Pure As White Quotes & Sayings

In a heartbeat, he scarcely could take a breath.
Wearing not a stitch of clothing, Eva stood in thigh-deep water with her back to him.
Before he blinked, his gaze slid from coppery tresses brushing feminine shoulders to a tiny waist which fanned into glorious heart-shaped buttocks. Heaven's stars, her flawless skin had to be as pure white as fresh cream.
God on the cross, save me.
Christ, he was only a flesh and blood man. Who on earth could resist such a temptation? He clenched his teeth and growled. Frigid water or nay, he lengthened like a stallion catching scent of a filly in heat. God's teeth, even his ballocks turned to balls of tight molten steel. — Amy Jarecki

Never will she be mine; never. I never brought a flush to her cheek, and it is not I who now have made it so chalk-white. And never will she slip across the street in the night, with anxiety in her heart and a letter to me.
Life has passed me by.
[..] I have got new curtains for my study; pure white. When I awoke this morning, I first thought it had been snowing. In my room the light was exactly as it is after the first fall of snow. I even fancied I caught the scent of snow freshly fallen. And soon it will come, the snow. One feels it in the air.
It will be welcome. Let it come. Let it fall. — Hjalmar Soderberg

In Narnia a girl might ring a bell in a deserted temple and feel the chime in her eyes, pure as the freeze that forces tears. Then when the sound dies out, the White Witch wakes. It was like, I want to touch you, and I can touch you, now what next, a dagger? — Helen Oyeyemi

He quirked an eyebrow briefly, slightly, in such a way that no one afterwards might be able to safely accuse him of having done it. Sei knew the look. Names are meaningless, plosives and breath, but those who liked the slope of her waist often made much of hers, which denoted purity, clarity - as though it had any more in the way of depth than others. They wondered, all of them, if she really was pure, as pure as her name announced her to be, all white banners and hymeneal grace. — Catherynne M Valente

Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one's first feeling, 'Thank God, even they aren't quite so bad as that,' or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything
God and our friends and ourselves included
as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred. — C.S. Lewis

Characters tend to be either for or against the quest. If they assist it, they are idealized as simply gallant or pure; if they obstruct it, they are characterized as simply villainous or cowardly. Hence every typical character ... tends to have his moral opposite confronting him, like black and white pieces in a chess game. — Northrop Frye

the one of insane geometries, of orange lightning, of fire that rained from trees like leaves falling, of the birds rising from the water their impossibly pure white wings spreading across the burning sky. As — Douglas Clegg

White and shining virgin of all human virtues, ark of the covenant between earth and heaven, tender and strong companion partaking of the lion and of the lamb, Prayer! Prayer will give you the key of heaven! Bold and pure as innocence, strong, like all that is single and simple, this glorious, invincible Queen rests, nevertheless, on the material world; she takes possession of it; like the sun, she clasps it in a circle of light. — Honore De Balzac

Many references have been made in this book to 'the reader,' who has been much in the news. It is now necessary to warn you that your concern for the reader must be pure: you must sympathize with the reader's plight (most readers are in trouble about half the time) but never seek to know the reader's wants. Your whole duty as a writer is to please and satisfy yourself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one. Start sniffing the air, or glancing at the Trend Machine, and you are as good as dead, although you may make a nice living. — E.B. White

The snow had done what even wizards and the Watch couldn't do, which was clean up Ankh-Morpork. It hadn't had time to get dirty. In the morning it'd probably look as though the city had been covered in coffee meringue, but for now it mounded the bushes and trees in pure white. — Terry Pratchett

O little souls! as pure as white And crystalline as rays of light Direct from heaven, their source divine; Refracted through the mist of years, How red my setting sun appears, How lurid looks this soul of mine! — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The prevarication and white lies which a mind that keeps itself ambitiously pure is as uneasy under as a great artist under the false touches that no eye detects but his own, are worn as lightly as mere trimming when once the actions have become a lie. — George Eliot

Queen of my tub, I merrily sing,
While the white foam rises high,
And sturdily wash, and rinse, and wring,
And fasten the clothes to dry;
Then out in the free fresh air they swing,
Under the sunny sky.

I wish we could wash from our hearts and our souls
The stains of the week away,
And let water and air by their magic make
Ourselves as pure as they;
Then on the earth there would be indeed
A glorious washing-day!

