Great Souls Quotes

Strong and rare natures are thus created; misery, almost always a stepmother, is sometimes a mother; privation gives birth to power of soul and mind; distress is the nurse of self-respect; misfortune is a good breast for great souls. ~ Victor Hugo

We encounter great souls by reading great books. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

among a people hurried and busy and preoccupied, some in the pursuit of riches, some in the pursuit of pleasure, and some, the majority, in the struggle for existence, there arise in every generation, here and there, one or two great souls - men who ~ Oliver Lodge

Go out into the world where your heart calls you. The blessings will come, I promise you that. I wish for you the insight to recognize the blessings as such, and sometimes it's hard. But you'll know it's a blessing if you are enriched and transformed by the experience. So be ready. There are great souls and teachers everywhere. It's your job to recognize them. ~ Sy Montgomery

There lived great souls in the history of the world. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Great truths are portions of the soul of man; Great souls are portions of eternity. ~ James Russell Lowell

Mountains have the power to call us into their realms and there, left forever, are our friends whose great souls were longing for the heights. Do not forget the mountaineers who have not returned from the summits. ~ Anatoli Boukreev

I get a glimpse of the mind of many souls from their sacred books. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I have always been looking for the noble qualities in human beings, and I have found them. There are great souls all along the highway of life, and there are great qualities even in the people who seem common and weak to us ordinarily. ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Man is made of thought, of will and of love: he can think truth or error, he can will good or evil, he can love beauty or ugliness. Now thought of the true - or knowledge of the real - demands on the one hand willing of the good and on the other love of the beautiful, hence virtue, for virtue is none other than beauty of soul; that is why the Greeks, who were aesthetes as well as thinkers, included virtue within philosophy. Without beauty of soul, all willing is sterile, it is petty and closes itself to grace; and in an analogous manner: without effort of will, all spiritual thought ultimately remains superficial and ineffectual and leads to pretension. Virtue coincides with a sensibility proportioned - or conformed - to the Truth, and that is why the soul of the sage soars above things and thereby above itself, if one may put it thus; whence the disinterestedness, nobleness and generosity of great souls. Quite clearly, the consciousness of metaphysical principles cannot go hand in hand with moral pettiness, such as ambition and hypocrisy : "Be ye perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect. ~ Frithjof Schuon

The sciences have two extremities which meet. The first is the ignorance in which men find themselves at birth. The second is that attained by great souls. They have surveyed whatever man can know, find that they know all, meet in that same ignorance whence they started. It is a clever ignorance, which knows itself. Those among them who, having emerged from the first ignorance, have been unable to achieve the other & have some smattering of this self-satisfied knowledge, pose as experts. The latter do not disturb people, are no more mistaken in their judgments on everything than others. The masses, the skilled, make up the retinue of a nation. The others, who respect it, are equally respected by it. ~ Comte De Lautreamont

On the Seven Minor Planes of the Great Spiritual Plane exist Beings of whom we may speak as Angels; Archangels; Demi-Gods. On the lower Minor Planes dwell those great souls whom we call Masters and Adepts. Above them come the Great Hierarchies of the Angelic Posts, unthinkable to man; and above those come those who may without irreverence be called "The Gods," so high in the scale of Being are they, their being, intelligence and power being akin to those attributed by the races of men to their conceptions of Deity. These Beings are beyond even the highest flights of the human imagination, the word "Divine" being the only one applicable to them. Many of these Beings, as well as the Angelic Host, take the greatest interest in the affairs of the Universe and play an important part in its affairs. These Unseen Divinities and Angelic Helpers extend their influence freely and powerfully, in the process of Evolution, and Cosmic Progress. Their occasional intervention and assistance in human affairs have led to the many legends, beliefs, religions and traditions of the race, past and present. They have super-imposed their knowledge and power upon the world, again and again, all under the Law of THE ALL, of course. ~ Three Initiates

The great souls distinguish with two things; their greater needs and their greater agony. ~ Alireza Salehi Nejad

The only quality that distinguishes the greats from the masses, is the unwillingness to give up. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Love is like some fresh spring, first a stream and then a river, changing its aspect and its nature as it flows to plunge itself in some boundless ocean, where restricted natures only find monotony, but where great souls are engulfed in endless contemplation. ~ Honore De Balzac

Some gentlemen have made an amazing figure in literature by general discontent with the universe as a trap of dulness into which their great souls have fallen by mistake; but the sense of a stupendous self and an insignificant world may have its consolations. Lydgate's discontent was much harder to bear; it was the sense that there was a grand existence in thought and effective action lying around him, while his self was being narrowed into the miserable isolation of egoistic fears, and vulgar anxieties for events that might allay such fears. ~ George Eliot

