Defilements Quotes & Sayings

If you follow the ways of the world, your heart will be drawn to its sensual defilements and easily led astray; if you go among people, your words will be guided by others' responses rather than come from the heart. — Yoshida Kenko

The principal cause of suffering is craving. Once craving is eliminated, much suffering will be eliminated. Still more suffering will be eliminated once ignorance is eliminated. Both craving and ignorance are equally powerful defilements that cause suffering. — Henepola Gunaratana

Blessing must arise from within your own mind. It is not something that comes from outside. When the positive qualities of your mind increase and the negativities decrease, that is what blessing means. The Tibetan word for blessing ... means transforming into magnificent potential. Therefore, blessing refers to the development of virtuous qualities you did not previously have and the improvement of those good qualities you have already developed. It also means decreasing the defilements of the mind that obstruct the generation of wholesome qualities. So actual blessing is received when the minds virtuous attributes gain strength and its defective characteristics weaken or deteriorate. — Dalai Lama XIV

Self-sacrifice is a passion so overwhelming that beside it even lust and hunger are trifling. It whirls its victim to destruction in the highest affirmation of his personality. The object doesn't matter; it may be worthwhile or it may be worthless. No wine is so intoxicating, no love so shattering, no vice so compelling. When he sacrifices himself man for a moment is greater than God, for how can God, infinite and omnipotent, sacrifice himself? At best he can only sacrifice his only begotten son. — W. Somerset Maugham

Yet this is life. For hardly have we mortals by long toilings extracted from this world's vast bulk its small but valuable sperm; and then, with weary patience, cleansed ourselves from its defilements, and learned to live here in clean tabernacles of the soul; hardly is this done, when-There she blows!-the ghost is spouted up, and away we sail to fight some other world, and go through young life's old routine again. — Herman Melville

Before the end of December, generally, they experience their first thawing. Those which a month ago were sour, crabbed, and quite unpalatable to the civilized taste, such at least as were frozen while sound, let a warmer sun come to thaw them, for they are extremely sensitive to its rays, are found to be filled with a rich, sweet cider, better than any bottled cider that I know of, and with which I am better acquainted than with wine. All apples are good in this state, and your jaws are the cider-press. — Henry David Thoreau

You yourself must make an effort. Buddhas are only show the way. The thoughtful who enter the way are freed from the bondage of defilements. — Gautama Buddha

All alterations and amendments of the Lord's own Word - are defilements and pollutions. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Certainly if after escaping from the defilements of the world by an accurate knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they get involved again with these very things and are overcome, their final state has become worse for them than the first. — Anonymous

To forgive is not just to be altruistic. — Desmond Tutu

One of the most difficult defilements of the spirit to deal with is the critical spirit. A critical spirit has its root in pride. Because of the 'plank' of pride in our own eye we are not capable of dealing with the 'speck' of need in someone else. We are often like the Pharisee who, completely unconscious of his own need prayed "God, I thank you that I am not like other men" (Luke 18:11). We are quick to see - and to speak of - the faults of others, but slow to see our own needs. How sweetly we relish the opportunity to speak critically of someone else - even when we are unsure of the facts. We forge that "a man who stirs up dissension among brothers" by criticizing one to another is one of the "six thing which the Lord hates" (Proverbs 6:16-19) — Jerry Bridges

Roger was not personally ambitious; he mainly wanted life not to make too many demands on him. — John Lanchester

Every moment of mindfulness means the gradual destruction of latent defilements. It is somewhat like cutting away a piece of wood with a small axe, every stroke helping to get rid of the unwanted fragments of wood. — Mahasi Sayadaw

Where does rain come from? It comes from all the dirty water that evaporates from the earth, like urine and the water you throw out after washing your feet. Isn't it wonderful how the sky can take that dirty water and change it into pure, clean water? Your mind can do the same with your defilements if you let it. — Ajahn Chah

A mind unruffled by the vagaries of fortune, from sorrow freed, from defilements cleansed, from fear liberated - this is the greatest blessing. — Gautama Buddha

Well, I think in trying to make life seem real enough that one is moved to do something about the more atrocious things. By going really far afield into a completely fake world, maybe there's a chance to make things resonant somehow - or in this case, truly terrifying. To make it as bad as the real stuff that's happening. — Jenny Holzer

Gluttony and satiety in food produce defiled lust, while free association with women enflames the fire of lusts ... At the time of struggle with defilement, punish your thoughts with lack of nourishment, so that you will think not of defilements, but of hunger, and reject the invitation to go visiting. — Nilus Of Sinai

For 'The Big Wander,' I probably had ten different outlines before I made myself start writing. I would sleep on each one, thinking it was wonderful, but I would always awake perceiving some flaw. — Will Hobbs

If you are tossed about by doubts, full of strong thoughtless passions, and yearning only for that which is detrimental, your thirst will grow stronger and stronger, unquenched, and your pain will grow with your defilements. — Gautama Buddha