Quotes by Thomas Moore

Narcissus lays his head on the grass by the pool, and then he quietly disappears into the underworld, where he continues to gaze at the image in the waters of the river Styx. Our images, especially those that appear in life and play important roles in episodes of transformation, stay with us forever. Once we have entertained an image, it is always potentially present to our gaze. You visit the Uffizi Gallery and see Botticelli's "Primavera," and then for a lifetime you dream of it or you talk about it frequently as a measure of beauty. Unexpectedly it presents itself in a moment of thought or in a discussion, reminding you of its eternal presence. This fragment of the myth suggests that we might continually make soul out of our narcissism by preserving and tending to the images that have come to us throughout our lives. This is the basis of art therapy or journal-keeping: making a home for certain images that have been transforming. Certain photographs or old letters might be related to the pool of water. Culturally, of course, we are constantly invited into the depths of ourselves by the plays, paintings, sculptures, and buildings of past centuries. Art can be a cure for narcissism. The words "curator" and "cure" are essentially the same. By being the curator of our images, we care for our souls.

Only in a thoroughly unrelated world can we poison nature without conscience, neglect our children and the poor, and righteously slay thousands of enemy soldiers because we don't have the patience or imagination for negotiation.

In a story told in many traditions and versions; a man is crouched over the ground at night under a lamppost obviously looking for something.  A passerby asks, "Have you lost something?", "Yes, my key," he says.  "Did you lose it here?"  "No", he says, "over there, but there's light over here."

Pythagoras asks that we not let a friend go lightly, for whatever reason.  Instead, we should stay with a friend as long as we can, until we're compelled to abandon him completely against our will.  It's a serious thing to toss away money, but to cast aside a person is even more serious.  Nothing in human life is more rarely found, nothing more dearly possessed.  No loss is more chilling or more dangerous than that of a friend.

The soul doesn't distinguish between good and bad as much as between what is nutritious and what isn't.

Care of the soul can be demanding, requiring a decision that the needs of the soul are as important as the more future-oriented things that claim our attention.

Technologies of the soul tend to be simple, bodily, slow and related to the heart as much as the mind.  Everything around us tells us we should be mechanically sophisticated, electronic, quick, and informational in our expressiveness - an exact antipode to the virtues of the soul.  It is no wonder, then, that in an age of telecommunications - which, by the way, literally means "distant connections" - we suffer symptoms of the loss of soul.  We are being urged from everyside to become efficient rather than intimate.

Love comes from years of breathing skin to skin tangled in each other's dreams until each night weaves another thread in the same web of blood and sleep and I have only passed through quickly like light and you have only surrounded me suddenly like flame

When we are narcissistic, we are not on solid ground (earth) or thinking clearly (air) or cought up in passion (fire).  Somehow if we follow the myth, we are dreamlike, fluid, not clearly formed, more immersed in a stream of fantasy than secure in a firm identity.

Truth is not really a soul word; soul is after insight more than truth.