It is in our own mind and not in exterior objects that we perceive most things; fools know scarcely anything because they are empty, and their heart is narrow; but great souls find in themselves a number of exterior things; they have no need to read or to travel or to listen or to work to discover the highest truths; they have only to delve into themselves and search, if we may say so, their own thoughts. ~ Luc De Clapiers

His purity was too great, his aspiration too high for this poor, miserable world! His great soul is now only enjoying that for which it was worthy! ~ Queen Victoria

Worth begets in base minds, envy; in great souls, emulation. ~ Henry Fielding

Each soul has it's own path. Children are young personalities but they are not always young souls. Incarnation into the domain of the five senses is a dramatic act of spiritual responsibility. Neonates are great souls and so I honor their paths. I do the best that I can, but the best that I can do is to change myself. To make myself a citizen like I want others to be. ~ Gary Zukav

Reading is the royal road to intellectual eminence ... Truly good books are more than mines to those who can understand them. They are the breathings of the great souls of past times. Genius is not embalmed in them, but lives in them perpetually. ~ William Ellery Channing

Great souls are great inspirers. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Only the great Souls can and know how to love. ~ Samael Aun Weor

A free life is still free for great souls. Verily, whoever possesses little is possessed that much less: praised be a little poverty! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I was in touch with great souls who exalted flesh and spirit over dollars and cents, and to whom the thin wail of the starved slum child meant more than all the pomp and circumstance of commercial expansion and world empire. ~ Jack London

Waste no more time talking about great souls and how they should be, become one yourself! ~ Marcus Aurelius

When God wants to make a mushroom, he does it overnight, but when He wants to make a giant oak, He takes a hundred years. Great souls are grown through struggles and storms and seasons of suffering. Be patient with the process. ~ Rick Warren

Great souls forgive not injuries till time has put their enemies within their power, that they may show forgiveness is their own. ~ John Dryden

The great souls work with great passion. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed. ~ Maya Angelou

Most of the world's great souls have been lonely. Loneliness seems to be one price the saint must pay for his saintliness ... Always remember: you cannot carry a cross in company. Though a man were surrounded by a vast crowd, his cross is his alone and his carrying of it marks him as a man apart. Society has turned against him; otherwise he would have no cross. No one is a friend to the man with a cross. ~ Aiden Wilson Tozer

In the love of narrow souls I make many short voyages but in vain–I find no sea room - but in great souls I sail before the wind without a watch, and never reach the shore. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Reading great books gives insight to the mind of great souls. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age. ~ Jonathan Swift

With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The great soul is the person who has taken on the task of change. If he or she is able to transcend fear, to act out of courage, the whole group will benefit and each one, in his or her own life, will be suddenly more courageous, though they may not see how or why. ~ Gary Zukav

It's a great feeling to connect with someone as charming as you. ~ Avijeet Das

Kings cannot ennoble thee, thou good, great soul, for One who is higher than kings hath done that for thee; but a king can confirm thy nobility to men. ~ Mark Twain

We too should make ourselves empty, that the great soul of the universe may fill us with its breath. ~ Laurence Binyon

An open life still stands open for great souls. Indeed, whoever possesses little is possessed all the less: praised be a small poverty! There, where the state ends, only there begins the human being who is not superfluous; there begins the song of necessity, the unique and irreplaceable melody. There, ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Great stories strengthen us to be great souls. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

There have been as great souls unknown to fame as any of the most famous. ~ Benjamin Franklin

The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call paradoxes, which are nothing else than grandiose thoughts in embryo. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

Ancient philosophers and spiritual teachers were explorers. They wanted us to be as well. They thought we should understand this physical world, but not get stuck here. For thousands of years we have shared their insights, over-analyzed and repeated their words; quoting and re-translating until all meaning has been lost. These great minds, great souls, great beings sought to be jumping off points, not merely the originators of emptied out and desiccated clichés. They wanted to be doorways, not doorstops. ~ Edward Fahey

All sorts of Heroes are intrinsically of the same material; that given a great soul, open to the Divine Significance of Life, then there is given a man fit to speak of this, to sing of this, to fight and work for this, in a great, victorious, enduring manner; there is given a Hero,
the outward shape of whom will depend on the time and the environment he finds himself in. ~ Thomas Carlyle

In his commerce with men I mean him to include- and that principally- those who live only in the memory of books. By means of history he will frequent those great souls of former years. If you want it to be so, history can be a waste of time; it can also be, if you want it to be so, a study bearing fruit beyond price. ~ Michel De Montaigne

He who would be a great soul in the future, must be a great soul now. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing baffles the schemes of evil people so much as the calm composure of great souls. ~ Honore Gabriel Riqueti, Comte De Mirabeau

During my PhD, I was depressed for eight-months, state of deep-worry. The stressful life leads to neglect of spirituality and wellness. I recovered by inspiration of great souls, friends and family. Ever since, I have sought spirituality of soul and well-being over all other things. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Great bodies die but great minds don't die! Inside the tomb of great men lay dead body's but at the library of great men lay the living minds of dead bodies! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Valor is common but great souls are rare. ~ Bernard-Joseph Saurin

