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Spiritual   /spˈɪrɪtʃəwəl/  /spˈɪrɪtʃwəl/   Listen
Spiritual

adjective
1.
Concerned with sacred matters or religion or the church.  Synonym: religious.  "A member of a religious order" , "Lords temporal and spiritual" , "Spiritual leaders" , "Spiritual songs"
2.
Concerned with or affecting the spirit or soul.  Synonym: unearthly.  "Spiritual fulfillment" , "Spiritual values" , "Unearthly love"
3.
Lacking material body or form or substance.  "The vital transcendental soul belonging to the spiritual realm"
4.
Resembling or characteristic of a phantom.  Synonyms: apparitional, ghostlike, ghostly, phantasmal, spectral.  "A phantasmal presence in the room" , "Spectral emanations" , "Spiritual tappings at a seance"



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"Spiritual" Quotes from Famous Books



... composed for the instrument, and if we were not in danger of being led into too wide an excursion, it would be profitable to trace the parallelism which is disclosed by the mechanical evolution of the instrument, and the technical and spiritual evolution of the music composed for it. A few points will be touched upon presently, when the intellectual activity invited by a ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... in his determination. On the 16th of December, therefore, he moved three resolutions, the object of which was to declare that his majesty being-prevented by indisposition from public business, it was the right and duty of the lords, spiritual and temporal, and commons of Great Britain, to provide the means of supplying the defect of the personal exercise of the royal authority. In the debates which followed these resolutions both parties put forth their ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... we should do well to avail ourselves of the support offered us from the outside places. These wandering children of the Old Land had cherished among them a strong and simple godliness, a devout habit of Christian morality, from which we might well draw spiritual sustenance. ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... familiar. We even demand, as Renan happily expressed it, to know the truth which shall enable us not to fear, but almost to love, death: and an irresistible force urges us to explore the depths of subconsciousness, whence, it is claimed, may spring the desired renewal and intensification of man's spiritual life. ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot

... seats, which were reserved for each according to prescription, a silence followed which was unusual in this circle, for they were accustomed to assemble as if for an intellectual feast at every sunset. It was a symposium of minds, at which the excesses, according to Alcibiades, were only spiritual. ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg

... punished, or only the coarser, grosser, more offensive sins? As to the first, ought sin to be punished? There is a strong drift toward the teaching that sin ought to be punished only for the purpose of reforming the sinner. Intelligent men endorse this teaching without realizing that it is spiritual anarchy and absolutely horrible and detestable. A woman and four little children are murdered in cold blood by three robbers for the purpose of robbing the home. When the three are arrested, the first is found ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin

... Italy, when they see the Milky Way stretching its wavering, cloudy path across the sky, shining as if made up of the footprints of innumerable saints, say that it is the road to Jerusalem. The road to the New Jerusalem has no such pallid and spiritual glory: its colors are those of life. No death but that of martyrdom, with its rosy blood, waving palm-branch and golden crown, is figured there. Life, and the joy of life, beauty so profuse that it can afford to have a few blemishes like a slatternly Venus, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various

... duke; and a banner was sent to William from the holy see, which the Pope himself had consecrated and blessed for the invasion of this island. The clergy throughout the continent were now assiduous and energetic in preaching up William's enterprise as undertaken in the cause of God. Besides these spiritual arms (the effect of which in the eleventh century must not be measured by the philosophy or the indifferentism of the nineteenth), the Norman duke applied all the energies of his mind and body, all the resources of his duchy, and all the influence he possessed ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... invasion of the French, he failed to comprehend the revolution marked out for the future in the shock of the modern nations. While criticising the papacy, he discerned the pernicious results of nepotism and secular ambition: but he had no instinct for the necessity of a spiritual and religious regeneration. His judgment of the political situation led him to believe that the several units of the Italian system might be turned to profit and account by the application of superficial remedies,—by ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... worthy Admiral Vivier des Murenes, was generally regarded as an excellent seaman. He displayed a piety that would have seemed excessive in an anti-clerical minister, if the Republic had not recognised that religion was of great maritime utility. Acting on the instruction of his spiritual director, the Reverend Father Douillard, the worthy Admiral had dedicated his fleet to St. Orberosia and directed canticles in honour of the Alcan Virgin to be composed by Christian bards. These replaced the national hymn in the music played ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... which I lie, dead and buried, in hope of a joyful resurrection in 1796." Indeed, it is not easy to conceive a more dismal situation for a young, ardent, and active man, fresh from Oxford, full of intellectual ambition, and not very keenly alive to the spiritual opportunities of his calling. The village, a kind of oasis in the desert of Salisbury Plain, was not touched by any of the coaching-roads. The only method of communication with the outside world was by the market-cart which brought the necessaries of life ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell

... as life exists, in a state of continual wear, old cells being constantly broken down, and new ones substituted in their places. When the Apostle exclaimed, "I die daily," he uttered an important physiological as well as a spiritual truth; though, if he had said, "I die every instant," he would have expressed it more exactly. It is only by continual death that we live at all. But continual death calls for continual creation, the continual destruction for continual repair, ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... collected one hundred and twenty stories for seventeen holidays—stories grave, gay, humorous, or fanciful; also some that are spiritual in feeling, and others that give the delicious thrill of horror so craved by boys and girls at Halloween time. The range of selection is wide, and touches all sides of wholesome boy and girl nature, and the tales have the power to ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott

