Lord, I want to be up in my heart.
The effect of great and inevitable misfortune is to elevate those souls which it does not deprive of all virtue.
For it is obvious to everybody, I think, that this study [of astronomy] compels the soul to look upward and leads it away from things here to higher things.
By religion I mean perfected manhood,--the quickening of the soul by the influence of the Divine Spirit.
Fasting, as some people speculate, is not a bodily torture, martyrdom, or a cross, but it is a way to elevate the body to reach the level of cooperation with the soul. When we fast, our intention is not to torture the body but to shun its behaviour. Thus, one who fasts becomes a spiritual and not a physical person. Fasting is an ascetic soul which takes the body with it as its partner in asceticism.
Even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he does the beauties of nature. The starry sky, the sea, and every sight afforded by these wonderful regions, seems still to have the power of elevating his soul from earth. Such a man has a double existence: he may suffer misery, and be overwhelmed by disappointments; yet, when he has retired into himself, he will be like a celestial spirit that has a halo around him, within whose circle no grief or folly ventures.
Prayer is not designed to inform God, but to give man a sight of his misery; to humble man's heart, to excite his desire, to inflame his faith, to animate his hope, to raise his soul from earth to heaven.
Only living things bring living joy to the soul and must elevate it.
It is clear to everyone that astronomy at all events compels the soul to look upwards, and draws it from the things of this world to the other.
The pure soul shall mount on native wings, . . . and cut a path into the heaven of glory.
We grow to heaven. We don't go to heaven.
The principal thing in this world is to keep one's soul aloft.
When, indeed, men speak of Beauty, they mean, precisely, not a quality, as is supposed, but an effect - they refer, in short, just to that intense and pure elevation of soul - not of intellect, or of heart.
There is a serene and settled majesty to woodland scenery that enters into the soul and delights and elevates it, and fills it with noble inclinations.
Tis immortality, 'tis that alone, Amid life's pains, abasements, emptiness, The soul can comfort, elevate, and fill. That only, and that amply this performs.
But that had been grief--this was joy. Yet that grief and this joy were alike outside all the ordinary conditions of life; they were loopholes, as it were, in that ordinary life through which there came glimpses of something sublime. And in the contemplation of this sublime something the soul was exalted to inconceivable heights of which it had before had no conception, while reason lagged behind, unable to keep up with it.
I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio of this elevating excitement.
A poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul.
It naturally elevates the soul to feel this intimate relationship to it's primal ground...A man then feels himself truly at home, and whenever he is lifted up through music he can say to himself: "Yes, you come from other worlds, and in music you can experience your native place."
Everything that exalts and expands consciousness is good, while that which depresses and diminishes it is evil.
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!
The soul at its highest is found like God, but an angel gives a closer idea of Him. That is all an angel is: an idea of God.
I count this thing to be grandly true: That a noble deed is a step toward God-- Lifting the soul from the common clod To a purer air and a broader view.
I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio of this elevating excitement. But all excitements are, through a psychal necessity, transient.