The great souls who became mighty in prayer and rejoiced to spend three and four hours a day alone with God were once beginners. ~ Samuel Chadwick

If productivity, efficiency, and rationality are not the ways God gauges a human person's value, then they are not the ways I should measure it, eiher. If childlike dependence on God is the mark of a great soul, then there are great souls hidden in all sorts of places where the world sees only disability, decay, and despair. ~ Colleen Carroll Campbell

Passion for fame: A passion which is the instinct of all great souls. ~ Edmund Burke

The world has lost a truly great soul today. Stephen Covey was a man whose 'work was love made visible.' He touched millions of people by the strength of his integrity and the depth of his caring. He was a personal friend, an extraordinary father, and a model for what human beings are truly capable of. Please join us in sending love and prayers to his family. ~ Tony Robbins

Great eagles fly alone; great lions hunt alone; great souls walk alone-alone with God. Such loneliness is hard to endure, and impossible to enjoy unless God accompanied. Prophets are lone men; they walk alone, pray alone and God makes them alone. ~ Leonard Ravenhill

But in some great souls, who consider themselves as citizens of the world, and forcing the imaginary barriers that separate people from people ... ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The wise man belongs to all countries, for the home of a great soul is the whole world ~ Democritus

The high-minded man does not bear grudges, for it is not the mark of a great soul to remember injuries, but to forget them. ~ Aristotle.

The great soul of power extends far beyond states, to every domain of life, from families to international affairs. And throughout, every form of authority and domination bears a severe burden of proof. It is not self-legitimizing. And when it cannot bear the burden, as is commonly the case, it should be dismantled. ~ Noam Chomsky

There never was a great soul that did not have some divine inspiration. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

Higher than the question of our duration is the question of our deserving. Immortality will come to such as are fit for it, and he would be a great soul in future must be a great soul now. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

We can not imitate great souls. However to study, analyse and imbibe the principles they teach and embody, is the path of progress. ~ Radhanath Swami

Base souls have no faith in great individuals. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Great souls by instinct to each other turn, demand alliance, and in friendship burn. ~ Elizabeth George

A great soul is called Saragrahi that means one who is always looking for the essence of every situation that comes before us. ~ Radhanath Swami

Sacrifice, which is the passion of great souls, has never been the law of societies. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel

Everybody dies, but great souls ressurects in our memories. ~ Michael Bassey

A very serious mental disorder is associated with creativity, a disorder that afflicts only the great souls, and its cure is not known, even to the great souls. ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

Many even see in Obama a messiah-like figure, a great soul, and some affectionately call him Mahatma Obama. ~ Dinesh Sharma

Wherever I travel to, I encounter great souls. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Great minds rise above problems.
Great hearts rise above pain.
Great souls rise above temptations.
Great individuals rise above themselves and the world. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

We learn of great things by little experiences. ~ Bram Stoker

It is because God is infinitely great and good that his glory is the end of all things; and his good pleasure the highest reason for whatever comes to pass. What is man that he should contend with God, or presume that his interests rather than God's glory should be made the final end? ~ Charles Hodge

Every calling is great when greatly pursued. ~ Mary Engelbreit

When I meet people who say - which they do all of the time - 'I must just tell you, my great aunt had cancer of the elbow and the doctors gave her 10 seconds to live, but last I heard she was climbing Mount Everest,' and so forth, I switch off quite early. ~ Christopher Hitchens

A free people, forgetting that it has a soul to be cared for, devotes all its energies to its material advancement. If it makes war, it is to subserve its commercial interests. The citizens copy after the State, and regard wealth, pomp, and luxury as the great goods of life. Such a nation creates wealth rapidly, and distributes it badly. ~ Albert Pike

Many people see the chance to eat something for nothing, without the need to cook or wash up, as the great consolation of going out to dinner. But they forget quite how difficult it is to talk to a stranger and eat at the same time. ~ Craig Brown

When Heaven is going to give a great responsibility to someone, it first makes his mind endure suffering. It makes his sinews and bones experience toil, and his body to suffer hunger. It inflicts him with poverty and knocks down everything he tries to build. In this way Heaven stimulates his mind, stabilizes his temper, and develops his weak points. - The Book of Mencius (Chinese, 300 BC) ~ Timothy Keller

The church as we know it today seems a million miles from the New Testament church. That may be a great generalization, but I will stand on it. There is a gulf between our average Christianity and the church of New Testament that makes the Grand Canyon look like a cavity in someone's tooth. ~ Leonard Ravenhill

What the Latins have done in this text (1 John v, 7) the Greeks have done to Paul (1 Tim. iii, 16). They now read, "Great is the mystery of godliness; God manifest in the flesh"; whereas all the churches for the first four or five hundred years, and the authors of all the ancient versions, Jerome as well as the rest, read, "Great is the mystery of godliness, which was manifest in the flesh." Our English version makes it yet a little stronger. It reads, "Great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh." ~ Isaac Newton

An apt and true reply was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride. "What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor." ~ Saint Augustine

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GREAT CHANGES IN ME I CANNOT DESCRIBE

I told the local astrologer that the fact that he doesn't see something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. A lover may perceive a certain light in the beloved's face that another person can't. A healthy person tastes a variety of flavorings in food that a patient with a coated tongue cannot. To the sick everything tastes bitter.

