. . . . What is the Soul?  It is the Consciousness in the life-powers.  It is the light within the heart . . .

. . . . By whom the awakened Soul is known while he dwells in the wilderness of the world, he is creator of all and maker of all; his is the world, for he s the world . . . . This mighty unborn grows not old, nor dies, for the Soul is immortal and fearless.  The Soul is the fearless Eternal. He grows one with the Eternal, the fearless Eternal, who knows this . . .

. . . the Soul exists in all times . . . can exist in any country . . . is independent of age and matter . . . is subject to . . . many desires . . . . Bondage is not caused . . . by the conjunction of the body and the Soul, but by the wrong knowledge as to the nature of their conjunction and the proper functions of body and Soul . . .

Souls do not . . . return confusedly [to the afterdeath states], nor by chance, into one and the same place, but each is dispatched into the condition which belongs to her.  And this is determined by that which the soul experiences while yet she is in the tenement of the body . . .

Origen taught . . . the pre-existence of Souls.  The Soul is immaterial, and therefore has neither beginning of days nor end of life . . . .

The individual . . . is made up of soul, spirit and body . . . . The union of these three elements form a person.  The soul passes successively into various bodies . . .

There is somewhat of the absolute and eternal in every human soul . . . something that transcends time and space and organic form, and makes eternity for the soul to be the continuous unfolding of a perpetual and indestructible principle of life . . .

I am present at the sowing of the seed of the world.  With a geometry of sunbeams the soul lays the foundations of nature.

. . . if it be true that the living come from the dead, then our souls must exist in the other world, for if not, how could they have been born again? . . . We arrive at the conclusion that the living come from the dead, just as the dead come from the living; and this, if true, affords a most certain proof that the souls of the dead exist in some place out of which they come again . . . .
 

Meno

The soul . . . as being immortal, and having been born again many times, and having seen all things that exist, whether in this world or in the world below, has knowledge of them all . . . for as all nature is akin, and the soul has learned all things, there is no difficulty in her eliciting or as men say learning . . .
 

Phaedrus

Every soul is immortal --for whatever is in perpetual motion is immortal . . . . All that is soul presides over all that is without soul and patrols all heaven, now appearing in one form and now another.  When it is fully feathered, it roams in the upper air and regulates the entire universe . . . . But the soul that has lost its feathers is carried down till it finds some solid resting-place . . .

. . . since the soul is always in motion and yet has not external source of motion, for it is self-moved, I conclude that it will also have no end to its motion, because it is not likely ever to abandon itself . . .

The soul . . . falling from on high, suffers captivity, is loaded with fetters, and employs the energies of sense . . . . Souls . . . are necessarily of an amphibious nature . . . and proceeding from the regions on high, because merged in the dark receptacle of body . . .

. . . when the better qualities in us are in activity, and the soul is exalted to those beings superior to itself, then it becomes separate altogether from everything which held it fast in the realm of generated existence, keeps itself aloof from inferior natures, exchanges one life for the other, and gives itself to a different order, entirely abandoning the former.

The soul is drawn down to these terrene bodies, and is on this account said to die when it is enclosed in this fallen region, and the seat of mortality . . . . the soul is not extinguished by its own proper death, but is only overwhelmed for a time . . . . through its entire refinement from body, it will be restored to the light of perennial life, and will return to its pristine integrity and perfection.

. . . that which has no temporal beginning will never have an end, and what has no end cannot have had a beginning.

. . . while self-will causes some human souls to descend more often than is necessary, cosmic law requires that each sall descend at least once in every world-period . . .

The soul desires to dwell in the body because without the members of that body it can neither act nor feel . . .

The soul can never be infected by the corruption of the body, but acts in the body like the wind which causes the sound of the organ, wherein if one of the pipes is spoiled, the wind cannot produce a good result in the pipe . . .

Some children are born from heaven, and others are born from hell, because each human being has his inherent tendencies, and these tendencies belong to his spirit, and indicate the state in which he existed before he was born.  Witches and sorcerers are not made at once; they are born with powers for evil. [They are born with the tendencies which they acquired in former lives upon the earth or upon some other planet (Hartmann).

. . . . The soul is not limited to the earth alone, but has the infinite worlds before it, for its dwelling-place.  It follows that by virtue of the High Justice that presides over all things . . .that[the hero and divinity in man] must not expect the government and administration of a better dwelling when it has badly guided itself in the rule of another . . . .

