Thomas Moore

Disappointments in love, even betrayals and losses, serve the soul at the very moment they seem in life to be tragedies. The soul is partly in time and partly in eternity. We might remember the part that resides in eternity when we feel despair over the part that is in life.

Love releases us into the realm of divine imagination, where the soul is expanded and reminded of its unearthly cravings and needs. We think that when a lover inflates his loved one he is failing to acknowledge her flaws - "Love is blind." But it may be the other way around. Love allows a person to see the true angelic nature of another person, the halo, the aureole of divinity. Certainly from the perspective of ordinary life this is madness and illusion. But if we let loose our hold on our philosophies and psychologies of enlightenment and reason, we might learn to appreciate the perspective of eternity that enters life as madness, Plato's divine frenzy.

Usually, the main problem with life conundrums is that we don't bring to them enough imagination

A small amount of good literature can often teach more about the inner life than volumes of psychology.

We display outrageously and obsessively that which we do not possess or have deeply at our disposal. If we are displaying sex with unseemly exaggeration and preoccupation then we have not found the heart of sex.

Something deep in human make up needs and longs for a taste of eternity--a momentary release from the relentless pace of time.

Renaissance philosophers often said that it is the soul that makes us human. We can turn that idea round and note that it is when we are most human that we have greatest access to the soul.

I__ interested in this humbler approach, one that is more accepting of human foibles, and indeed sees dignity and peace as emerging more from that acceptance than from any method of transcending the human condition.

Gnostic tales tell of the homesickness of the soul, its yearning for its own milieu_

It may help us, in those times of trouble, to remember that love is not only about relationship, it is also an affair of the soul.

It is only through mystery and madness that the soul is revealed

A man or a woman can inspire such deep fantasy and emotion that through the lovemaking embrace of a partners body we make break through the limits of the human condition to touch upon another level of reality.

In the fifteenth century, Marsilio Ficino put it as simply as possible. The mind, he said, tends to go off on its own so that it seems to have no relevance to the physical world. At the same time, the materialistic life can be so absorbing that we get caught in it and forget about spirituality. What we need, he said, is soul, in the middle, holding together mind and body, ideas and life, spirituality and the world.

Finding the right work is like discovering your own soul in the world.

We have to start from the ground up and reconsider what education is. In my language, I'd like to see us educate the soul, and not just the mind. The result would be a person who could be in the world creatively, make good friendships, live in a place he loved, do work that is rewarding, and make a contribution to the community. People say that the word "educate" means to "draw out" a person's potential. But I like the "duc" - part in the middle of it. To be educated is to become a duke, a leader, a person of stature and color, a presence and a character.

An eternal question about children is, how should we educate them? Politicians and educators consider more school days in a year, more science and math, the use of computers and other technology in the classroom, more exams and tests, more certification for teachers, and less money for art. All of these responses come from the place where we want to make the child into the best adult possible, not in the ancient Greek sense of virtuous and wise, but in the sense of one who is an efficient part of the machinery of society. But on all these counts, soul is neglected.

Bastard Freedom waves Her fustian flag in mockery over slaves.

We need people in our lives with whom we can be as open as possible. To have real conversations with people may seem like such a simple, obvious suggestion, but it involves courage and risk.