Quotes & Sayings About Impurity

How deep a wound to morals and social purity has that accursed article of the celibacy of the clergy been! Even the best and most enlightened men in Romanist countries attach a notion of impurity to the marriage of a clergyman. And can such a feeling be without its effect on the estimation of the wedded life in general? Impossible! and the morals of both sexes in Spain, Italy, France, and. prove it abundantly. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Don't condemn yourself - that only increases the hold of impurity. Accept your limitations but know that you're working towards changing them. — Frederick Lenz

If a man wishes to guide the people in his house the right way, he must not grow angry at them. For anger does not only make one's soul impure; it transfers impurity to the souls of those with whom one is angry. — Martin Buber

A Mystic And A Drunk

The Universe turns on an axis.
Let my soul circle around a table
like a beggar, like a planet
rolling in the vast, totally helpless and free.

The knight and the castle move jaggedly
about the chessboard, but they're actually
centered on the king. They circle.

If love is your center, a ring
gets put on your finger.

Something inside the moth
is made of fire.

A mystic touches the annihilating tip
of pure nothing.

A drunkard thinks peeing is absolution.
Lord, take these impurities from me.

The lord replies, First, understand
the nature of impurity. If your key is bent,
the lock will not open.

I fall silent.
King Shams has come.
Always when I close, he opens. — Jalaluddin Rumi

In temptations against chastity, the spiritual masters advise us, not so much to contend with the bad thought, as to turn the mind to some spiritual, or, at least, indifferent object. It is useful to combat other bad thoughts face to face, but not thoughts of impurity. — Alphonsus Liguori

By oneself is evil done, by oneself is one made impure. By oneself is evil undone, by oneself is one made pure. Each one is responsible for purity and impurity. No one can cleanse another. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Abstract painting seeks to be a pure pictorial language, and thus attempts to escape the essential impurity of all languages: the recourse to signs or forms that have meanings shared by everyone. — Octavio Paz

The stench of impurity before God and the angels is so great, that no stench in the world can equal it. — Philip Neri

Unless we realize our sins enough to call them by name, it is hardly worth while to say anything about them at all. When we pray for forgiveness, let us say, "my temper," or "untruthfulness," or "pride," "my selfishness, my cowardice, indolence, jealousy, revenge, impurity." To recognize our sins, we must look them in the face and call them by their right names, however hard. Honesty in confession calls for definiteness in confession. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

Here is an example to help you understand the efficacy of the Rosary. You remember the story of David who vanquished Goliath. What steps did the young Israelite take to overthrow the giant? He struck him in the middle of the forehead with a pebble from his sling. If we regard the Philistine as representing evil and all its powers: heresy, impurity, pride, we can consider the little stones from the sling capable of overthrowing the enemy as symbolizing the Aves of the Rosary. — Columba Marmion

The soul's impurity consists in bad judgments, and purification consists in producing in it right judgments, and the pure soul is one which has right judgments. — Epictetus

The greatest impurity is ignorance. Free yourself from it. Be pure. — Gautama Buddha

His moral purity serves to magnify our impurity. — Jerry Bridges

If you wish to get pure air into your room, or if you go for a walk in the fresh air, think of the pure and of the unclean heart. Many of us like to have pure air in the room (and this is an excellent habit), or are fond of walking in the fresh air, but they do not even think of the necessity of the purity of the spirit or heart (of, so to say, spiritual air, the breath of life); and, living in the fresh air, they allow themselves to indulge in impure thoughts, impure movements of the heart, and even impurity of language, and most impure carnal actions. — John Of Kronstadt

Purity of soul and impurity of body can go together. — Vincent Van Gogh

Again, as I had often met it in my own church, I was confronted with the Impurity of Women doctrine that seemed to preoccupy all clergymen. — Harper Lee

You are the source of all purity and impurity. No one purifies another. — Gautama Buddha

Intemperance is a hydra with a hundred heads. She never stalks abroad unaccompanied with impurity, anger, and the most infamous profligacies. — Saint John Chrysostom

