Spirit Quotes

"Misunderstood! It is a right fool's word. Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away, and a sunny spirit takes their place."
-Mark Twain

"We write because we believe the human spirit cannot be tamed and should not be trained."
-Nikki Giovanni

"I ran and ran and ran every day, and I acquired this sense of determination, this sense of spirit that I would never, never give up, no matter what else happened."
-Wilma Rudolph

"Even so, one step from my grave, I believe that cruelty, spite, The powers of darkness will in time, Be crushed by the spirit of light."
-Boris Pasternak

"I look at an ant and l see myself: a native South African, endowed by nature with a strength much greater than my size so I might cope with the weight of a racism that crushes my spirit."
-Miriam Makeba

"Spiritual favors are not always to be looked for, and not always to be relied on."
-Amelia E. Barr

"Give me a spirit that on this life's rough sea Loves to have his sails filled with a lusty wind, Even till his sail-yards tremble, his masts crack, And his rapt ship run on her side so low That she drinks water, and her keel ploughs air."
-George Chapman

"The spirit of man can endure only so much and when it is broken only a miracle can mend it."
-John Burroughs

"Never regard study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs."
-Albert Einstein

"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind."
-Albert Einstein

"I feel that you are justified in looking into the future with true assurance, because you have a mode of living in which we find the joy of life and the joy of work harmoniously combined. Added to this is the spirit of ambition which pervades your very being, and seems to make the day's work like a happy child at play."
-Albert Einstein

"It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge."
-Voltaire

"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The miracle, or the power, that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application, and perseverance under the prompting of a brave, determined spirit."
-Mark Twain

"Laws are partly formed for the sake of good men, in order to instruct them how they may live on friendly terms with one another, and partly for the sake of those who refuse to be instructed, whose spirit cannot be subdued, or softened, or hindered from plunging into evil."
-Plato

"I myself do nothing. The Holy Spirit accomplishes all through me."
-William Blake

"The seven deadly sins ... Food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven milestones from man's neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the milestones are lifted."
-George Bernard Shaw

"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive."
-Thomas Jefferson

"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive."
-Thomas Jefferson

"For verily, my brothers, the spirit is a stomach."
-Friedrich Nietzsche

"I would not know what the spirit of a philosopher might wish more to be than a good dancer."
-Friedrich Nietzsche

"What we're all striving for is authenticity, a spirit-to-spirit connection."
-Oprah Winfrey

"Music must take rank as the highest of the fine arts - as the one which, more than any other, ministers to the human spirit."
-Herbert Spencer

"Without theory, practice is but routine born of habit. Theory alone can bring forth and develop the spirit of inventions."
-Louis Pasteur

"There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple: If the ill spirit have so fair a house, Good things will strive to dwell with 't."
-William Shakespeare

"In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness."
-Carl Sagan

"The spirit in which a thing is given determines that in which the debt is acknowledged; it's the intention, not the face-value of the gift, that's weighed."
-Seneca