#spirits

I cannot count the good people I know who to my mind would be even better if they bent their spirits to the study of their own hungers. ↗

— M.F.K. Fisher

#hungers #spirits #food

Many African societies divide humans into three categories: those still alive on the earth, the sasha, and the zamani. The recently departed whose time on earth overlapped with people still here are the sasha, the living-dead. They are not wholly dead, for they still live in the memories of the living, who can call them to mind, create their likeness in art, and bring them to life in anecdote. When the last person to know an ancestor dies, that ancestor leaves the sasha for the zamani, the dead. As generalised ancestors, the zamani are not forgotten but revered. Many … can be recalled by name. But they are not the living-dead. There is a difference. ↗

— James W Loewen

#death-and-dying #ghosts #lies-my-teacher-told-me #spirits #art

Plant diseases, drought, desolation, despair were recurrent catastrophes during the ages - and the ancient remedies: supplications to supernatural spirits or gods. ↗

— Norman Borlaug

#ancient #catastrophes #desolation #despair #diseases

Music is not man's invention, but his heritage from the blessed spirits. ↗

— Tomas Luis de Victoria

#heritage #his #invention #man #music

For most of the history of our species we were helpless to understand how nature works. We took every storm, drought, illness and comet personally. We created myths and spirits in an attempt to explain the patterns of nature. ↗

— Ann Druyan

#comet #created #drought #every #explain

All that spirits desire, spirits attain. ↗

— Khalil Gibran

#desire #spirits

Look up, laugh loud, talk big, keep the color in your cheek and the fire in your eye, adorn your person, maintain your health, your beauty and your animal spirits. ↗

— William Hazlitt

#animal #beauty #big #cheek #color

The real effect of the WTC calamity has been depressed spirits, anxiety, and uncertainty among publishers, and of course those emotions are not restricted to publishers. ↗

— Richard Curtis

#anxiety #been #calamity #course #depressed

A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history. ↗

— Mahatma Gandhi

#alter #body #course #determined #faith

And, as I have said, it's made me think twice about the imagination. If the spirits aren't external, how astonishing the mediums become! Victor Hugo said of his voices that they were like his own mental powers multiplied by five. ↗

— James Merrill

#astonishing #become #external #five #his