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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Spirits

I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

Shakespeare.

Beautiful spirit, with thy hair of light and dazzling eyes of glory!

Byron.

Beware what spirit rages in your breast; for one inspired, ten thousand are possessed.

Roscommon.

Spirits live insphered, in regions mild, of calm and serene air.

Milton.

The spirits perverse with easy intercourse pass to and fro, to tempt or punish mortals.

Milton.

  • Spirits are not finely touched
  • But to fine issues.
  • Shakespeare.

  • For spirits when they please
  • Can either sex assume, or both.
  • Milton.

    There is an evil spirit continually active and intent to seduce.

    South.

  • Spirits of peace, where are ye? are ye all gone?
  • And leave me here in wretchedness behind ye?
  • Shakespeare.

  • Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth
  • Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep.
  • Milton.

    Without the notion and allowance of spirits, our philosophy will be lame and defective in one main part of it.

    Locke.

    He had been indulging in fanciful speculations on spiritual essences until he had an ideal world of his own around him.

    Washington Irving.

    Whither are they vanished? Into the air; and what seemed corporal melted, as breath into the wind.

    Shakespeare.

    How must a spirit, late escaped from earth, the truth of things new blazing in its eyes, look back astonished on the ways of men, whose lives’ whole drift is to forget their graves!

    Young.

  • All heart they live, all head, all eye, all ear,
  • All intellect, all sense, and as they please
  • They limb themselves, and color, shape, or size
  • Assume, as likes them best, condense or rare.
  • Milton.

  • There’s a spirit above, and a spirit below,
  • A spirit of joy, and a spirit of woe,
  • The spirit above is the spirit divine,
  • The spirit below is the spirit of wine.
  • Written about 1825.

    Wicked spirits may by their cunning carry further in a seeming confederacy or subserviency to the designs of a good angel.

    Dryden.

    For my own part, I am apt to join in the opinion with those who believe that all the regions of Nature swarm with spirits, and that we have multitudes of spectators on all our actions when we think ourselves most alone.

    Addison.

  • Aërial spirits, by great Jove design’d
  • To be on earth the guardians of mankind:
  • Invisible to mortal eyes they go,
  • And mark our actions, good or bad, below:
  • The immortal spies with watchful care preside,
  • And thrice ten thousand round their charges glide:
  • They can reward with glory or with gold,
  • A power they by divine permission hold.
  • Hesiod.

    Whether dark presages of the night proceed from any latent power of the soul during her abstraction, or from any operation of subordinate spirits, has been a dispute.

    Addison.