Purer Quotes & Sayings

Friendships are the purer and the more ardent, the nearer they come to the presence of God, the Sun not only of righteousness but of love. — Walter Savage Landor

On him the light of star and moon
Shall fall with purer radiance down ...
Him Nature giveth for defence
His formidable innocencn;
The mounting sap, the shells, the sea,
All spheres, all stonse, his helpers be ... — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The best books are those which lift us to a higher plane where we breathe a purer atmosphere. — Orison Swett Marden

A page lay on his desk. His fingers held a pen. With these tools he built a world. Perhaps the world he built lived behind his eyes and was transmitted to the page by the instrument of ink, or else it lived beneath the page somehow, his pen's progress sculpting form out of a purer white than sculptor's marble. — Max Gladstone

Each religion has helped mankind. Paganism increased in man the light of beauty, the largeness and height of his life, his aim at a many-sided perfection; Christianity gave him some vision of divine love and charity; Buddhism has shown him a noble way to be wiser, gentler, purer, Judaism and Islam how to be religiously faithful in action and zealously devoted to God; Hinduism has opened to him the largest and profoundest spiritual possibilities. — Sri Aurobindo

Life starts and it ends with a breath, in between these two breaths lays a story; a child is born and explores the world; the child smiles and cries; the child lives and becomes a man; the man learns that life is neither good or bad, just beautiful the way it is.
Life ends on this earth by letting go of the first breath, because the man knows that letting go is the path that leads to freedom; and then life begins again purer than ever. — Quetzal

And all this culture, all this art, was simply a trick. It allowed us to pretend that human beings were noble, intelligent creatures who'd left their animal past behind them long ago and had evolved into something finer, something purer; that because they could write like angels they were angels. But this art was just a screen that hid the ugly truth -- that we were still the same creatures who had cut into the warm bellies of the animals we'd killed with sharpened stones and vented our anger on the weak with frenzied blows of a blunt club. — Gordon Reece

No nation is better than its sacred book. In that book are expressed its highest ideals of life, and no nation rises above those ideals. No nation has a sacred book to be compared with ours. This American nation from its first settlement at Jamestown to the present hour is based upon and permeated by the principles of the Bible. The more this Bible enters into our national life the grander and purer and better will that life become. — David Josiah Brewer

Absolute Purity, unsullied even by the shadow of sin. "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all" (1Jo 1:5). Holiness is the very excellency of the divine nature: the great God is "glorious in holiness" (Exo 15:11). Therefore do we read, "Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity" (Hab 1:13). As — Arthur W. Pink

No life can be pure in its purpose, and strong in its strife, and all life not be purer and stronger thereby. — Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl Of Lytton

It meant that when she saw him for the first time in every life,Daniel was already in love with her. Every time. And always had been. And every time, she had to fall in love with him from scratch.He could never pressure her or push her into loving him. He had to win her anew each time. Daniel's love for her was one long, uninterrupted stream.It was the purest form of love there was,purer even than the love Luce returned. His love flowed without breaking,without stopping. Whereas Luce's love was wiped clean with every death, Daniel's grew over time, across all eternity. How powerfully strong must it be by now? Hundreds of love stacked one on top of the other? It was almost too massive for Luce to comprehend. He loved her that much,and yet in every lifetime,over and over again,he had to wait for her to catch up. — Lauren Kate

Werewolves are the guardians of humanity, and their form should be purer while exorcised. They'll be assets in the last battle. — S.M. Reine

If we range through the whole territory of nature, and endeavour to extract from each department the rich stores of knowledge and pleasure they respectively contain, we shall not find a more refined or purer source of amusement, or a more interesting and unfailing subject for recreation, than that which the observation and examination of the structure, affinities, and habits of plants and vegetables, afford. — Joseph Paxton

Fasting cures diseases, dries up bodily humors, puts demons to flight, gets rid of impure thoughts, makes the mind clearer and the heart purer, the body sanctified, and raises man to the throne of God. — Athenaeus

