Top 120 Thomas Moore Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Many of the arts practiced at home are especially nourishing to the soul because they foster contemplation and demand a degree of artfulness, such as arranging flowers, cooking, and making repairs.”

— Thomas Moore

102. “A philosophy of life is a bundle of wisdom you have gathered from your reading and experience. It is not a rigid ideology that allows no development and complexity. It’s a living thing, a developing idea about life that belongs to you alone.”

— Thomas Moore

103. “Each that we lose takes part of us; A crescent still abides, Which like the moon, some turbid night, Is summoned by the tides.7.”

— Thomas Moore

104. “Faith is a gift of spirit that allows the soul to remain attached to its own unfolding. When faith is soulful, it is always planted in the soil of wonder and questioning. It isn’t a defensive and anxious holding on to certain objects of belief, because doubt, as its shadow, can be brought into a faith that is fully mature. Imagine.”

— Thomas Moore

105. “I believe that one day we’ll understand that we’ve lost out on religion because we made it too lofty and distant. I see it as a simple quality of everyday life, and in that simplicity lie its beauty and importance.”

— Thomas Moore

106. “One effective “trick” in caring for the soul is to look with special attention and openness at what the individual rejects, and then to speak favorably for that rejected element.”

— Thomas Moore

107. “All human symptoms and problems, when they are taken to their depth and realized in a soulful way, find their ultimate solution in a religious sensibility.”

— Thomas Moore

108. “You might also understand the difference between force and strength, the former pressing too hard to achieve questionable ends, the latter a deep-seated power of soul. You might notice the difference between ego power and soul power, the former anxious and self-centered. Finally, you might appreciate the paradoxes involved, where being more vulnerable in a comfortable way gives you strength, and when you have some deep strength, you can finally feel vulnerable.”

— Thomas Moore

109. “To be religious even in a personal way, you have to wake up and find your own portals to wonder and transcendence.”

— Thomas Moore

110. “She was lost in the breeziness of her secular existence and couldn’t land anywhere. Nothing was sacred. Nothing could stop her long enough to reflect sufficiently on her life.”

— Thomas Moore

111. “Good Demeter mothering keeps a child in the heat and passion of life which immortalize and establish soulfulness. Mothering involves not only physical survival and achievement – Demeter’s grain and fruit – it is also concerned with guiding a child to his or her unknown depths and the mystery of fate.”

— Thomas Moore

112. “We could all be a Freud to our own experiences.”

— Thomas Moore

113. “The problem in the modern spiritual landscape is not only a plethora of genuine, useful material but also a marketplace teeming with questionable ideas, practices, and leaders.”

— Thomas Moore

114. “As the religious authorities often say, the institution is human, while the substance of the religion is transcendent.”

— Thomas Moore

115. “I’m painfully aware that the experts in fields like religion and spirituality sometimes feel that bringing mysticism down so far into ordinary life is an insult to the great mystics and makes it all too light and breezy. I feel just the opposite. I believe that one day we’ll understand that we’ve lost out on religion because we made it too lofty and distant. I see it as a simple quality of everyday life, and in that simplicity lie its beauty and importance.”

— Thomas Moore

116. “Body exercise is incomplete if it focuses exclusively on muscle and is motivated by the ideal of a physique unspoiled by fat.”

— Thomas Moore

117. “The point is not merely to succeed but to become a deeper, more complex, more mature person through your struggle. You allow the alchemy of your challenging journey to etch itself into your character, making you into a rich personality. Then whatever work you do will have the quality of your experience and your capacity to be ripened by it. Doing.”

— Thomas Moore

118. “If you are highly neurotic, or worse, you don’t have to become normal and healthy to live a creative and loving life. You can learn to transform your insanity into eccentricity.”

— Thomas Moore

119. “Part of the pain of love is that no person, however suitable and satisfying, completes the desire for love. There is always a remainder, because love takes us beyond the human sphere. It puts you in touch with the ultimate object of desire. It invites you to transcend yourself, to be more than you ever have been.”

— Thomas Moore

120. “What if we thought of the family less as the determining influence by which we are formed and more the raw material from which we can make a life?”

— Thomas Moore

121. “Many people think that the point in life is to solve their problems and be happy. But happiness is usually a fleeting sensation, and you never get rid of your problems. Your purpose in life may be to become more of who you are and more engaged with the people and the life around you, to really live your life. That may sound obvious, yet many people spend their time avoiding life.”

— Thomas Moore

122. “Few things are more important than finding a home and working at it constantly to make it resonate with deep memories and fulfill deep longings.”

— Thomas Moore

123. “All illness is meaningful, although its meaning may never be translatable into entirely rational terms. The point is not to understand the cause of the disease and then solve the problem, but to get close enough to the disease to restore the particular religious connection with life at which it hints.”

— Thomas Moore

124. “The preparation of food also serves the soul in a number of ways. In a general sense, it gives us a valuable, ordinary opportunity to meditate quietly, as we peel and cut vegetables, stir pots, measure out proportions, and watch for boiling and roasting. We can become absorbed in the sensual contemplation of colors, textures, and tastes as, alchemists of the kitchen, we mix and stir just the right proportions.”

— Thomas Moore

125. “Part of finding your soul is to wake up to this habit of thinking like others and go your own way. It may be painful to separate from those people who have given you a sense of belonging and purpose, but your soul is at stake. A.”

— Thomas Moore

126. “The darkness doesn’t exactly come from outside, but is a revelation of something in your nature. In your black moods and dark fears you find and essential part of yourself.”

— Thomas Moore

127. “But real virtue can’t be bought with repression; real virtue is the rare innocence that comes from taking life on and owning your passions.”

— Thomas Moore

128. “We cultivate soulfulness in a relationship by honoring its vernacular life. We deal with the given relationship and forgo the indulgence of imagining something better or different. We respect its style and its unfolding qualities. These vernacular qualities of family, marriage, or friendship may not appear in a flash, but may take years to be revealed. Only through time and experience do we discover the nature and styles of actual people.”

— Thomas Moore

129. “It’s often the case that in the bodies of several friends we see one soul. – Marsilio Ficino, Letter to Almanno Donati.”

— Thomas Moore

130. “Jung called this process I’m describing individualism, becoming an individual, a real person not continually swept away by his passions of influenced by his culture. Each person has a unique opus, a soul work, because each has a particular makeup and history. For Jung the opus was a process of getting to know yourself deeply, not only a psychological process of painful advance in self-knowledge; but a religious initiation involving spiritual ideals and the search for meaning.”

— Thomas Moore

131. “Aging brings out the flavors of a personality. The individual emerges over time, the way fruit matures and ripens. In the Renaissance view, depression, aging, and individuality all go together: the sadness of growing old is part of becoming an individual. Melancholy thoughts carve out an interior space where wisdom can take up residence. Saturn.”

— Thomas Moore

132. “Every day you have choices. You can do things that wound your soul, like being dominated by the work ethic or compulsively seeking more money and possessions, or you can be around people who give you pleasure and do things that satisfy a desire deep inside you. Make this soul care a way of life, and you may discover what the Greeks called eudaimonia – a good spirit, or, in the deepest sense, happiness.”

— Thomas Moore

133. “Sweet flowers alone can say what passion fears revealing.”

— Thomas Moore