A grub in filth is dirty, but it changes into a cicada and sips dew in the autumn breeze. Rotting plants have no luster, but they turn into foxfire and glow in the summer moonlight. So we know that purity emerges from impurity, and light is born from darkness. — Zicheng Hong

You are as the yellow leaf.
The messengers of death are at hand.
You are to travel far away.
What will you take with you?
You are the lamp
To lighten the way.
Then hurry, hurry.
When your light shines
Without impurity or desire
You will come into the boundless country.
Your life is falling away.
Death is at hand.
Where will you rest on the way?
What have you taken with you?
You are the lamp
To lighten the way.
Then hurry, hurry.
When your light shines purely
You will not be born
And you will not die. — Gautama Buddha

The quest to sin always knocks at the door of the heart, but behold! You have the right and will to open your door or never to mind the knocks, no matter how intense it is! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Meditation will do you a disservice. It will confuse you more than clarify you. It will bring tremendous impurity in you - if you are allowing your mind to wander during the empowered experience. — Frederick Lenz

The motive for purifying yourself - that you feel spiritually impure - will prevent any genuine gain until you learn to love the impurity you started with. Can any being seriously think that he is going to pass through the infinity of time without ever making another mistake? Quite often a flash of enlightenment will give you this message: Go back to where you started and learn to love it more. — Thaddeus Golas

God is so pure that if we were to behold Him within the context of our natural bodies, we would be destroyed because of the impurity of sin in our flesh that was genetically passed down to us through the sin of Adam and Eve. God purifies, or makes purely holy, everything He touches. That's right; the purification process of His total presence would destroy our natural bodies completely, because no good thing is in us. Isn't that a mystery? But then, it's a mystery to me how He made evergreens to stay green perpetually, or how fish spawn, or how birds sing so beautifully. We cannot put God in a box, or try to intellectualize His every facet. We would just sound pompous. — Marion Green

As much purity one has within, his external circumstances will be that much more favorable. As much impurity there is within, there will be a corresponding amount of unfavorable external circumstances. — Dada Bhagwan

The transcendental light permeates your being and washes away impurity. All those different selves which are limited and binding and hurting are washed away. — Frederick Lenz

Chit impurity is due to the relative vision. When the vision becomes real (enlightened), purification of chit occurs. — Dada Bhagwan

...without any conscientious scruples condoning impurity in themselves, required ideal and angelic purity in their women... — Leo Tolstoy

Honor is like the eye, which cannot suffer the least impurity without damage. It is a precious stone, the price of which is lessened by a single flaw. — Jacques-Benigne Bossuet

The pride of ancestry is a superstructure of the most imposing height, but resting on the most flimsy foundation. It is ridiculous enough to observe the hauteur with which the old nobility look down on the new. The reason of this puzzled me a little, until I began to reflect that most titles are respectable only because they are old; if new, they would be despised, because all those who now admire the grandeur of the stream would see nothing but the impurity of the source. — Charles Caleb Colton

Kenny is a drug, and I've just had the best hit of my life. I'm not losing this addiction. I'm in, all the way, pledging my voluntarily servitude to the gateway of my desire. Kenny was the freedom I was longing for. Love and all this wild pent up desire, proved to be the combination that set me free. But only Kenny had the power to unleash me. She scrubbed the impurity from my life and washed clean the world, so I could see it stark and clear for the very first time. Kenny perfumed my existence with her regal charm, her sovereign splendor. Kenny is in everyway sublime. — Addison Moore

The proof of spiritual maturity, Tolstoy contended, is not how "pure" you are but awareness of your impurity. That very awareness opens the door to grace. — Philip Yancey

The devil, the originator of sorrowful anxieties and restless troubles, flees before the sound of music almost as much as before the Word of God ... Music is a gift and grace of God, not an invention of men. Thus it drives out the devil and makes people cheerful. Then one forgets all wrath, impurity, and other devices. — Martin Luther

The daily lesson of slum life, visualised, reiterated, of low standards, vile living, obscenity, profanity, impurity, is bound tobe dwarfing and debasing to the children who are in the midst of it. — Albion Fellows Bacon