Christ desires nothing so much as to redeem His heritage from the dominion of Satan. But before we are delivered from Satan's power without, we must be delivered {175} from his power within. The Lord permits trials in order that we may be cleansed from earthliness, from selfishness, from harsh, unchristlike traits of character. He suffers the deep waters of affliction to go over our souls in order that we may know Him and Jesus Christ whom He has sent, in order that we may have deep heart longings to be cleansed from defilement, and may come forth from the trial purer, holier, happier. Often we enter the furnace of trial with our souls darkened with selfishness; but if patient under the crucial test, we shall come forth reflecting the divine character. When His purpose in the affliction is accomplished, "He shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday." Ps. 37:6. — Ellen G. White

Whoseoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god. Certain it is that the light that a man receiveth by counsel from another is drier and purer than that which cometh from his own understanding and judgment. — Francis Bacon

Christians have made too much out of work in the same way that Americans have begun engaging in yoga competitions - twisted-up versions of a purer thing. Christians want to make a difference. So we do, and we do, and we do, and then we find ourselves exhausted. In — Shauna Niequist

Limits are possibilities ... Formal restrictions, contrary to what you might think, free you up by allowing you to concentrate on purer ideas ... You can be crippled by too many choices, especially if you don't know what your goals are. — Chip Kidd

I find purer philosophy in a Poem than in a Conclusion of Geometry, a chemical analysis, or a physical law. — Wilfred Owen

I was washing outside in the darkness,
the sky burning with rough stars,
and the starlight, salt on an axe-blade.
The cold overflows the barrel.

The gate's locked,
the land's grim as its conscience.
I don't think they'll find the new weaving,
finer than truth, anywhere.

Star-salt is melting in the barrel,
icy water is blackening,
death's growing purer, misfortune saltier,
the earth's moving nearer to truth and to dread. — Innokenty Annensky

And let your board stand an altar on which the pure and the innocent of forest and plain are sacrificed for that which is purer and still more innocent in man. — Kahlil Gibran

The light that a man receives by counsel from another is drier and purer than that which comes from his own understanding and judgment, which is ever infused and drenched in his affections and customs. — Francis Bacon

Some part of me ... had been waiting, since Kelp's death, for certainty that God ... was either dead or malicious. On the cot, now, in the rain-shadowed room with the medicine smells, I knew it was worse than that. They were a challenge, a dare: you must look at the horrors of the world and find a way back to faith in spite of what you saw. I had a glimpse of what the purer version of myself might be capable of: enduring the loss, keeping the rage and disgust down, finding meaning through suffering. But it was only a glimpse. There was so much shame, and the shame made me angry at the thought of getting better. — Glen Duncan

The deeds of love are less questionable than any action of an individual can be, for, it being founded on the rarest mutual respect, the parties incessantly stimulate each other to a loftier and purer life, and the act in which they are associated must be pure and noble indeed, for innocence and purity can have no equal. In this relation we deal with one whom we respect more religiously even than we respect our better selves, and we shall necessarily conduct as in the presence of God. What presence can be more awful to the lover than the presence of his beloved? — Henry David Thoreau

Heaven and Earth are meeting in a storm that, when it's over, will leave the air purer and the leaves fertile, but before that happens, houses will be destroyed, centuries- old trees will topple, paradises will be flooded. — Paulo Coelho

And this is the mission of the church
not civilization, but salvation
not better laws, purer legislation, social elevation, human equality and liberty, but first, the "kingdom of God and His righteousness;" regenerated hearts, and all other things will follow. — Abbott Eliot Kittredge

[My] pillar of support through life ... I can say conscientiously that I do not know in the world a man of purer integrity, more dispassionate, disinterested, and devoted to genuine Republicanism; nor could I in the whole scope of America and Europe point out an abler head. — Thomas Jefferson