Along the path of a useful life
Will heart's-ease ever bloom;
The busy mind has no time to think
Of sorrow, or care, or gloom;
And anxious thoughts may be swept away
As we busily wield a broom.

I am glad a task to me is given
To labor at day by day;
For it brings me health, and strength, and hope,
And I cheerfully learn to say-
"Head, you may think; Heart, you may feel;
But Hand, you shall work always! — Louisa May Alcott

When a woman falls in love with me, I feel guilty. I am convinced that it's pure obstinacy that keeps me from reciprocating her passion. As I explain to her that I'm gay, it sounds, even to me, like a silly excuse; I scarcely believe it myself. — Edmund White

And what was she like?" "Tall, fine bust, sloping shoulders; long, graceful neck: olive complexion, dark and clear; noble features; eyes rather like Mr. Rochester's: large and black, and as brilliant as her jewels. And then she had such a fine head of hair; raven-black and so becomingly arranged: a crown of thick plaits behind, and in front the longest, the glossiest curls I ever saw. She was dressed in pure white; an amber-coloured scarf was passed over her shoulder and across her breast, tied at the side, and descending in long, fringed ends below her knee. She wore an amber-coloured flower, too, in her hair: it contrasted well with the jetty mass of her curls. — Charlotte Bronte

Myron lay sprawled next to a knee-knockingly gorgeous brunette clad only in a Class-B-felony bikini, a tropical drink sans umbrella in one hand, the aqua clear Caribbean water lapping at his feet, the sand a dazzling white powder, the sky a pure blue that could only be God's blank canvas, the sun a soothing and rich as a Swedish masseur with a snifter of cognac, and he was intensely miserable. — Harlan Coben

The holiness of God is like a white light: pure, simple, complete. But when that light shines, as it were, through the prisms of individual human lives, it breaks into an infinite variety of colors ... each one reveals a unique dimension of the divine holiness. — Robert Barron

The fledgling has a bleached white breast, a regal demeanor, and an otherworldly elegance, as if she dropped straight from some pure celestial realm into my lap. If — Terry Masear

Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind. — E.B. White

Janus found himself drawn to the edge of the rink, staring fixedly at Candace as she approached: grinning, puffing steam, her cheeks flushed, her brown hair peeking out from under a knitted cap, her hazel eyes sparkling green and gold in the bright winter sun. She wore a wool riding coat, brilliant red trimmed with black, which stood out amid the ice like a ruby on white gold. Janus thought she had never looked more beautiful than she did in that moment, with all her cares and duties laid aside for the pure joy of living. Janus wanted to freeze the moment in his memory and carry it forever: This is what happiness looks like. I never knew. — Chris Lester

Through a bombed cemetery, long-forgotten Londoners unearthed and flung into trees, grinning in rotted formal wear. A curlicued swing set in a cratered playground. The horrors piled up, incomprehensible, the bombers now and then dropping flares to light it all with the pure, shining white of a thousand camera flashes. As if to say: Look. Look what we made. — Ransom Riggs

The breath of peace was fanning her glorious brow, her head was bowed a very little forward, and a tress, escaping from its bonds, fell by the side of her pure white temple, and close to her just opened lips; it hung there motionless! no breath disturbed its repose! She slept as an angel might sleep, having accomplished the mission of her God. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

In my later years I have sought to become simpler, straighter and purer in my handling of the language. I've had many writing heroes, writers who have influenced me. Of the ones still alive, I can think of E.B. White. I certainly admire the pure, crystal stream of his prose. When I was very young as a sportswriter I knowingly and unashamedly imitated others. I had a series of heroes who would delight me for a while and I'd imitate them
Damon Runyon, Westbrook Pegler, Joe Williams. — Red Smith

While these thoughts crossed his mind, Margaret clung to the doorpost to steady herself: but a film came over her eyes - he was only just in time to catch her. 'Mother - mother!' cried he; 'Come down - they are gone, and Miss Hale is hurt!' He bore her into the dining-room, and laid her on the sofa there; laid her down softly, and looking on her pure white face, the sense of what she was to him came upon him so keenly that he spoke it out in his pain:
'Oh, my Margaret - my Margaret! no one can tell what you are to me! Dead - cold as you lie there, you are the only woman I ever loved! Oh, Margaret - Margaret!' Inarticulately as he spoke, kneeling by her, and rather moaning than saying the words, he started up, ashamed of himself, as his mother came in. She saw nothing, but her son a little paler, a little sterner than usual. — Elizabeth Gaskell