The soul of man, while she is in the body, is like a candle sut up in a dark lanthorn, or a fire that is almost stifled for want of air . . . she cries out with Seneca: "How long this self-dame round?"

. . . the soul only changes its body bit by bit and by degrees, so that it is never despoiled of all its organs all together . . . neither are there any entirely separate souls, nor superhuman spirits without bodies.

"To look upon the soul as going on from strength to strength to consider that she is to shine forever with new accessions of glory and brighten to all eternity; that she will be still adding virtue to virtue and knowledge to knowledge,  carries in it something  wonderfully agreeable to that  ambition which is  natural to the mind  of man . . ."

. . . . Souls were either created from all eternity, with the result that they are infinitely older than Adam's sin and have no connection with it, or they are formed at the time of conception, with the result that God must exercise eternal vigilance and create in each instance a new spirit that He will render eternally miserable.

. . . when one reflects upon the eternity of the universe, onc can conceive of no other destiny than the Monads should eventually participate in the bliss of the gods as joyfully cooperating forces.  The work of creation will be intrusted to them . . .

. . . . The soul continues to exercise its power of thought and views the universe from other aspects.  Of course, one can say, that it has not in the least exhausted this spehere as yet . . .

The soul is an emanation of the Divinity, a part of the soul of the world, a ray from the source of light.  It comes from without into the human body, as into a temporary abode, it goes out of it anew; it wanders in ethereal regions, it returns to visit . . . it passes into other habitations, for the soul is immortal.

The soul . . . cosntitutes the generating center of all its organism, the pivot around which [everything] gravitates . . . . The soul, residing temporarily in a special organism, develops therein its animal faculties . . . and when this special organism breaks up, as the soul survives, it becomes a germ [which is] qualified from metamorphosis to metamorphosis, to ascend to a [universal or] general life . . .

The human soul is in the first place the ego of the human being, a perceiving, feeling, willing, thinking and remembering entity.  It is . . . not a set of memories, but the possessor of a particular group of memories, most of which never rise to the level of consciousness . . . . The soul is something which gives unity to the mental complex of a man . . . . we have become so accustomed to this unity within ourselves that it takes a mental effort to describe it in proper terms and to realize its significance . . .

Some souls have had a few years of development on earth, while others are completely blank; they are nothing but potentialites.  the opportunities for development differ tremendously among different souls . . . . the earthly development of most human souls is far from inspiring . . .

. . . what the soul has done once by the process of incarntion in a physical body, it can presumably do again.  (By the "soul" we mean that individualized aspect of the Self, including . . . the Intuitive self --and Higher Mind, all of which are regarded as immortal).

. . . The soul . . . may be capable of existing without the body, though it be imprisoned in it as in a tomb.  It looks out, we might suppose, through the window of the senses; and its vision is obscured or distorted by every imperfection of the glass.  "If a man is shut up in a hous," Dr. McTaggart has remarked, "the transparency of the windows is an essential condition of his seeing the sky.  But it would not be prudent to infer that if he walked out of the house he could not see the sky, because their was no longer any glass through which he might see. . ."

What . . . is it that . . . the "soul" seeks?  It seeks what is good; but does not know what is the ultimate Good . . . . The soul, even of the best and most fortunate of us, does not achieve the Good of which she feels herself to be capable and in which alone she can rest . . .

. . . Who ever saw the Immortal Spirit of man . . . . the sages of the Orient . . . showed us that by combining science with religion, the existence of [the] immortality of man's spirit may be demonstrated like a problem of Euclid . . . .

. . . . by . . . talking of it [the soul] as something different  from oneself, the people have acquired an underlying notion that they are not souls because the soul may be lost by them.  From this has come about a tendency to materialism causing men to pay more attention to the body than to the soul.  But when the true teaching is known it will be seen that the core of the soul, which is the Self, is a vital matter requiring attention every day, and not to be deferred without grievous injury resulting  to the whole man, both body and soul.
 

The Key to Theosophy

. . . . matter, deprived of its soul and spirit, or its divine essence, cannot speak to the human heart.  But the identity of the soul and spirit, or real, immortal man, . . . once proven and deep-rooted in our hearts, would lead us far on the road of real charity and brotherly goodwill.