We leave a stain, we leave a trail, we leave our imprint. Impurity, cruelty, abuse, error, excrement, semen - there's no other way to be here. Nothing to do with disobedience. Nothing to do with grace or salvation or redemption. It's in everyone. Indwelling. Inherent. Defining. The stain that is there before its mark. — Philip Roth

Purity or impurity depends on oneself,
No one can purify another. — Gautama Buddha

It is tragic to see how the religious sentiment of the West has become so individualized that concepts such as "a contrite heart," have come to refer only to the personal experiences of guilt and willingness to do penance for it. The awareness of our impurity in thoughts, words and deeds can indeed put us in a remorseful mood and create in us the hope for a forgiving gesture. But if the catastrophical events of our days, the wars, mass murders, unbridled violence, crowded prisons, torture chambers, the hunger and the illness of millions of people and he unnamable misery of a major part of the human race is safely kept outside the solitude of our hearts, our contrition remains no more than a pious emotion. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

As soon as you willfully allow a dialogue with temptation to begin, the soul is robbed of peace, just as consent to impurity destroys grace. — Josemaria Escriva

Either we must speak as we dress, or dress as we speak. Why do we profess one thing and display another? The tongue talks of chastity, but the whole body reveals impurity. — St. Jerome

Rather than the obsession with impurity, you'd do better to fear the nostalgia for purity. — Georges Bernanos

In addition, Islam stressed on purifying the body, clothes and everything that is related to man's private life in his land and home, from the unclean impurity. — Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah

Christ, being man, had to see impurity and denounced it; but God, infinitely higher, does not see iniquity and cannot be angry. — Swami Vivekananda

The more grace we have, the less we shall think of ourselves, for grace, like light, reveals our impurity. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The price the Virgin demanded was purity, and the way the educators of Catholic children have interpreted this for nearly two thousand years is sexual chastity. Impurity, we were taught, follows from many sins, but all are secondary to the principal impulse of the devil in the soul
lust. — Marina Warner

This is neither the time nor the place, however, to ponder how often the soul, in order to be able to boast of a clean body, has burdened itself with sadness, envy, and impurity. — Jose Saramago

For we always seem to ourselves righteous and upright and wise and holy - this pride is innate in all of us - unless by clear proofs we stand convinced of our own unrighteousness, foulness, folly, and impurity. — John Calvin

Piety practiced in solitude, like the flower that blooms in the desert, may give its fragrance to the winds of heaven, and delight those unbodied spirits that survey the works of God and the actions of men; but it bestows no assistance upon earthly beings, and however free from taints of impurity, yet wants the sacred splendor of beneficence. — Samuel Johnson

If anyone views himself as being totally perfect in the actual sense of the word, he is undoubtedly imperfect in God's eyes. For the thought alone is one of presumption, impurity and imperfection. One may rightly strive for perfection pertaining to character and spirit, but must bear in mind that he will never reach its purest form within this human body. The fact that he has strived for it until the end has made him 'perfect' in the eyes of God. — Tanya R. Taylor

Any test that turns on what is offensive to the communitys standards is too loose, too capricious, too destructive of freedom of expression to be squared with the First Amendment. Under that test, juries can censor, suppress, and punish what they dont like, provided the matter relates to sexual impurity or has a tendency to excite lustful thoughts. This is community censorship in one of its worst forms. It creates a regime where in the battle between the literati and the Philistines, the Philistines are certain to win. — William O. Douglas

For (such is our innate pride) we always seem to ourselves just, and upright, and wise, and holy, until we are convinced, by clear evidence, of our injustice, vileness, folly, and impurity. — John Calvin

The beginningless Consciousness is unborn, whole and, residing forever in its natural home of the Heart-cave, is without form, world or impurity. It is beyond comparison and completely unattached. It cannot be comprehended by the mind nor can it be seen or felt by the senses. — Ramana Maharshi

By turns our purity inspires and our impurity casts us down. — Henry David Thoreau