Great changes and shifts occur in me that I cannot describe, but they are very real. Ways open. A fragrance from the divine comes through. No one sees this, but it is the most profound event in my life. Friendship cannot be seen or measured, but the experience of living within it is beyond argument. Words like belief, righteousness, and faith can be used however a debater wants. With Hasan the silk-weaver recently I spoke of the power of the Islamic prophets. Then he used my words to support his free-thinking lineage.

Soul comes here from the unseen to observe this world, the body, the night, and the sunlit morning landscape, saying, I have seen this; now show me your other properties, Lord of the universes (3:26). ~ Bahauddin

Reading is a great treasure of enlightenment. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

If our mission is grand & our vision is glorious, we need great values that match our ambition or else, we toil in vain... ~ Assegid Habtewold

We are forced to fight a duel. We are forced by honour and an internal intellectual need. Do not, for your own sake, attempt to stop us. I know all the excellent and ethical things that you will want to say to us. I know all about the essential requirements of civil order: I have written leading articles about them all my life. I know all about the sacredness of human life; I have bored all my friends with it. Try and understand our position. This man and I are alone in the modern world in that we think that God is essentially important. I think He does not exist; that is where the importance comes in for me. But this man thinks that He does exist, and thinking that very properly thinks Him more important than anything else. Now we wish to make a great demonstration and assertion - something that will set the world on fire like the first Christian persecutions. If ~ G.K. Chesterton

About this time he had the sarcophagus and body of Alexander the Great brought forth from its shrine, and after gazing on it, showed his respect by placing upon it a golden crown and strewing it with flowers; and being then asked whether he wished to see the tomb of the Ptolemies as well, he replied, "My wish was to see a king, not corpses. ~ Suetonius

Was I to blame for bringing Brew out of his shell and exposing him to all the toxic things the rest of us carry in our souls? ~ Neal Shusterman

Husbands are things that wives have to
get used to putting up with.
And with whom they breakfast with
and sup with.
They interfere with the discipline of nurseries,
And forget anniversaries,
And when they have been particularly remiss,
They think they can cure everything
with a great big kiss. ~ Ogden Nash

What we put into every moment is all we have. You can drug yourself to death or you can smoke yourself to death or eat yourself to death, or you can do everything right and be healthy and then get hit by a car. Life is so great, such a neat thing, and yet all during it we have to face death, which can make you nuts and depressed. ~ Gilda Radner

Sacrifice has great value in that it not only achieves personal success but builds successful communities, nations and humanity. Each moment spent in selfless sacrifice makes you a stronger person, and such strength fosters the required determination to cope with adversity and hardship for the sake of others. ~ Vishwas Chavan

As a player it is great to experience many other ways of playing, other tactics and other mentalities. I have played in several countries and because of that I know without any doubt that the English league is the one for me. ~ Djibril Cisse

Whence come I and whither go I? That is the great unfathomable question, the same for every one of us. Science has no answer to it. ~ Max Planck

Beautiful souls often get put into plain bodies, but they cannot be hidden, and have a power all their own, the greater for the unconsciousness or the humility which gives it grace. ~ Louisa May Alcott

A great coder can easily be 50 times more productive than a mediocre one, while bad ones ultimately have negative productivity. ~ Jon Evans

To deny that human beings are filled with anti-social passions betrays a denial of reality and a lack of self-awareness. One has to be taught nonsense for a great many formative years to believe it. ~ Dennis Prager

God must be very great to have created a world that leaves a mystery as to whether he created it. ~ Richard Wurmbrand

When I was 4 years old ... I dreamt that I'd been eaten by a wolf, and to my great surprise I was in the wolf's stomach and not in heaven. ~ Bertrand Russell

Matthew Henry said, "When God intends great mercy for His people, He sets them apraying." Indeed, when God wants anything accomplished in His Kingdom, He moves men to pray. God is always the initiator. All effectual prayer was moving in the heart of God before ever it began to move in the heart of man. What Kepler said as he unlocked the secrets of the heavens, could well be said by the man who prays in the Spirit: "O God, I am thinking Thy thoughts after Thee. ~ Arthur Wallis

Great food is similar to great sex. Extra you have greater you want. ~ Gael Greene