What are spirits?

Famous quotes containing the word spirits:

    Magic is the envelopment and coercion of the objective world by the ego; it is a dynamic subjectivism. Religion is the coercion of the ego by gods and spirits who are objectively conceived beings in control of nature and man.
    Richard Chase (b. 1914)

    Humans are amphibians—half spirit and half animal.... As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.
    —C.S. (Clive Staples)

    I have heard, but not believed, the spirits o’the dead
    May walk again.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)