Khadi has been conceived as the foundation and the image of ahimsa. A real khadi-wearer will not utter an untruth. A real khadi-wearer will harbour no violence, no deceit, no impurity. — Mahatma Gandhi

Ambition fortifies the will of man to become ruler over other men: it operates with deception, cajolery, and violence, it is the action of impurity upon impurity. — T. S. Eliot

My hands are clean, but my heart has somewhat of impurity. — Euripides

Man is not defiled by his impurities. It is the other man pointing out his impurities to him, whom he is defiled by. Is there anything anyone can do, to become righteous, anyway? God made us impure. If he had a problem with that, He would have made us gods, instead. — C. JoyBell C.

You take pride in setting no limit to your endurance, Mr. Rearden, because you think that you are doing right. What if you aren't? What if you're placing your virtue in the service of evil and letting it become a tool for the destruction of everything you love, respect and admire? Why don't you uphold your own code of values among men as you do among iron smelters? You who won't allow one per cent of impurity into an alloy of metal - what have you allowed into your moral code? — Ayn Rand

Purity is not imposed upon us as though it were a kind of punishment, it is one of those mysterious but obvious conditions of that supernatural knowledge of ourselves in the Divine, which we speak of as faith. Impurity does not destroy this knowledge, it slays our need for it. — Georges Bernanos

The more pure and chaste is a soul, the more it hungers for this Bread [Jesus in the Eucharist], from which it derives strength to resist all temptations to sins of impurity, and by which it is more intimately united with the Divine Spouse; 'He who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood, abides in Me and I in him' — Pope Pius XII

Mainly through sins of impurity, do the forces of darkness subjugate souls. — Pope Pius XII

Our souls, piercing through the impurity of flesh, behold the highest heaven, and thence bring knowledge to contemplate the ever-during, glory and termless joy. — Walter Raleigh

Walk in Love EPHESIANS 5 j Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. 2And k walk in love, l as Christ loved us and m gave himself up for us, a n fragrant o offering and sacrifice to God. 3But p sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness q must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. 4Let there be r no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, s which are out of place, but instead t let there be thanksgiving. 5For you may be sure of this, that u everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous ( v that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. 6 w Let no one x deceive you with empty words, for because of these things y the wrath of God comes upon z the sons of disobedience. 7Therefore a do not become partners with them; 8for b at one time you were c darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. d Walk as children of light — Anonymous

Assuredly we bring not innocence not the world, we bring impurity much rather: that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary. — John Milton

Even at birth the soul comes to its own and through every step of its earthly pilgrimage it attracts those combinations of conditions which reveal itself, which are the reflections of its own purity and, impurity, its strength and weakness. Men — James Allen

There is only a single step between impurity and purity. — Berl Katznelson

He was so far from being able to carry out such threats that one might conclude that the author of this document was utterly mad. Indeed, the man in the cave had entered a separate reality, one that was deeply connected to the mythic chords of Muslim identity and in fact gestured to anyone whose culture was threatened by modernity and impurity and the loss of tradition. By declaring war on the United States from a cave in Afghanistan, bin Laden assumed the role of an uncorrupted, indomitable primitive standing against the awesome power of the secular, scientific, technological Goliath; he was fighting modernity itself. — Lawrence Wright

The pastor should always be pure in thought ... no impurity ought to pollute him who has undertaken the office of wiping away the stains in the hearts of others ... for the hand that would cleanse from dirt must be clean, lest, being itself sordid with clinging mire, it soil whatever it touches all the more. — Pope Gregory I

True knowledge is a virtue of the talented, but harmful to those without discernment. Spring water free of impurity, entering the ocean, becomes undrinkable. — Akkineni Nagarjuna

Also the spectacle and the awareness of her own body. Daily and, so to speak, ceremoniously soiled with saliva and sperm, she felt herself literally to be the respository of impurity, the sink mentioned in the Scriptures. And yet those parts of her body most constantly offended, having become less sensitive, at the same time seemed to her to have become more beautiful and, as it were, ennobled: her mouth closed upon anonymous members, the tips of her breasts constantly fondled by hands, and between her quartered thighs the twin, contiguous paths wantonly ploughed. — Pauline Reage