As his mind becomes purer and his emotions come under control, his thoughts become clearer and his instincts truer. As he learns to live more and more in harmony with his higher Self, his body's natural intuition becomes active of itself. The result is that false desires and unnatural instincts which have been imposed upon it by others or by himself will become weaker and weaker and fall away entirely in time. This may happen without any attempt to undergo an elaborate system of self-discipline on his part: yet it will affect his way of living, his diet, his habits. False cravings like the craving for smoking tobacco will vanish of their own accord; false appetites like the appetite for alcoholic liquor or flesh food will likewise vanish; but the more deep-seated the desire, the longer it will take to uproot it
except in the case of some who will hear and answer a heroic call for an abrupt change. — Paul Brunton

The one object of fifty years of abstract art is to present art-as-art and as nothing else, to make it into the one thing it is only, separating and defining it more and more, making it purer and emptier, more absolute and more exclusive - non-objective, non-representational, non-figurative, non-imagist, non-expressionist, non-subjective. the only and one way to say what abstract art or art-as-art is, is to say what it is not. — Ad Reinhardt

Perhaps it takes a purer faith to praise God for unrealized blessings than for those we once enjoyed or those we enjoy now. — A.W. Tozer

It is hard work to control the workings of inclination and turn the bent of nature; but that it may be done, I know from experience. God has given us, in a measure, the power to make our own fate: and when our energies seem to demand a sustenance they cannot get
when our will strains after a path we may not follow
we need neither starve from inanition, not stand still in despair: we have but to seek another nourishment for the mind, as strong as the forbidden fruit it longed to taste
and perhaps purer; and to hew out for the adventurous foot a road as direct and broad as the one Fortune has blocked up against us, if rougher than it. — Charlotte Bronte

There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes. We cannot see it, but when our bodies are purified, we shall see that it is all matter. — Joseph Smith Jr.

While all the future, for thy purer soul,
With "sober certainties" of love is blest. — William Wordsworth

The love of woman is a precious treasure. Tenderness has no deeper source, devotion no purer shrine, sacrifice no more saintlike abnegation. — Germain-Francois Poullain De Saint-Foix

The deeper the nostalgia and the more complete the fear, the purer, the richer the word and the secret. — Elie Wiesel

I count this thing to be grandly true: That a noble deed is a step toward God
Lifting the soul from the common clod To a purer air and a broader view. — J.G. Holland

Thought without language, says Lavelle, would not be a purer thought; it would be no more than the intention to think. And his last book offers a theory of expressiveness which makes of expression not a faithful image of an already realized interior being, but the very means by which it is realized. — Maurice Merleau Ponty

As the leaves of trees are said to absorb all noxious qualities of the air, and to breathe forth a purer atmosphere, so it seems to me as if they drew from us all sordid and angry passions, and breathed forth peace and philanthropy. — Washington Irving

Everytime you do a Good Deed with true intention, your soul grows purer. — Soman Chainani

The purer the application of socialism, the worse the results, the purer the application of capitalism, the better the results. — James Cook

Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful as yet, do as the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful; the sculptor cuts away here, smoothes there, makes this line lighter, this other purer, until he or she has shown a beautiful face upon the statue. — Plotinus

There was no higher art than music and no purer musical form than song. — Vivien Shotwell

There's no purer feeling in the world than being scared. — Stephen Graham Jones

say: maybe not in these words; maybe not in words at all, but in the purer language of thought; but yes, certainly, this is what was at the bottom of it all; because children are the vessels into which adults pour their poison, and it was the poison of grown-ups which did for us. — Salman Rushdie

Prayer is a sign of repentance, a desire to become better, purer. — Mahatma Gandhi

It was not a purer realm that loomed vastly over the city. Smokestacks punctured the membrane between the land and the air and disgorged tons of poisonous smog into that upper world as if out of spite. In a thicker, stinking haze just above the rooftops, the detritus from a million low chimneys eddied together. Crematoria vented into the airborne ashes of wills burnt by jealous executors, which mixed with coaldust burnt to keep dying lovers warm. Thousands of sordid smoke-ghosts wrapped New Crobuzon in a stench that suffocated like guilt. — China Mieville