The two men were slowly pacing the terrace in front of Dr. Raymond's house. The sun still hung above the western mountain-line, but it shone with a dull red glow that cast no shadows, and all the air was quiet; a sweet breath came from the great wood on the hillside above, and with it, at intervals, the soft murmuring call of the wild doves. Below, in the long lovely valley, the river wound in and out between the lonely hills, and, as the sun hovered and vanished into the west, a faint mist, pure white, began to rise from the hills. Dr. Raymond turned sharply to his friend. Safe? Of course it is. In itself the operation is a perfectly simple one; any surgeon could do it. — Arthur Machen

Bracelets with white symbols?" Michael made the question casual; in fact, he bent his head and concentrated on tuning his guitar, not that it needed it. Every note sounded perfect as it whispered out of the strings. "Do you remember?"
"No." She felt a pure burst of something that wasn't quite panic, wasn't quite excitement. "Does that mean they have Protection?"
He hesitated for about a second, just long enough for her to know he was surprised. "You mean condoms?" he asked. "Doesn't everybody? — Rachel Caine

A pure white puppy followed on the girl's heels, barking, and the girl laughed in the breathless, drunken way of children as she ran into the hallway. — Kit Alloway

Farrell had seen pure white drunkenness before, but not often enough to recognize it at sight. He knew the thing itself, however
the freight train rattling and lurching comically from hilarity to slobbering sorrow, picking up speed as it passed through wild, aimless anger straight on into wild sickness; and then, running smoothly and almost silently now, into a dark place of shaking and sweating and crying, and out again with no warning to where a dazzling snowy light made everything very still. — Peter S. Beagle

How do you know me, girl? He asked, his voice caked with venom. There was movement from the curtains and the throng of vamps seemed to cry out as one, in a sound of pure surprise.
My head turned towards the figure of a young man. He looked like an angel, dressed in white and gold, but whether that was because he caused Petrel to stop or the flickering candlelight from the sconces above us, I couldn't say. — Cyrese Covelli

I see it, Jack. Your muse is back. The thing that gave you passion, tormented you, and haunted you is back. You're reeling in ecstasy and dread. It's something you want, but can't ever have. And the one that brings the pain is pure, white as snow ... and standing in front of you. — H.M. Ward

Positive Lifeparticles and Negative Life Particles
Lifeparticles are originally in a neutral, indeterminate state of limitless possibilities. What determines
the quality of positivity or negativity is the kind of information given to the Lifeparticles. Think of it as pure white light that changes its color when it it filtered through colored lenses. when information is added, Lifeparticles move and change according to that information. If bright, positive information is added to Lifeparticles, they become bright and positive. However, if dark, negative information is added to them, they act as dark, negative energy.What changes the characteristics of neutral Lifeparticles ,then, it the mind. — Ilchi Lee

Ruby Bates, one of the young white girls, was a remarkable person. She told me she had been driven into prostitution when she was thirteen. She had been working in a textile mill for a pittance. When she asked for a raise, the boss told her to make it up by going with the workers. She told me there was nothing else she could do ... Ruby Bates was a remarkable woman. Underneath it all - the poverty, the degradation - she was decent, pure. Here was an illiterate white girl, all of whose training had been clouded by the myths of white supremacy, who, in the struggle for the lives of these nine innocent boys, had come to see the role she was being forced to play. As a murderer. She turned against her oppressors ... I shall never forget her. — Studs Terkel

and there she was standing on the grass, which seemed to have turned green, and with the sun pouring down on her and warm sweet wafts about her and the fluting and twittering and singing coming from every bush and tree. She clasped her hands for pure joy and looked up in the sky and it was so blue and pink and pearly and white and flooded with springtime light that she felt as if she must flute and sing aloud herself — Frances Hodgson Burnett

Many progressive economists insist that gold is now in essentially the same position as silver and that the arguments the simon-pure gold advocates use against the white metal can be directed with equal effect against their own fetish. — Benjamin Graham

Although I am a political liberal, I believe that conservatives have a better understanding of moral development (although not of moral psychology in general - they are too committed to the myth of pure evil). Conservatives want schools to teach lessons that will create a positive and uniquely American identity, including a heavy dose of American history and civics, using English as the only national language. Liberals are justifiably wary of jingoism, nationalism, and the focus on books by "dead white males," but I think everyone who cares about education should remember that the American motto of e pluribus, unum (from many, one) has two parts. The celebration of pluribus should be balanced by policies that strengthen the unum. — Jonathan Haidt