Reviewers claimed that she could see a way through any emotional conflict; more often than not, they mentioned the purity of her heart. But they were wrong. It was the impurity in her heart that made her successful. She was an ordinary woman who'd made extraordinary mistakes. She understood every nuance of need and loss. — Kristin Hannah

Idolatry is attached to everything. All of our bitterness, all our impurity, all our malice, all of our problems, everything that troubles us is a result of idolatry. And what is idolatry? It's taking a good thing and making it an ultimate thing. — Timothy Keller

The careless, the lukewarm Catholics should, above all, dread hell, for he is continually walking on the brink of the infernal abyss. He makes little of the precepts of hearing Mass, of the prescribed abstinence from flesh meat, he scruples not neglecting the religious training of his children, he associates with persons and frequents places that are to him an occasion of sin, he yields to impure thoughts, commits sins of impurity without remorse, gives way to his vindictive feelings against his neighbor, indulges in excess in eating and drinking, neglects prayer and the sacraments. Now is the time for him to be aroused from his life of sin, now is the time for him to give up sin and change his life, for if he defers doing so, it may soon be to late. This may, indeed, be the last warning that God gives him. — Fr. Martin Von Cochem

What seems wrong to you is right for him
What is poison to one is honey to someone else.
Purity and impurity, sloth and diligence in worship,
These mean nothing to Me.
I am apart from all that.
Ways of worshipping are not to be ranked as better
or worse than one another.
Hindus do Hindu things.
The Dravidian Muslims in India do what they do.
It's all praise, and it's all right.
It's not I that's glorified in acts of worship.
It's the worshippers! I don't hear
the words they say. I look inside at the humility.
That broken-open lowliness is the Reality,
not the language! Forget phraseology.
I want burning, burning.
Be Friends
with your burning. Burn up your thinking
and your forms of expression! — Karen Armstrong

Achievement of any kind is the crown of effort,the diadem of thought.By the aid of self-control, resolution, purity, righteousness, and well-directed thought a man ascends.By the aid of animality,indolence,impurity,corruption,and confusion of thought a man descends. — James Allen

Religious doctrines would do well to withdraw their pretension to be dealing with matters of fact. That pretension is not only the source of the conflicts of religion with science and the vain and bitter controversies of sects; it is also the cause of the impurity and incoherence of religion in the soul. — George Santayana

Mostly he misses Jutta: her loyalty, her obstinacy, the way she always seems to recognize what is right. Though in Werner's weaker moments, he resents those same qualities in his sister. Perhaps she's the impurity in him, the static in his signal that the bullies can sense. — Anthony Doerr

A man's grammar, like Caesar's wife, should not only be pure, but above suspicion of impurity. — Edgar Allan Poe

19When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, 20idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, 21envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God. — Anonymous

Another great illusion that woman must ... destroy .. is the impurity of sex, the realisation in defiance of superstition that there is nothing impure in sex - except in the mental attitude toward it ... — Mina Loy

In a pure society, the subject of marriage would not be so often avoided,
from shame and not from reverence, winked out of sight,and hinted at only; but treated naturally and simply,
perhaps simply avoided like the kindred mysteries. If it cannot be spoken of for shame, how can it be acted of? But, doubtless, there is far more purity, as well as more impurity, than is apparent. — Henry David Thoreau

We are all such accidents. We do not make up history and culture. We simply appear, not by our own choice. We make what we can of our condition with the means available. We must accept the mixture as we find it - the impurity of it, the tragedy of it, the hope of it. — Saul Bellow

Impurity is a mere superimposition under which your real nature has become hidden. But the real you is already perfect, already strong. — Swami Vivekananda

Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather: that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary ... . They are not skillful considerers of human things who imagine to remove sin by removing the matter of sin. For ... it is a huge heap increasing under the very act of diminishing ... . Good and evil we know in the field of this world grow up together almost inseparably ... . It was from out of the rind of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into this world. And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evil, that is, of knowing good by evil. — John Milton

