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:

    A Spirit free, to choose for my own share,
    What sort of Flesh and Blood I pleas’d to wear,
    I’d be a Dog, a Monkey or a Bear,
    Or any thing, but that vain Animal,
    Who is so proud of being rational.
    John Wilmot, 2d Earl Of Rochester (1647–1680)

    Caprice, independence and rebellion, which are opposed to the social order, are essential to the good health of an ethnic group. We shall measure the good health of this group by the number of its delinquents. Nothing is more immobilizing than the spirit of deference.
    Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985)

    But oh! each visitation
    Suspends what nature gave me any my birth,
    My shaping spirit of Imagination.
    Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)