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The Lord let the house of a brute to the soul of a man,
And the man said, "Am I your debtor?"
And the Lord—"Not yet: but make it as clean as you can,
And then I will let you a better."

— Alfred, Lord Tennyson By an Evolutionist; Reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)

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Spirituality

More quotes by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan.

Acting the law we live by without fear;
And, because right is right, to follow right
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.

Where love could walk with banish'd Hope no more.

The Lover's Tale (1879)

Love lieth deep; Love dwells not in lip-depths.

The Lover's Tale (1879)

Thou that singest wheat and woodland, tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd;
All the charm of all the Muses often flowering in a lonely word.

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Reason is Life's sole arbiter, the magic Laby'rinth's single clue:
Worlds lie above, beyond its ken; what crosses it can ne'er be true.

Richard Francis Burton The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

In imitating the exemplary acts of a god or of a mythic hero, or simply by recounting their adventures, the man of an archaic society detaches himself from profane time and magically re-enters the Great Time, the sacred time.

Mircea Eliade Myths, Dreams and Mysteries (1967)

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

Thomas Jefferson

The superior man loves his soul; the inferior man loves his property.

Confucius

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Alfred, Lord Tennyson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.