Anyone who has fallen into fornication, adultery or any other such bodily impurity, should desist from this revolting filth and cleanse himself through confession, tears, fasting and the like. For God judges unrepentant fornicators and adulterers. He condemns them, dismisses them and consigns them to hell, unquenchable fire and other never-ending punishments, saying, 'Let the impure and accursed be taken away, lest they see and enjoy the glory of the Lord' (cf. Isa. 26:10 LXX). — Gregory Palamas

Desire is poverty. Desire is the greatest impurity of the mind. Desire is the motive force for action. Desire in the mind is the real impurity. Even a spark of desire is a very great evil. — Swami Sivananda

Ego is impurity. Be selfless. Consecrate and dedicate your life to perfection. — Frederick Lenz

The second cause whence these rebellions sometimes proceed is the devil, who, in order to disquiet and disturb the soul, at times when it is at prayer or is striving to pray, contrives to stir up these motions of impurity in its nature; and if the soul gives heed to any of these, they cause it great harm. For through fear of these not only do persons become lax in prayer - which is the aim of the devil when he begins to strive with them - but some give up prayer altogether, because they think that these things attack them more during that exercise than apart from it, which is true, since the devil attacks them then more than at other times, so that they may give up spiritual exercises. — San Juan De La Cruz

3But p sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness q must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. 4Let there be r no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, s which are out of place, but instead t let there be thanksgiving. 5For you may be sure of this, that u everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous ( v that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. 6 w Let no one x deceive you with empty words, for because of these things y the wrath of God comes upon z the sons of disobedience. 7Therefore a do not become partners with them; 8for b at one time you were c darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. d Walk as children of light 9(for e the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), 10and f try to discern — Anonymous

Being the Stream
Meditation is not just a rest or retreat from the turmoil of the
stream or the impurity of the world. It is a way of being the stream,
so that one can be at home in both the white water and the eddies.
Meditation may take one out of the world, but it also puts one totally
into it. — Gary Snyder

This is my real bed-rock objection to the eastern systems. They decry all manly virtue as dangerous and wicked, and they look upon Nature as evil. True enough, everything is evil relatively to Adonai; for all stain is impurity. A bee's swarm is evil - inside one's clothes. "Dirt is matter in the wrong place." It is dirt to connect sex with statuary, morals with art.
Only Adonai, who is in a sense the True Meaning of everything, cannot defile any idea. This is a hard saying, though true, for nothing of course is dirtier than to try and use Adonai as a fig-leaf for one's shame.
To seduce women under the pretense of religion is unutterable foulness; though both adultery and religion are themselves clean. To mix jam and mustard is a messy mistake. — Aleister Crowley

Scripture is wrought with a clear message of Jesus' utter disregard for appearance and social rank. In Judean society, it was a major taboo for a man to even speak to a woman who was not his own wife or daughter; yet Jesus interacted regularly with foreign women, He taught women, ignored ritual impurity laws, and readily accepted women into His inner circle of followers. — Matt Litton

So you begin to wonder if Leonia's true passion is really, as they say, the enjoyment of new and different things, and not, instead, the joy of expelling, discarding, cleansing itself of a recurrent impurity. — Italo Calvino

Offerings to propitiate the dead then were regarded as belonging to the class of funeral sacrifices, and these are idolatry. Idolatry, in fact, is a sort of homage to the departed, the one as well as the other is a service to dead men. Moreover, demons dwell in the images of the dead ... this sort of exhibition has passed from honors of the dead to honors of the living; I mean, to quaestorships [financial overseers]and magistractes, to priestly offices of different kinds. Yet, since idolatry still cleaves to the dignity's name, whatever is done in its name partakes of its impurity. — Tertullian

The confusing signals, the impurity of the signal, gives you verisimilitude, as when you attend a funeral and notice that it's being poorly done. — Donald Barthelme

Put to death therefore what is earthly to you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. — Jewel E. Ann