... duck, living in captivity and hating me, that it was dear to me, and that I felt for its sufferings? I had never known my wife, so I had never known how to talk to her or what to talk about. Her appearance I knew very well and appreciated it as it deserved, but her spiritual, moral world, her mind, her outlook on life, her frequent changes of mood, her eyes full of hatred, her disdain, the scope and variety of her reading which sometimes struck me, or, for instance, the nun-like expression I had seen on her ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... former enemies to be enjoyed. Not only is Israel to be at peace with all nations, but, far more, is to have the leadership of the nations of the earth, and leadership of the highest sort—in a world-wide spiritual movement, in the day when the Spirit of God is to be poured ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon

... expect, therefore, that while the crafts in Russia will lose in artistic value, the drama, sculpture and painting and all those arts which have nothing to do with the machine and depend entirely upon mental and spiritual inspiration will receive an impetus from the Communist faith. Whether the flowering period will be long or short depends partly on the political situation, but chiefly on the rapidity of industrial development. It may ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell

... mounted in brass. The tongs, like the two-handed sword of Bruce, cannot be wielded by puny people. We burn in it hickory wood, cut long. We like the smell of this aromatic forest timber, and its clear flame. The birch is also a sweet wood for the hearth, with a sort of spiritual flame and an even temper,—no snappishness. Some prefer the elm, which holds fire so well; and I have a neighbor who uses nothing but apple-tree wood,—a solid, family sort of wood, fragrant also, and full of delightful suggestions. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... human significance, which, I think, is the source of the delight we take in them. The song of the bobolink to me expresses hilarity; the song sparrow's, faith; the bluebird's, love; the catbird's, pride; the white-eyed flycatcher's, self-consciousness; that of the hermit thrush spiritual serenity: while there is something military in the call of ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... Cyrano and Swift had revived from Lucian, but of a new, a modern, and a very English variety. Buncle is sometimes extraordinarily like Borrow (on whom he probably had influence), and it would not be hard to arrange a very considerable spiritual succession for him, by no means deserving the uncomplimentary terms in which he dismisses his progeny in ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... "I know more than your name. Kenny sent me a letter of measures, spiritual, mental and physical that would turn Bertillon green with envy. If ever you default with all the foolish hearts in New York I'll turn you over to the police. ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... once likened to the gorgeousness of the Mosque of Omar. Yet, by this, her beauty was rather enhanced than lessened as though Nature, the master-painter, had retouched a picture already wondrous, softening its colors with a tone more spiritual. Both face and figure had lost something of roundness and the hand that lay on the table was slenderer of finger and wrist, but Mary Burton had not been robbed of her beauty, and when she spoke, very low and hesitantly, one realized that out of her voice no single golden note was missing. ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... father, her mother, and the priest, to whom she was bound to tell everything, and from whom she should have sought advice. Thus, long afterwards, St. Theresa had visions, and, in obedience to her priest, she at first distrusted these, as perhaps a delusion of evil, or a temptation of spiritual pride. Joan, however, was afraid that her father would interfere with her mission, and prevent her from going to the king. She believed that she must not be 'disobedient to the ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various

... I stand in to you, is a daily Call upon me to consider the spiritual State of these great Cities; and tho' I doubt not but GOD has many faithful and chosen Servants among you, yet the general View of the Wickedness and Corruption that abound, and are spreading far and wide, gives me, and must give to every serious ...
— A Letter from the Lord Bishop of London, to the Clergy and People of London and Westminster; On Occasion of the Late Earthquakes • Thomas Sherlock

... the Dorothy. Having touched on the African coast, they crossed over to South America, where they took two Portuguese ships, one of which had forty-five negroes on board, while the only riches in the other, besides slaves and friars, were beads and other spiritual trinkets, and the furniture designed for a new monastery. Several other prizes were made, when, without attempting to reach the Pacific, they returned to England. While numerous English vessels were cruising on the coasts of Old Spain, and destroying its trade and ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston

... sure that it was not these qualities which recommended me to Emma Becker, nor, whatever we may have felt under the influences of Orizaba, was it any spiritual affinity. Doctors, I fear, are not great believers in spiritual affinities; they know that such emotions can be accounted for in other ways. Probably Emma was attracted to me because I was dark, and I to her because she was fair. Orizaba and opportunity merely ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard

... force their supreme divinity, and who upon its altars are prepared to sacrifice both the gathered fruits and the potential germs of the unfettered human spirit. [Cheers.] I use this language advisedly. This is not merely a material; it is also a spiritual conflict. [Cheers.] Upon its issues everything that contains promise and hope, that leads to emancipation and a fuller liberty for the millions who make up the mass of mankind will be found sooner ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various

... was personally introduced to a lady with whom I had passed many a dreamy hour of spiritual communion—Mrs. Jameson, whose works on arts and artists were for years almost my only food for a certain class ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... audience who laughed long and loud, greatly to the disturbance of the solemnity of the occasion. The witty minister remarked that this addition to his flock, like some church members, seemed to care more for the carnal than the spiritual, and proceeded to the thirteenthly ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... night appear to grow sad with the dreary sorrow of her heart, and at length he returns—but not as a loving and sober husband; not as a tender and home-providing father; not as a man, with all the noble attributes of the human nature; not as a Christian, with the spiritual Balm of Gilead, with which to soothe the cankering ills of his household;—no, not as either he returns, but rather as a madman escaped from the prison walls of Bedlam, or as fiend let loose ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon

