Human spirit

“ Let your feelings be governed and controlled by the principles of eternal life, as should the children of God, delighting in truth and righteousness. Let the wicked say what they please, for their breath is in their nostrils, and all their glory is like the grass and the flower of the grass that passeth away. ”

“ By the little which can thus satisfy the needs of the human spirit we can measure the extent of its loss. ”

“ Wisdom and Spirit of the Universe!
Thou Soul, that art the Eternity of thought!
And giv'st to forms and images a breath
And everlasting motion! not in vain,
By day or star-light, thus from my first dawn
Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me
The passions that build up our human soul;
Not with the mean and vulgar works of Man,—
But with high objects, with enduring things,
With life and nature; purifying thus
The elements of feeling and of thought,
And sanctifying by such discipline
Both pain and fear,—until we recognise
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart. ”

“ If you have any sensibility or imagination, this will establish such an intercourse between you and the Supreme Being, as will be of infinite consequence to you in life. It will communicate an habitual cheerfulness to your tempers, give a firmness and steadiness to your virtue, and enable you to go through all the vicissitudes of human life with propriety and dignity. ”

“ From what innate principle does this arise, but from God within the mind!—I assert it for the honour of human nature, that no man, however dissolute, but comes back to the hour of reflection and solemn thoughtfulness—when the actions that are passed return upon the mind, and this internal monitor sits in judgment upon them, and gives her verdict of approbation or dislike. ”

“ Without Knowledge of the Human Nature. “Varied, according to character, are the demands made by heart and mind,” assures us a representative of modern philosophy, “corresponding to them is the image of the world to which the individual turns by inner necessity. ”

“ And in that day shall be discovered every inward working of every human soul: every appetite, passion, inclination, affection, with the various combinations of them, with every temper and disposition that constitute the whole complex character of each individual. ”

“ It is more than mere feeling or emotion; it is not blind, but rational, and above deception, having its ground in our moral and religious nature. It extends to the whole person, to body, mind, and spirit, to the character as well as to the face and form. ”

“ Have we any difficulty to comprehend the force of humanity or benevolence? Or to conceive that the very aspect of happiness, joy, prosperity, gives pleasure; while pain, suffering, sorrow, communicate uneasiness? Here we have an unmistakeable, powerful, universal sentiment of human nature to build upon. ”

“ The attempt of one earnest mind to show unto many what humanity is—ay, and more, what humanity might become; to depict what is true in essence through imaginary forms; to teach, counsel, and warn, by means of the silent transcript of human life. Human life without God! ”

“ The highest object of life we take to be, to form a manly character, and to work out the best development possible, of body and spirit—of mind, conscience, heart, and soul. This is the end: all else ought to be regarded but as the means. ”

“ Countless {40} souls, trusting to their individual experience, have learned, as we at the last time indicated, to define their ideal, and their need, and, upon occasion, to discover the power that they took to be their saving principle--their deliverer. Who amongst all these were right, either in their judgment as to their need or in their consciousness that they had found the way that leads to peace, to triumph, to union with the goal of human life? Were all of them more or less right? Were any of them wholly deluded? Are there as many supreme aims of life as there are individuals? ”

“ For how is every one, whether heathen or Christian, child or man, enlightened or taught, to live and behave? Is it not by the words of those round him, by the words he reads in books, by the thoughts which he thinks out and puts into shape for himself? All this is the light which every human being has his share of. ”

“ Think as you inhale of whatever qualities you would like to possess, and believe that you are inhaling them. Select seven qualities—Love, Health, Wisdom, Usefulness, Power to Do Good, Success, Opulence—will cover the average human desires. The very unworldly will substitute spiritual knowledge for opulence. Fill your mind with the idea that you are drawing in these qualities with your breaths, and exhaling all that is weak or unworthy. ”

“ And the importance of dealing rightly with these powers is readily perceived if we reflect that conduct is the greater part of human life, which is a life of thought and love, of hope and faith, of imagination and desire. ”

“ Let that inform the sentiments and awaken the man's dormant sense of moral obligation, and by degrees he will learn the nothingness of the pleasures of human sense and the grandeur and bliss of a spiritual sense, which silences the material or corporeal. ”

“ Rest on the human faces that pass by,
Each with its gay or busy interest:
And then I muse upon their lot, and read
Many a lesson in their changeful cast,
And so grow kind of heart, as if the sight
Of human beings were humanity. ”

“ Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence. ”

“ We are becoming more and more conscious of how close-wrought are the fibres of the human race; we recognize how the life of any one man affects the life of his fellows, and how the individual can gather into his own soul the sorrows and joys, the perplexities and aspirations of many people. ”

“ Whence is intelligence but from the world's Soul, which is the soul of men? And towering above being, above life and reason, is conscience, the supreme guide, the light enlightening every man that cometh into this world. ”

“ But how to take the right attitude and bear the right mind towards this various, manifold, engrossing, wonderful human life, as it unfolds for us here—how shall that be done? Some have tried to answer by amputating large sections of human experience. ”

“ Good dispositions in the domains of will, sentiment, judgment, imagination, perseverance, duty, accuracy, self-control, the faculty of thinking logically and distinguishing the true from the false, the faculty of combining æsthetic thoughts and sensations, all constitute human values which are much superior to the faculty of rapid assimilation or receptivity, and a good memory for words and phrases. ”