I don't remember now who took the photo of us, but I've had it in my room for years. We're leaning out of our windows and we're laughing at each other with joyfulness purer than anything to do with the polite smiling you get used to doing when you get older. The photo has the kind of proper smiles that happen when you're looking straight into the face of someone who's been your best friend for a long time. — Sarah Moore Fitzgerald

Whatever beauty we behold, the more it is distant, serene, and cold, the purer and more durable it is. It is better to warm ourselves with ice than with fire. — Henry David Thoreau

Goodwill to others is constructive thought. It helps build you up. It is good for your body. It makes vour blood purer, your muscles stronger, and your whole form more symmetrical in shape. It is the real elixir of life. The more such thought you attract to you, the more life you will have. — Prentice Mulford

Suffering is a great grace; through suffering the soul becomes like the Saviour; in suffering love becomes crystallised; the greater the suffering, the purer the love. — Mary Faustina Kowalska

In spite of death, he felt the need of life and love. He felt that love saved him from despair, and that this love, under the menace of despair, had become still stronger and purer. The one mystery of death, still unsolved, had scarcely passed before his eyes, when another mystery had arisen, as insoluble, urging him to love and to life. — Leo Tolstoy

Therefore we examine with considerable diligence the consensus of the true, learned, and purer antiquity, and we love and praise the testimonies of the fathers which agree with the Scripture. — Martin Chemnitz

It's the false moral component behind blind animal love that so frosts me. The faulty logic that believes that the capacity to adore a nonhuman creature is somehow a purer form of love. — David Rakoff

For there are two possible reactions to social ostracism - either a man emerges determined to be better, purer, and kindlier or he goes bad, challenges the world and does even worse things. The last is by far the commonest reaction to stigma. — John Steinbeck

He who has talent in him must be purer in soul than anyone else. Another will be forgiven much, but to him it will not be forgiven. A man who leaves the house in bright, festive clothes needs only one drop of mud splashed from under a wheel, and people all surround him, point their fingers at him, and talk about his slovenliness, while the same people ignore many spots on other passers-by who are wearing everyday clothes. For on everyday clothes the spots do not show. — Nikolai Gogol

Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness to yourself. Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute. Avoid being scornful, both to others and to yourself. What seems to you bad within you will grow purer from the very fact of your observing it in yourself. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

...I always feel like a better person when I'm on the water." The air smelled cleaner here. The water seemed purer. She wanted to strip off her clothes and dive off the side of the boat and let the water baptize her a free woman. "The ocean is big", Ty said. "And we aren't. It's good to be humbled every now and then." "You ever go through a divorce?" she asked. "Not yet." "Trust me, I know from humble. — Tiffany Reisz

Dear Lord and Father of mankind, Forgive our foolish ways! Re-clothe us in our rightful mind, In purer lives thy service find, In deeper reverence praise — John Greenleaf Whittier

As for myself, I have found my perfect pattern in Jesus, who said, "The Father has not left Me
alone, for I always do those things that please Him." I am no longer motivated by personal ambition.
I have discovered a sweeter, purer motive: simply to please my Father. — Derek Prince

< ... > many national leaders including Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, John Adams, John Jay, Gouverneur Morris, and Rufus King saw American slavery as an immense problem, a curse, a blight, or a national disease. If the degree of their revulsion varied, they agreed that the nation would be much safer, purer, happier, and better off without the racial slavery that they had inherited from previous generations and, some of them would emphasize, from England. Most of them also believed that America would be an infinitely better and less complicated place without the African American population, which most white leaders associated with all the defects, mistakes, sins, shortcomings, and animality of an otherwise almost perfect nation. — David Brion Davis

The park is high. And as out of a house
I step out of its glimmering half-light
into openness and evening. Into the wind,
the same wind that the clouds feel,
the bright rivers and the turning mills
that stand slowly grinding at the sky's edge.
Now I too am a thing held in its hand,
the smallest thing under the sky. --Look:

Is that one sky?:
Blissfully lucid blue,
into which ever purer clouds throng,
and under it all white in endless changes,
and over it that huge, thin-spun gray,
pulsing warmly as on red underpaint,
and over everything this silent radiance
of a setting sun.