... it was a kindly admiration not unmixed with awe. For there was about her beauty a touch of the spiritual which set her above the common run of women, making men feel her purity and sweetness, and inclining their hearts to worship ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill

... the ennoblement of the human heart, nor does the grace of God flow through the channels of surpassing intellect or of orthodox belief. Men there have been in all ages, Pagan no less than Christian, who with scanty mental enlightenment and spiritual knowledge have yet lived holy and noble lives: men there have been in all ages, Christian no less than Pagan, who with consummate gifts and profound erudition have disgraced some of the noblest words which ever ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... to-day, as I shall in future use, the word "Religion" as signifying the feelings of love, reverence, or dread with which the human mind is affected by its conceptions of spiritual being; and you know well how necessary it is, both to the rightness of our own life, and to the understanding the lives of others, that we should always keep clearly distinguished our ideas of Religion, as thus defined, ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... not admit that he was hovering on the brink of loving Betty Gower—it seemed an incredible thing for him to do—but was vividly aware that she had kindled an incomprehensible fire in him, and he suspected, indeed he feared with a fear that bordered on spiritual shrinking, that it would go on glowing after she was gone. And she would go presently. This spontaneous rushing to his aid was merely what a girl like that, with generous impulses and quick sympathy, would do for any one in dire need. She would leave behind her an inescapable longing, an ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... nomination, whom rights, conferred by birth or office, entitled to their seats. One of these was a family conclave (concilium domesticum), or assembly of the full-grown males of the Royal House; the other was a Senate comprising both the spiritual and the temporal chiefs of the nation, the Sophi, or "Wise Men," and the Magi, or "Priests." Together these two bodies constituted the Megistanes, the "Nobles" or "Great Men"—the privileged class which to a considerable extent checked and controlled the monarch. The monarchy was elective, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson

... are half of beauty and delight, and the better half; otherwise we should have no souls. A single violet, discovered by chance in the by-ways of an April forest in New England, gives a pleasure as poignant as, and more spiritual than, the miles ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne

... the church doors had been opened, and presently they discerned a female form crossing the lawn towards the open window. It was Sister Cecilia, walking with that mincing lightness of tread which seems to be the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual superiority over the remainder of womanhood. Good women—those mistaken females who move in an atmosphere of ostentatious good works—usually walk like this. Like this they enter the humble cot with a little soup and ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman

... number of men who are considered eligible to office. Candidates are put in nomination and elected because they have been good neighbors, honorable citizens, competent teachers of youth, or faithful spiritual guides; or, possibly, because they have been successful in business, are of the military or of the fire department, or because they are leaders and benefactors of special classes of society. In ordinary times these facts are all worthy ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell

... be correct, which do not literally agree with yours. To what interpretation does the word "faith" not lend itself, both when taken alone and in connection with that which the Scriptures command us "to believe," in every single instance where they employ the word! Against my will, I fall into spiritual discussion and controversies. Among Catholics the Bible is read not at all, or with great precaution, by the laity; it is expounded only by the priests, who have concerned themselves all their lives with the study of the original ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... of the fifth century, seems the first pope who grasped the conception of Rome's universal ecclesiastical dominion. The capture of Rome by Alaric ended the city's claims to temporal supremacy; it confirmed the spiritual ascendancy of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee

... Captain Widdrington make such an observation as this latter one? Surely he must be aware how much more interesting it is to provide for the spiritual wants of people at a distance than for those of people in our country. What missionary society, worthy of the name, would undertake a church-building crusade into Lancashire or Yorkshire? It is too near home, too commonplace. But let them discover some region at the antipodes, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... Jesuits who surrounded the sick and dying monarch. Charles II. had long been harassed by the importunities of both parties that he should give the influence of his voice in the decision. Tortured by the incessant vacillations of his own mind, he was at last influenced, by the suggestions of his spiritual advisers, to refer the question to the pope. He accordingly sent an embassage to the pontiff with a ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... indeed arrive to-morrow morning, Mr. Bulmer, I shall relinquish you to him; in other circumstances will be laid upon me the deplorable necessity of summoning a Protestant minister from Manneville, and, after your spiritual affairs are put in order, of hanging you—suppose we say ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... to church. And though I can no longer go up to the sanctuary and partake of the bread and wine, "the outward and visible signs" made use of in the heavenly feast; yet, blessed be God's holy name, I can, and do partake in a spiritual manner of that which those signs represent. I feel and know what it is to have "Christ in me the hope of glory." And this "satisfies my longing, as nothing else can do." I find peace and comfort in simply "looking ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton

... some that the version of the Seventy-eighth Psalm by Sternhold and Hopkins, whose spiritual songs were usually printed, as appears above, "at ye end of their Bibles," was the first which was sung at Commencement dinners; but this does not seem at all probable, since the first Commencement at Cambridge did not take place until 1642, at which time the "Bay Psalm-Book," ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... discover in the aphorisms of the ancient Greeks and Hindus several close parallels to the doctrines of the Old and New Testaments, and he will have reasoned justly if he conclude that the so-called "heathens" could have derived their spiritual light only from the same Source as that which inspired the Hebrew prophets and ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston

... no means adhere exclusively to such addresses to the saints, as supplicate them to pray for the faithful on earth. Many a prayer is couched in language which can be interpreted only as conveying a petition to them immediately for their assistance, temporal and spiritual. ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler

... Scott's novels admire the Jacobs must be Papists too." An idea got about that the religion of such genteel people as the Stuarts must be the climax of gentility, and that idea was quite sufficient. Only let a thing, whether temporal or spiritual, be considered genteel in England, and if it be not followed it is strange indeed; so Scott's writings not only made the greater part of the nation ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... Occasionally, too, he would direct that they have a family feast in honour of their household gods; and on these occasions a cup of their intoxicating ava draught was poured out as a drink-offering. They did this in their family house, where they were all assembled, supposing that their gods had a spiritual presence there, as well as in the material objects to which we have referred. Often it was supposed that the god came among them, and spoke through the father or some other member of the family, telling them what to do in order to remove a present evil ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner

... love without interfering with another man's parish. I can't forgive that," said Mr Morgan, recovering himself; "he must be taught to know better; and it is very hard upon a clergyman," continued the spiritual ruler of Carlingford, "that he cannot move in a matter like this without incurring a storm of godless criticism. If I were sending Wentworth out of my parish, I shouldn't wonder if the 'Times' had an article upon it, denouncing me as an indolent priest and bigot, ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... avoided them as much as I did books of religion, and perhaps from the same motive. I was better pleased with romances, and this circumstance made me read the Pilgrim's Progress with eagerness, though to no purpose." The new era, of which he was to be the aggressive spiritual representative from Christendom, had not dawned. Walter Scott was ten years his junior. Captain Cook had not discovered the Sandwich Islands, and was only returning from the second of his three voyages while Carey was still at school. The church services and the ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith

... rational beings that in great things and in small things they act from ideas. The magic power of thought cannot be exaggerated. Great conceptions have great consequences, and they rule the world. A new spiritual idea shoots forth its rays and enlightens to larger issues generations of men. There is a mystery in every forth-putting of will-power, and every expression of personality. Character cannot be computed. The art of goodness, of living nobly, if so unconscious a thing may be called an art, is one ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... My endeavour through life is to judge not that I be not judged. One of my beloved husband's finest sermons was on that text. I read it constantly—in my own copy of the edition printed by subscription, in the first days of my widowhood—and at every fresh perusal I derive an increase of spiritual benefit and edification. ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... all eyes," murmured Esther; and it was true that at this distance the preacher seemed to be made up of two eyes and a voice, so slight and delicate was his frame. Very tall, slender and dark, his thin, long face gave so spiritual an expression to his figure that the great eyes seemed to penetrate like his clear voice to every soul within ...
— Esther • Henry Adams

... in so-called spiritual experiences (spiritistic is the better word), there is generally a preceding feeling like entering an icehouse.[2] This is described as occurring to the butler of the Haunted House at B——, Harold Sanders, in 1896; to Mr. "Endell," and to others. This chill is surely identical with, ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris

... takes ten Arabs to fight one negro; no wonder their spiritual life is apathetic, unfruitful, since the digits that explore and design, following up the vagrant fancies of the imagination, are practically atrophied. You will see beggars who find it too troublesome, on cold days, to extricate ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... princely Saint was now authenticated delightfully. That which had made him seem unreal in moments of spiritual laxity—the impenetrable secrecy of his private life—was now seen to enhance manyfold his wondrous givings. Here was a charm which could never have sat the display before them had it been dryly bought in their presence ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... something on my chest." She looked surprised. "Yes, there's something on my chest. I speak in a spiritual sense." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various

... even with a touch of spiritual exaltation, like a person long condemned to intercourse with inferiors, who has the irresistible desire to open her mind and heart to a breath of the higher life. Andrea listened to her and was conscious ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... from the shore, the blue waters dimpled in the sunshine, and the flop of their ripple in the clincher-landings was an old and pleasant music to him. Suddenly he sat erect and listened: "Maggie called me. Three times over she called me." The impression upon his spiritual ear was so strong that ere he was aware ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr

... contractual theory which, in these pages, he connects with the great name of Jefferson. But things even deeper than patriotism impelled him against Prussianism. His enemy was the barbarian when he enslaves, as something more hellish even than the barbarian when he slays. His was the spiritual instinct by which Prussian order was worse than Prussian anarchy; and nothing was so inhuman as an inhuman humanitarianism. If you had asked him for what he fought and died amid the wasted fields of France and Flanders, he might ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... of Apollo surviving, or absorbing, all other pagan godhead. The apparatus of the medical art, the salutary mineral or herb, diet or abstinence, and all the varieties of the bath, came to have a kind of sacramental character, so deep was the feeling, in more serious minds, of a moral or spiritual profit in physical health, beyond the obvious bodily advantages one had of it; the body becoming truly, in that case, but a quiet handmaid of the soul. The priesthood or "family" of Aesculapius, a vast college, believed to be in possession of certain precious medical secrets, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater

