lyrical and riveting testament to the strength of the human spirit, as well as the power of family and community. Ward's paragraphs are like songs, lifting us even as the authenticity of this world and these characters keeps the ground in clear sight. This is an extraordinary book by an extraordinary writer. — Skip Horack

Everything comes from one thing, everything comes from the Spirit. Jazz would not exist had it not been for gospel music, the blues would not exist had it not been for spiritual blues, which goes back to slave songs our fore fathers were singing while they were out in the field. So it's all one continuous growth from one group of people. Of course jazz now is played by various cultures and colors around the world. But the stimulus is One Voice. — Ramsey Lewis

Away from the goal
Far away I stand from my home.
A home unknown
Where my heart and spirit must go

Thy guidance oh Lord
Thy guidance oh lord
Eternal eternity I beseech
that You will lead me to the goal


Away from victory
far away I stand from victory
Victory unknown; thy spirit divine I know
that You may lead me where I must go


Thy guidance oh Lord
Thy guidance oh lord
Victorious victory I beseech
that You will lead me to a victorious victory

Away from the troubles of life
far away from the troubles; my delight
that You will lead me with thy light
Thy light that rekindles my night


Thy guidance oh Lord
Thy guidance oh lord
Far away from the troubles I beseech
That You will lead me from the troubles of life with Thy light — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

The strength of my heart is the music in my spirit. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Songs like "Spirit Carries On" really gets the audience moved and on the same page. It's challenging and all so much fun to play. — John Petrucci