Pine trees rise through cloud
soar up into the blue skies,
bush clover spangled with dewdrops
sways in the autumn breeze;
As I dip cold, pure water
at the edge of the stream,
a solitary white crane
comes lolloping my way. — Baisao

It was heaven. Pure and simple paradise. Even as he kissed his way along her neck, his palms circled, his fingers kneaded, and she sent up the white flag of surrender. — Susan Mallery

Is not this lily pure? What fuller can procure A white so perfect, spotless clear As in this flower doth appear? — Francis Quarles

We know that Rangi can at least mutter because Digger Gibson says he used to talk to the bear. In his group home for orphaned Moa boys, Rangi had a pet cinnamon bear. I saw her once. She was just a wet-nosed cub, a cuff of pure white around her neck. Rangi found her on the banks of the Waitiki River and walked her around on a leash. He filed her claws and fed her tiny, smelly fishes. They shot her the day his new father, Digger, came to pick him up.
"Burying that bear," I overheard Digger tell Mr. Oamaru once. "The first thing we ever did together as father and son."
Rangi's given us this global silent treatment ever since, a silence he extends to people, animals, ice. — Karen Russell

They may seize
On the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand
And steal immortal blessing from her lips,
Who, even in pure and vestal modesty,
Still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin. — William Shakespeare

I feel stuffy, as if there were not enough air to breathe - hot, and uneasy. Two months of no exercise have made me weak and plegmatic mentally and physically. On the short walk from here to the libe I drink the cold pure night air and the clear unbelievably delicate crescent-moonlight with a greedy reverence. Days are bizarre collections of hothouse languidities, mystical and poignant sensuous quotations (white thy fambles, red thy gan, and thy quarrons dainty is ... " Dark, liquid loveliness of words half dimly understood.) — Sylvia Plath

Wherever you need to go ...
Gods or fate or just pure coincidence and kindness, it was a gift. This was a gift. The world was wide-open - wide-open and hers for the taking, if she dared. She could go to Antica, attend the Torre Cesme, go anywhere she wished.
If she dared.
Yrene smiled.
An hour later, no one stopped Yrene Towers as she walked out of the White Pig and never looked back. — Sarah J. Maas

Nevertheless, it was not necessary to assume, as Wolfe had in the case of Viola Duday, that if he had killed Priscilla Eads he had probably done so by contrivance and not by perpetration. In spite of his pure white hair and wrinkled old skin, I would have bet, from the way he looked and moved and held his shoulders and head, that he could still have chinned himself up to five or six times. — Rex Stout

I have been feeding pigeons, thousands of them for years. But there was one, a beautiful bird, pure white with light grey tips on its wings; that one was different. It was a female. I had only to wish and call her and she would come flying to me. I loved that pigeon as a man loves a women, and she loved me. As long as I had her, there was a purpose to my life. — Nikola Tesla

Idolatry and all the sins that followed in its train were abhorrent to God, and he commanded his people not to mingle with other nations, to "do after their works," and forget God. He forbade their marriage with idolaters, lest their hearts should be led away from him. It was just as necessary then as it is now that God's people should be pure, "unspotted from the world." They must keep themselves free from its spirit, because it is opposed to truth and righteousness. But God did not intend that his people, in self-righteous exclusiveness, should shut themselves away from the world, so that they could have no influence upon it. — Ellen G. White

And there in the middle, high above Prechistensky Boulevard, amidst a scattering of stars on every side but catching the eye through its closeness to the earth, its pure white light and the long uplift of its tail, shone the comet, the huge, brilliant comet of 1812, that popular harbinger of untold horrors and the end of the world. But this bright comet with its long, shiny tail held no fears for Pierre. Quite the reverse: Pierre's eyes glittered with tears of rapture as he gazed up at this radiant star, which must have traced its parabola through infinite space at speeds unimaginable and now suddenly seemed to have picked its spot in the black sky and impaled itself like an arrow piercing the earth, and stuck there, with its strong upthrusting tail and its brilliant display of whiteness amidst the infinity of scintillating stars. This heavenly body seemed perfectly attuned to Pierre's newly melted heart, as it gathered reassurance and blossomed into new life. — Leo Tolstoy