... independent. Here more and more care is given to provide education for everyone born on our soil. Here religion, released from political connection with the civil government, refuses to subserve the craft of statesmen, and becomes in its independence the spiritual life of the people. Here toleration is extended to every opinion, in the quiet certainty that truth needs only a fair field to secure the victory. Here the human mind goes forth unshackled in the pursuit of science, to collect stores of knowledge and acquire an ever-increasing ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... others; but not one in ten knows what a soul means, nor do they expect to meet with either reward or punishment in the next world, though they are taught to regard animals as clean and unclean, and some go through the form of a pilgrimage to Mecca. Indeed the whole of their spiritual education goes into oaths and ejaculations—Allah and Mohammed being as common in their mouths as damn and blast are with our soldiers and sailors. The long and short of this story is, that the freed men generally turn out ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... not proper for a church system and a commune, nor for a Protestant church and a Catholic church, nor for a town of one hundred thousand inhabitants and a village of five hundred. Each association has its own peculiar and distinctive features, which grade it according to its kind, according to its spiritual or temporal aims, according to its liberal or authoritative spirit, according to is small or large dimensions, according to the simplicity or complexity of its affairs, according to the capacity or incapacity of its members: features which within it are both efficient and permanent; whatever ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... children "who grow up in ignorance." We likewise hear that the earth is square and the moon a green cheese. Children can no more grow in ignorance than they can grow in a dark and air-tight case. All growth, mental, moral, spiritual or "physical," is by increase in in-telligence; i.e., by recognition of more truth. All things exist in a limitless sea of pure wisdom waiting, waiting to be understood. As fast as this universal wisdom is ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne

... conscience. It seems very strange; one would think that no soul could be at rest in utter disregard of its Maker, in complete neglect of the plainest duties of a creature endowed with human intelligence—which means, of course, power to perceive spiritual truths. Yet such persons seem capable of going through a long life without once feeling the impulse to worship, to render thanks and praise to the Supreme Being. I suppose they very early deaden their spiritual faculties; ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... Now, the sinfulness of this Erastian practice still persisted in, is evident from the Scriptures of truth, where the glorious king of Zion assigns the power of appointing fasts, not to the civil magistrate, but to the spiritual office-bearers in his house. Jer. xiii, 18: "Say unto the king and queen, Humble yourselves." Here it is the office of the prophets of the Lord, to enjoin humiliation work upon those that are in civil authority, contrary to the present ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery

... reading devotional literature is a great aid to our being devotional. Too few, I fear, realize how important to our spiritual advancement is the cultivation of a taste for devotional reading. As a rule, those who have a taste for spiritual books and gratify that taste prosper in the Lord, while those who have no relish for such books labor at a ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr

... by the older brethren of their Order, whose duty it was to assist in the proper manoeuvring of their young careers, that, although support of the 'varsity teams was important, they must neglect neither the spiritual nor the intellectual by-products of undergraduate doings. Therefore they became members of the college Y.M.C.A. and of the ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington

... He hadn't been very long in the place when Joanna left home and friends. 'Twas one day that next summer after she went, and I had been married early in the spring. He felt that he ought to go out and visit her. She was a member of the church, and might wish to have him consider her spiritual state. I wa'n't so sure o' that, but I always liked Joanna, and I'd come to be her cousin by marriage. Nathan an' I had conversed about goin' out to pay her a visit, but he got his chance to sail sooner'n he expected. He always thought everything of her, and last time he come home, knowing ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett

... strive to exorcise fear in the training of children, this purpose would constitute a bond of sympathy among them and they would be encouraged by the reflection that this high purpose was animating parents and teachers the world around. Courage, of course, is of the spirit and typifies many spiritual qualities that characterize civilization of high grade. It is quite conceivable that these qualities of the spirit may become the goals of thinking in all lands. Thus the nations would be brought into a relation of closer harmony. Had a score of boys shared the experience of the lad who grew into ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson

... epic of earth; the history of a microcosm. Its dominant note is one of patient strength and simplicity; the mainstay of its working is the tacit, stern, yet loving alliance between Nature and the Man who faces her himself, trusting to himself and her for the physical means of life, and the spiritual contentment with life which she must grant if he be worthy. Modern man faces Nature only by proxy, or as proxy, through others or for others, and the intimacy is lost. In the wilds the contact is direct and immediate; it is the foothold upon earth, the touch of ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun

... daughter, to the valley of Clairvaux [29] in Champagne; and was content, till the hour of his death, with the humble station of abbot of his own community. A philosophic age has abolished, with too liberal and indiscriminate disdain, the honors of these spiritual heroes. The meanest among them are distinguished by some energies of the mind; they were at least superior to their votaries and disciples; and, in the race of superstition, they attained the prize for which such numbers contended. In speech, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... This is my appeal. Many may deny its validity, if they choose, but no one can brush aside or answer the arguments upon which it is based. The executive tasks of this war rest upon me. I ask that you lighten them and place in my hands instruments, spiritual instruments, which I have daily to apologize for ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... to the earnestness and solemnity of their religious faith. We find the cause in the simple, exalted, and comparatively spiritual ideas they had of the Supreme Being; in a word, we shall state the whole ground to be this,—that the Greeks were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... ages from the patient literary toil of one religious recluse. And finally St. Benedict, in that Rule of his which was to be the code of monastic Christendom for centuries, had sanctified Work as one of the most effectual preservatives of the bodily and spiritual health of the ascetic, bringing together Laborare and Orare in friendly union, and proclaiming anew for the monk as for the untonsured citizen the primal ordinance, 'In the sweat of thy brow thou shalt ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... berries which he found by the wayside, and occasionally asking for something to eat. He slept in the open air, for he knew no fear; his brain still weaving the golden threads; still talking to invisible spirits; his face looking so spiritual that one was not surprised that strange tongues spoke a strange language to the lonely boy. He has wandered on until his feet are sore and a feeling of weariness steals over him; he looks around and finds that he is no nearer ...
— Bohemian Society • Lydia Leavitt

