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.

Read more about Spirit.

Famous quotes containing the word spirit:

    “A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.”
    —Edmund Burke (1729–1797)

    “It is not one man nor a million, but the spirit of liberty that must be preserved. The waves which dash upon the shore are, one by one, broken, but the ocean conquers nevertheless. It overwhelms the Armada, it wears out the rock. In like manner, whatever the struggle of individuals, the great cause will gather strength.”
    —George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)

    “And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within,
    That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of
    Glynn
    Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore
    When length was failure, and when breadth was but bitterness sore,
    And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnamable pain
    Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain,—
    Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face
    The vast sweet visage of space.”
    —Sidney Lanier (1842–1881)