Yellow is my favorite, but what is yellow? Handmaiden to white, it is a slight tarnish of pure light. Take away a bit of whites absolute luminosity, and what remains is yellow
sunlike, golden as a crown, buttercups in a field, marsh marigolds, a finch's wing, a plastic flute. — Richard Grossinger

It is my hope that as the Negro plunges deeper into the quest for freedom and justice he will plunge even deeper into the philosophy of non-violence. The Negro all over the South must come to the point that he can say to his white brother: We will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. We will not hate you, but we will not obey your evil laws. We will soon wear you down by pure capacity to suffer. — Martin Luther

The drums staggered toward the distant street. Moving away from us, the dancers romped and rolled on the rhythm, their swaying heads like a field of wildflowers weaving back and forth on waves of wind. As the music dwindled to an echo in our minds, the day-to-day and minute-to-minute of slum life slowly reclaimed the lanes. We gave ourselves to our routines, our needs, and our harmless, hopeful scheming. And for a while, a little while, ours was a better world because the hearts and smiles that ruled it were almost as pure and clean as the flower petals fluttering from our hair, and clinging to our faces like still, white tears. — Gregory David Roberts

Jealousy was a fat, chalk-white snake in his chest. It writhed slowly, as pure as innocence and childishly plain.
Replaceable. He was ... replaceable. — John Ajvide Lindqvist

A single bad habit will mar an otherwise faultless character, as an ink-drop soileth the pure white page. — Hosea Ballou

SHORTLY AFTER Louis Freeh was sworn in as the fifth director of the FBI on September 1, 1993, he turned in his White House pass. He refused to enter the Oval Office. His reasons were pure and simple. Freeh regarded President Clinton not as commander in chief but as the subject of a criminal case. The — Tim Weiner

TAL HAD TO laugh. Hardly presentable! Wasn't it strange, the way humans looked at themselves with eyes of flesh and not of the Spirit? Certainly that dear woman had been through mire and filth of every degree; she was scarred, exhausted, ragged, and dirty. But to the angels, she appeared as God Himself saw her, just as any other redeemed saint of the living God: pure, shining, clean, dressed in garments as white as snow. — Frank E. Peretti

Teenage girls are extremists who see the world in black-and- white terms, missing shades of gray. Life is either marvelous or notworth living. School is either pure torment or is going fantastically. Other people are either great or horrible, and they themselves are wonderful or pathetic failures. One day a girl will refer to herself as "the goddess of social life" and the next day she'll regret that she's the "ultimate in nerdosity. — Mary Pipher

I was in an empty field when I came across a tree. This tree was full of white blossoms and succulent cherries. The sun was shining and the breeze was blowing - everything was lovely. I looked back at the tree and its pure white blossoms were stained with blood. I gazed down in front of me, in horror, as a wooden cross marked the place of a small dirty mound. — Katlyn Charlesworth

The deeper I went into the valley, the greater the rewards. First, it was a clump of birches, the bottoms wrapped in thick fog, the uppermost branches clear now, nesting birds waking with bright-eyed songs. Next, I passed under the pines, browned needles underfoot, and was transported to the quiet moments of rapture under such branches throughout my life. The last, and worth all other gifts combined, was that moment when the valley inhaled, taking with it the fog. In its place, so close to where I was standing, there they were, the year's first flowers, the pure white snowdrops springing from the dark-green foliage under the elms. It was as if the clouds were swept in an instant from the sky leaving only the quiet delicacy of the stars. — Megan Rich

A strange cold fear gripped him as he looked down at that angelic face resting against his shoulder. Her thick dark lashes lay heavy against her perfect olive skin like two perfect dark crescent moons concealing those glorious starry green eyes burdened with anguish much too raw and intense for a teenager to bear. She was frail and tiny and much too beautiful, light as a feather in his arms, like a pure white dove. Things were only going to get worse before they were going to get better but that was okay because Logan was determined to be there for Sienna every step of the way. — Ali Harper

I meditate for the last time on this mountain that is bare, though others all around are white with snow. Like the bare peak of the koan, this one is not different from myself. I know this mountain because I am this mountain, I can feel it breathing at this moment, as its grass tops stray against the snows. If the snow leopard should leap from the rock above and manifest itself before me - S-A-A-O! - then in that moment of pure fright, out of my wits, I might truly perceive it, and be free. — Peter Matthiessen