“ TRUE MANLINESS. I. THE conscience of every man recognizes courage as the foundation of true manliness, and manliness as the perfection of human character, and if Christianity runs counter to conscience in this matter, or indeed in any other, Christianity will go to the wall. ”

“ The new heart, and the right spirit,—the change, not in the mere external behavior but, in the very disposition and inclination of the soul,—excludes every jot and tittle of self-assertion, every particle of proud and stoical manhood. ”

“ Let us train our minds, first to think aright, believe aright, that the meditations of our hearts may be correct, for our actions will naturally correspond with that that is in the heart. This, my brethren and sisters, is our duty. ”

“ But to Him it appears, that they are superficially informed of the Frame and Tenor of the human Mind, who think that mere Reason (as it exists in Man) is more than a Power of discerning and chusing the properest Means for obtaining his desired Ends, whether these Ends be Good or Evil. The Passions, pre-established Habits, and infused Principles of the Soul are the universal Motives to human Action. ”

“ But when we take a survey of the more sublime parts of the human frame; when we behold man's internal make and structure; his mental faculties; his social propensions, and those active powers which set all in motion—the passions,—what an illustrious display of consummate wisdom is presented to our admiring view! ”

“ Thou art the main-spring, the vital secret, the fountain-source, of our existence. What is life but a genial current of joy and grace that wells up incessantly from Thy centred self? Thou art the life, the inner vitality, of our senses. ”

“ These interests are, in fact, the eternal and universal forces of spiritual existence, the essential cravings of the human heart, the spontaneous and inevitable objects of human action, justifiable and rational in virtue of their own character, and consequently the very universal powers to which we have referred. ”

“ We know the law of human nature: acts produce habits, habits breed dispositions, dispositions form the will, and the rightly-formed will is character. ”

“ These, to the hungry “Human Soul,” may be of immense importance, but if the “Human Soul”—principle 5, be not first prepared, if we do not look upward and build upward, all these means,—Spiritual thoughts that are “in the air,” wise books, this society of yours—they are all to such a spiritually-desert soul, but as of old—“pearls before swine”—hidden light—a force shut out by ourselves from acting within us. ”

“ This influence of individual subjects will be all the greater, of course, the nearer and more intimately they are united with the true centre of the universal spiritual life, the spirit of spirits, about which the universe gravitates, whether with or without the conscious will of the individual. ”

“ The men and the women who are awake to these inner helps—these directing, moulding, and sustaining powers and forces that belong to the realm of mind and spirit—are never to be found among those who ask: Is life worth the living? ”

“ Let us name the higher and the purer one, the spirit of the soul; and call the other, the spirit of the flesh; for both are distinct from mere intellect, which each uses as an agent, as each gains the ascendancy, or appeals to as a judge when the struggle is nearly equal. It is upon this struggle between these two principles that turns the greater part of each man's moral history. ”

“ In the preceding lectures I have given reasons for thinking that in two great departments of human interest—Æsthetics and Ethics—the highest beliefs and emotions cannot claim to have any survival value. ”

“ He places the human mind on an elevation, from which it commands a view of the whole line of moral consequences; and requires it to conform its acts to the larger and more enlightened conscience which it has thus acquired. ”

“ They reckon up several sorts of pleasures, which they call true ones; some belong to the body, and others to the mind. The pleasures of the mind lie in knowledge, and in that delight which the contemplation of truth carries with it; to which they add the joyful reflections on a well- spent life, and the assured hopes of a future happiness. ”

“ What is the nature of that subtle and majestic principle which attaches us to a few persons, not so much by personal as by the most spiritual ties? What is the quality of the persons who, without being public men, or literary men, or rich men, or active men, or (in the popular sense) religious men, have a certain salutary omnipresence in all our life’s history, almost giving their own quality to the atmosphere and the landscape? ”

“ They recognized man as a trinity, the three elements of which are "body, soul, and spirit." The soul, in their system of philosophy, corresponds to the objective mind, and the spirit to the subjective mind. ”

“ Your own thoughts, desires, and aspirations comprise your world, and, to you, all that there is in the universe of beauty and joy and bliss, or of ugliness and sorrow and pain, is contained within yourself.
By your own thoughts you make or mar your life, your world, your universe, As you build within by the power of thought, so will your outward life and circumstances shape themselves accordingly. ”

“ The man rightly practiced in all noble exercises of life—in moral fidelity, in reverence and sympathy, in observation and conformity to the actual conditions of the world about him—will find pouring in upon him a beauty, a love, a divinity, which fill the soul with a heavenly vision. ”

“ Men know that they need, if I may so put it, four things: truth for the understanding, love round which the heart may coil, authority for the will which may direct and restrain, and energy for the practical life. ”

“ And in this have I long believed that my power consists; in sympathy, and that part of the imagination which relates to sentiment and contemplation. I am formed, if for anything not in common with the herd of mankind, to apprehend minute and remote distinctions of feeling, whether relative to external nature or the living beings which surround us, and to communicate the conceptions which result from considering either the moral or the material universe as a whole. ”

“ Down below them, is another question which is included in them all and which sooner or later must be faced by each and every one of us: "Why am I here on earth? Has my life any purpose in the great, everlasting scheme of things? What is that purpose?" ”

“ Let us look to the One life as our model, and turn to Him who lived it on our earth, as to the guide, and friend, and helper, who alone can strengthen the feeble knees, and lift up the fainting heart. ”