... supposing, of course, that he had given up all hope of Christianizing them, I asked him where he would settle, and what he would do. He did not hesitate a moment, and said that he would hunt up the remnant of his people and attend to their spiritual wants. ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau

... itself were in the glass; for methought their poor souls needed such fiery stimulant to lift them a little way out of the smothering squalor of both their outward and interior life, giving them glimpses and suggestions, even if bewildering ones, of a spiritual existence that limited their present misery. The temperance-reformers unquestionably derive their commission from the Divine Beneficence, but have never been taken fully into its counsels. All may not be lost, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... Library MS. we find nothing which this Battery Park might have inspired. And yet, we can not believe that Khalid here was only attracted by that vague something which, in his spiritual enceinteship, he seemed to relish. Nothing? Not even the does and kangaroos that adorn the Park distracted or detained him? We doubt it; and Khalid's lute sustains us in our doubt. Ay, and so does our Scribe; for in his Histoire Intime we read the following, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... the result of service performed. In no land are there so many and such large aggregations of wealth as here; in no land do they perform larger service; in no land will the work of a day bring so large a reward in material and spiritual welfare. ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge

... from Bjoernson's judgment? I think not. In a historical, if not in an aesthetic, sense, Ghosts may well rank as Ibsen's greatest work. It was the play which first gave the full measure of his technical and spiritual originality and daring. It has done far more than any other of his plays to "move boundary-posts." It has advanced the frontiers of dramatic art and implanted new ideals, both technical and intellectual, in the minds of a whole generation of playwrights. It ...
— Ghosts • Henrik Ibsen

... knows better than I the capabilities of a system of domestic service at its best. I have seen children who were spiritual sons and daughters of their masters, girls who were friends of their mistresses, and old servants honored and revered. But in every such case the Servant had transcended the Menial, the Service had been exalted above the Wage. Now to accomplish ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... aloud. After nones work must be resumed until evening. From October the first until the beginning of Lent they were to read until the ninth hour. At the ninth hour they were to take their meal and then read spiritual works or the Psalms. Throughout Lent they were required to read until the third hour, then work until the tenth. Every monk was to have a book from the library, and to read it through during Lent. On Sundays reading ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage

... rather too much as a matter of solemn and dignified occupation than as a matter of feeling and conduct. It was not that my father ever forgot the latter; indeed, behind his love for symbolical worship lay a passionate and almost Puritan evangelicalism. But he did not speak easily and openly of spiritual experience. I was myself profoundly attracted as a boy by the aesthetic side of religion, and loved its solemnities with all my heart; but it was not till I made friends with Bishop Wilkinson at the ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson

... cures are said to have been wrought by this saintly relic. It is called the Hand of Father Arrowsmith—a priest who is said to have been put to death at Lancaster for his religion in the time of William III. When about to suffer, he desired his spiritual attendant to cut off his right hand, which should then have the power to work miraculous cures on those who had faith to believe in its efficacy. Not many years ago, a female, sick of the smallpox, had it lying in bed with her every night for six weeks, in order to effect ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... her mountain Castle, telling that the Chatelaine would be glad to receive me whenever my travels led me her way. She mentioned our common enthusiasm for the Venetians and graciously wanted my opinion on the Giorgione, which the enemies of Mantovani, her friend and my spiritual father, as she called him, had spitefully slandered. Such slanders had never happened to reach my ears but I was ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather

... the Lord our God and earnest supplication for pardoning mercy through the blood of Christ and deep acknowledgement of our great unworthiness to be the Lord's Covenant People, also acknowledging our own inability to keep covenant with God or to perform any spiritual duty unless the Lord Jesus do enable us thereto by his spiritual dwelling in us, and being awfully sensible that it is a dreadful thing for sinful dust and ashes personally to transact with the infinitely glorious Majesty ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond

... inspecting other people's clothes. If that is so, they must be profoundly impressed by the amazing proportion of misfits. The souls of thousands are quite obviously clad in ready-made garments. Here is the spirit of a bright young girl decked out in all the contents of her grandmother's spiritual wardrobe. The clothes fitted the grandmother perfectly; the old lady looked charming in them; but the grand-daughter looks ridiculous. I was once at a testimony meeting. The thing that most impressed me was the ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham

... goes without saying. The Pilgrims had their spiritual adviser with them in the person of Elder Brewster, and were not likely to tolerate a priest of either the English or the Romish church on a vessel carrying them. The officer referred to was the representative of the business interests of the owner or ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames

... day now closed.'" ("That's Aunt Elizabeth," muttered Gerrard under his breath.) "'I will try hard to hasten my rebellious spirit,—no not hasten, but chasten—I always say that wrong, Uncle Tom—to reverently submit myself to all my governors, teachers, spiritual pastors and masters: to regulate my conduc', and demean myself with all humility; to keep my hands from picking and stealing, to recollect that I may be called this night before, Thee to answer for my many sins and transgressions.' That's all ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke

... John Winthrop were governors of two religious commonwealths. We must not forget that the Puritans came to America to secure a higher form of spiritual life. In the reign of Elizabeth, it was thought that the Revival of Learning would cure all ills and unlock the gates of happiness. This hope had met with disappointment. Then Puritanism came, and ushered in a new era of spiritual aspiration for something better, ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck

... themselves? Should we have much confidence in a physician, who, after confessing that he was utterly ignorant of his art, should nevertheless boast of the excellence of his remedies? This, however, is the constant practice of our spiritual quacks. By a strange fatality, the most sensible people consent to be the dupes of these empirics who are perpetually obliged to avow their own ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach

... ago, when we visited this hut, we found them stolid and indifferent, caring nothing for spiritual things. The woman sat smoking over the fire, scarcely vouchsafing us a word, and muttered to a crony, "Wot's thet thar woman nosing 'bout yere for? She'd er heap sight ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 49, No. 3, March, 1895 • Various

... quiet meditation in Somerset changed to a busy whirl at this reply. That Paula should become indifferent to his existence from a sense of superiority, physical, spiritual, or social, was a sufficiently ironical thing; but that she should have relinquished him because of the presence of a rival lent commonplace dreariness to ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... had been chased on the moors; often he had been hidden cunningly in shepherd's cottages, twice he had eluded the dragoons by immersing himself in peat-bogs, and once he had been wounded. His face could never at any time have been otherwise than refined and spiritual, but now it was that of an ascetic, worn by prayer and fasting, while his dark blue eyes glowed when he was moved like coals of fire, and the golden hair upon his head, as the sun touched it, was like unto an aureole. Standing ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren

... it is so called in Scripture, though it be otherwise rendered by the translators, not much as I conceive to their commendation, seeing by that means they have lost us a good lesson, the apostles borrowing that name for their spiritual congregations, to the end that we might see they intended the government of the church to be democratical or popular, as is also plain in the rest of ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... is above us, and respect for the man who is beside us, and I do hope that our next minister will be a good man, of active brain, warm heart and Christly sympathies, who will be among us a living, moral, and spiritual force, and who will be willing to teach us on the Bible plan of 'line upon line, precept upon precept, here ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... history of that ancient empire. Through its influence the mikado came to his own again, after being for seven centuries virtually the vassal of the shogun. So long had he vanished from sight that the people looked upon him as a far-off spiritual dignitary, and had forgotten that he was once the supreme lord of the land. During all this time the imperial court had been kept up, with its prime minister, its officials and nobles,—with everything except authority. The court dignitaries ranked, ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... the Almighty, with ardour and humility, on behalf of the Royal Family. It came in the long prayer, about the middle. Not in the perfunctory words of a ritual, but in the language of his choice, which varied according to what he believed to be the spiritual needs of the reigning House, and was at one period, touching certain of its members, though respectful, extremely candid. The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, "now in session," also—was ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... singularly touching to find in the spiritual, grave, and religious temper of these letters an affinity to the spirit of many others written from the front. During those weeks, those endless months of winter in the mud or the frost of the trenches, in the daily sight of death, in the thought of that death coming ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous

... there is nothing recondite about it. There are a great many philosophers—let us say Plato, Aristotle, Antisthenes, and your spiritual fathers, Chrysippus, Zeno, and all the rest of them; what was it that induced you, leaving the rest alone, to pick out the school you did from among them all, and pin your philosophic faith to it? Were you favoured like Chaerephon ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... his heart. But the writer desires, as Mr. Wallace's pastor, to add the testimony of observation and personal knowledge to the rare purity and uprightness of character, to the generosity of spirit, to the thoughtful kindness, and to the deep and reverent regard for spiritual things, of his distinguished parishioner. As an example of untiring energy, of probity of character, of cleanness of soul, of uprightness of life, of sincerity of purpose, of firmness of moral principle, he may safely be held up as a model ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... Alan Hawke, "his writings to-day are the pride of Genevan scholars; his library was the nucleus of the Geneva University; his defiant spirit broke the chains of Calvin's narrowness, and his resistant, spiritual example caught up has made Geneva the home of the oppressed, the central, radiant point of mental light and liberty for the world! Geneva since 1536 has harbored the brightest wandering Spanish, French, English, and Irish youth! Even grim Russia cannot reclaim from the free city its wayward ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... to point out is an even sadder thing than that—namely, that Christian people may lose their strength because they let go their hold upon God, and know nothing about it. Spiritual declension, all unconscious of its own existence, is the very history of hundreds of nominal Christians amongst us, and, I dare say, of some of us. The very fact that you do not suppose the statement to have the least application to yourself is perhaps ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... prophets, who administered everything. This immense domain, which was a kind of State within the State, was ruled over by a single high priest, chosen by the sovereign from among the prophets. He was the irresponsible head of it, and his spiritual ambition had increased step by step with the extension of his material resources. As the human Pharaoh showed himself entitled to homage from the lords of the earth, the priests came at length to the conclusion that Amon ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... do pity you very much. I pity you for your sins and sufferings. But more than all I pity you for the moral and spiritual blindness of which you do not even seem to ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... though without any essential change in their management. Ever since the independence of Mexico, the missions had been going down; until, at last, a law was passed, stripping them of all their possessions, and confining the priests to their spiritual duties, at the same time declaring all the Indians free and independent Rancheros. The change in the condition of the Indians was, as may be supposed, only nominal; they are virtually serfs, as much as they ever were. ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... he thought of her with sadness and perplexity, there came across him the memory of Mrs. Elsmere's sudden movement toward Hester; how she had drawn the child to her and kissed her—she, so unearthly and so spiritual, whose very aspect showed her the ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... voluptuous images and aspirations for earthly pleasures. Franz Liszt at this early age had a sensibility so delicate, and an imagination so quickly kindled, that he himself tells us no one can guess the extremes of ecstasy and despair through which he alternately passed. These spiritual experiences were perhaps fed by the mysticism of Jacob Boehme, whose works came into his possession, and furnished a most delusive and dangerous guide for the young enthusiast's fancy. But, dream ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris

... supplied the vacancies. The master himself was elected by a general chapter of these military functionaries alone, or combined with the conventual clergy, as in the order of Calatrava, which seems to have recognized the supremacy of the military over the spiritual division of the community, more unreservedly than that ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... Leggende fantastiche gives nine legends, one of which is the story of St. Peter's mother, mentioned above. Of the remaining ones, several may be classed under ghost stories, and two illustrate the great sanctity attached by the Italian to the spiritual relationship contracted by godmothers and godfathers, and by groomsmen and the bride. It is well known that in the Romish Church a godfather or godmother contracts a spiritual relationship with the godson or goddaughter and their parents which would prevent marriage between the parties. ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane

... consulted respecting the regulations, and because he was not permitted, as he said, to take the charge of this little flock. He made many objections to Sister Frances, as being an improper person to have the spiritual guidance of these young people: but as he was unable to give any just reason for his dislike, Mad. de Fleury persisted in her choice, and was at last obliged to assert, in opposition to the domineering abbe, her right to judge and decide in her own affairs. With seeming politeness, he begged ten ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... habits of mind in our own day are the theoretical and analytical habits. Dissection, vivisection, analysis—those are the processes to which all things not conclusively historical and all things spiritual are bound to pass. Thus we find the old myths classified into Sun Myths and Dawn Myths, Earth Myths and Moon Myths, Fire Myths and Wind Myths, until, as one of the most sane and vigorous thinkers of the present day[2] has justly observed: "If you take ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang

... out his life-work so as to make straight the path and level the road for the King; that a school-teacher can use his influence to bring pupils to the Master Teacher; that a physician has peculiar opportunity to quicken the spiritual lives of his patients; and that any legitimate occupation can be made to serve man's chief end, which is "to glorify God and ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith

... the effect of this was uncanny. He played, it seemed, a spiritual Blind Man's Buff. On every side of him things filled the air; once and again he would touch them, sometimes he would fancy that he was alone, clear, isolated, when suddenly something again would blunder up against him. And always with him, driving him into the ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole

... necessarily a poem, while a poem that can be sung as a hymn is something more than a poem. Imagination makes poems; devotion makes hymns. There can be poetry without emotion, but a hymn never. A poem may argue; a hymn must not. In short to be a hymn, what is written must express spiritual feelings and desires. The music of faith, hope and charity will ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth

... altogether unfair. There is no immorality of the court plays of Charles II.'s time which may not be found in those of Charles I.'s. Sedley and Etherege are not a whit worse, but only more stupid, than Fletcher or Shirley; and Monsieur Thomas is the spiritual father of all Angry lads, Rufflers, Blades, Bullies, Mohocks, Corinthians, and Dandies, down to the last drunken clerk who wrenched off a knocker, or robbed his master's till to pay his losses at a betting-office. True; we of this generation can hardly afford to throw stones. The ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley

... Congress, it runs: "We have resolved to grant to Christians as well as all others the liberty to practice the religion they prefer, in order that whatever exists of divinity or celestial power may help and favor us and all who are under our government." The empire pursued power — not merely spiritual but physical — in the sense in which Constantine issued his army order the year before, at the battle of the Milvian Bridge: In hoc signo vinces! using the Cross as a train of artillery, which, to his mind, it was. Society accepted it in the same character. ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... that the event so communicated really had to do with, and was the common idea of the sensorial illusion experienced by both parties. To speak figuratively, my dear Archy—mind, figuratively—I prefer to think, that the death of a human being throws a sort of gleam through the spiritual world, which may now and then touch some congenial object with sudden light, or even two, when they happen to be exactly in the proper position; as the twin spires of a cathedral may be momentarily illuminated by some far-off flash, while the countless roofs ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various



Words linked to "Spiritual" :   supernatural, incorporeal, Negro spiritual, spirit, sacred, religious song, immaterial, unworldly



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