There are some parts of the world that, once visited, get into your heart and won't go. For me, India is such a place. When I first visited, I was stunned by the richness of the land, by its lush beauty and exotic architecture, by its ability to overload the senses with the pure, concentrated intensity of its colors, smells, tastes, and sounds. It was as if all my life I had been seeing the world in black and white and, when brought face-to-face with India, experienced everything re-rendered in brilliant technicolor. — Keith Bellows

The field was carpeted with the most lustrous show of wildflowers she had ever seen - flowers by the hundreds, the thousands, the millions. Purple irises. White lilies. Pink daisies. Yellow buttercups and red columbines and many others she knew no names for. A breeze had arisen; the sun had broken through the clouds. She shrugged off her pack and walked slowly forward. It was as if she were wading into a sea of pure color. The tips of her fingers brushed the petals of the flowers as she passed. They seemed to bow their heads in salutation, welcoming her into their embrace. In a trance of beauty, Amy moved among them. Corridors of golden sunshine fell over the field; far away, across the sea, a new age had begun.
Here she would make her garden. She would make her garden, and wait. — Justin Cronin

How many words grace the pages of this book!
They are supposed to bestir memory. As if words could remember!
For words are miserable mountain climbers and miserable miners of meaning. They do not retrieve the hidden treasures from the heights or dredge them from the depths!
But there is a living commemoration that softly strokes everything worthy of remembering with its caress. And when a red-hot flame leaps forth, poignant and piercing, from such retrospective ash, and you fix your gaze upon it, as if gripped by its magic spell, then...
But how with a shaky hand and coarse writing instrument can one possibly inscribe oneself in such pure remembrance, other than to stain these white unassuming pages? — Franz Kafka

A girl stood before him in midstream, alone and still, gazing out to sea. She seemed like one whom magic had changed into the likeness of a strange and beautiful seabird. Her long slender bare legs were delicate as a crane's and pure save where an emerald trail of seaweed had fashioned itself as a sign upon the flesh. Her thighs, fuller and soft-hued as ivory, were bared almost to the hips, where the white fringes of her drawers were like feathering of soft white down. Her slate-blue skirts were kilted boldly about her waist and dovetailed behind her. Her bosom was as a bird's, soft and slight, slight and soft as the breast of some dark-plumaged dove. But her long fair hair was girlish: and girlish, and touched with the wonder of mortal beauty, her face. — James Joyce

However, whatever frightening mask it might assume, the national spirit in its original state was of pristine whiteness. Traveling through a country like Thailand, Honda realized more clearly than ever the simplicity and purity of things Japanese, like transparent stream water
through which one could glimpse pebbles below, or the probity of Shinto rites. Honda's life was not imbued with such spirit. Like the majority of Japanese he ignored it, behaving as though it did not exist and surviving by
escaping from it. All his life he had dodged things fundamental and artless: white silk, clear cold water, the zigzag white paper of the exorciser's staff fluttering in the breeze, the sacred precinct marked by a torii, the gods'
dwelling in the sea, the mountains, the vast ocean, the Japanese sword with its glistening blade so pure and sharp. Not only Honda, but the vast majority of Westernized Japanese, could no longer stand such intensely native elements. — Yukio Mishima

How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it, "all men are created equal, except negroes." When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics." When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty - to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy.26 — Eric Foner

As the glow of the cabin windows turned to flickers through the trees and then to black, her eyes adjusted and the starlight alone on the pure white snow was enough to light her way. The cold scorched her cheeks and her lungs, but she was warm in her fox hat and wool. An owl swooped through the spruce boughs, a slow-flying shadow, but she was not frightened. She felt old and strong, like the mountains and the river. She would find her way home. — Eowyn Ivey

The pure, absolute quality and nature of each note in itself are only appreciated by the strummer. For some notes have all the sea in them, and some cathedral bells; others a woodland joyance and a smell of greenery; in some fauns dance to the merry reed, and even the grave centaurs peep out from their caves. Some bring moonlight, and some the deep crimson of a rose's heart; some are blue, some red, and others will tell of an army with silken standards and march-music. And throughout all the sequence of suggestion, up above the little white men leap and peep, and strive against the imprisoning wires; and all the big rosewood box hums as it were full of hiving bees. — Kenneth Grahame