Spirit

Spirit

The English word spirit (from Latin spiritus "breath") has many differing meanings and connotations, most of them relating to a non-corporeal substance contrasted with the material body. The word spirit is often used metaphysically to refer to the consciousness or personality. The notions of a person's spirit and soul often also overlap, as both contrast with body and both are understood as surviving the bodily death in religion and occultism, and "spirit" can also have the sense of "ghost", i.e. a manifestation of the spirit of a deceased person.

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Famous quotes containing the word spirit:

    “The proper stuff of fiction” does not exist; everything is the proper stuff of fiction, every feeling, every thought; every quality of brain and spirit is drawn upon; no perception comes amiss.
    Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)

    One swiftly forgets his intolerable writing, his mirthless, sedulous, repellent manner, in the face of the Athenian tragedy he instills into his seduced and soul-sick servant girls, his barbaric pirates of finances, his conquered and hamstrung supermen, his wives who sit and wait. He has, like Conrad, a sure talent for depicting the spirit in disintegration.
    —H.L. (Henry Lewis)

    My Mother! when I learnt that thou wast dead,
    Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed?
    Hovered thy spirit o’er thy sorrowing son,
    Wretch even then, life’s journey just begun?
    William Cowper (1731–1800)