Miraculous structure,
moved within itself and upheld by itself,
shaping figures, giant wings, faults
and high mountain ridges before the first star
and suddenly, there: a gate into such
distances as perhaps only birds know... — Rainer Maria Rilke

If thou indeed derive thy light from Heaven,
Then, to the measure of that heaven-born light,
Shine, Poet! in thy place, and be content:
The stars pre-eminent in magnitude,
And they that from the zenith dart their beams,
(Visible though they be to half the earth,
Though half a sphere be conscious of their brightness)
Are yet of no diviner origin,
No purer essence, than the one that burns,
Like an untended watch-fire on the ridge
Of some dark mountain; or than those which seem
Humbly to hang, like twinkling winter lamps,
Among the branches of the leafless trees.
All are the undying offspring of one Sire:
Then, to the measure of the light vouchsafed,
Shine, Poet! in thy place, and be content. — William Wordsworth

Tie your heart at night to mine, love,
and both will defeat the darkness
like twin drums beating in the forest
against the heavy wall of wet leaves.
Night crossing: black coal of dream
that cuts the thread of earthly orbs
with the punctuality of a headlong train
that pulls cold stone and shadow endlessly.
Love, because of it, tie me to a purer movement,
to the grip on life that beats in your breast,
with the wings of a submerged swan,
So that our dream might reply
to the sky's questioning stars
with one key, one door closed to shadow. — Pablo Neruda

For we can affirm with a good conscience that we have, after reading the Holy Scripture, applied ourselves and yet daily apply ourselves to the extent that the grace of the Lord permits to inquiry into and investigation of the consensus of the true and purer antiquity. — Martin Chemnitz

The purer your heart, the lighter your spirit will be. The lighter your spirit, the closer to light it will float. The closer to light it is permitted to go, the higher it will float. The higher it floats, the closer to God you will be. Heaven has seven layers. The vibrations of your good deeds, which will be reflected by the weight of your conscience and the purity of your heart, will determine the layer in which your soul will reside. Your goal is to make your heart as light as a feather. The heavier the heart, the more chained to this hell it will remain. — Suzy Kassem

Plus, if you think carefully, when you fall in love with someone not for her lookay, don't you think it's purer? It would last longer as physical aged but personality grows — Evelyn Rose

In this case," said Randall unpleasantly, "it affords me purer gratification to dwell upon the thought of my dear Aunt Gertrude duped and betrayed."
"Your aunt doesn't suffer throught it!"
"What a pity!" said Randall. — Georgette Heyer

Faith is a quiet certainty that there is both a higher purpose to life and a higher power that oversees that purpose. Faith is knowing that we do not have to go it alone during our darkest hours and, even when we feel utterly victimized and weak, there is still something brighter, purer, and more potent than anything we can imagine that cares enough to reach out and offer a shoulder for us to lean upon. The object of faith takes many forms and many names, but the universal truth is faith itself. — Michelle Belanger

As the years go by, the circle of the Ojibway gets bigger and bigger. Canadians of all colours and religion are entering that circle. You might feel that you have roots somewhere else, but in reality, you are right here with us. I do not know if you feel the throbbing of the land in your chest, and if you feel the bear is your brother with a spirit purer and stronger than yours, or if the elk is on a higher level of life than is man. You may not share the spiritual anguish as I see the earth ravaged by the stranger, but you can no longer escape my fate as the soil turns barren and the rivers poison. Much against my will, and probably yours, time and circumstance have put us together in the same circle. And so I come not to plead with you to save me from the monstrous stranger of capitalist greed and technology. I come to inform you that my danger is your danger too. My genocide is your genocide. — John Ralston Saul

If any one of us has had an ambition higher than that of making money; a motive better than that of expediency; a faith warmer than that of reasoning; a love purer than that of the self; he has been slow to express it; still slower to urge it. — Henry Adams

"The person next to me meditates better than I do. They're purer." - This is the ego feeling sorry for itself. — Frederick Lenz

Whatever the soul chooses to love, it will resemble. And therefore what we choose to love is important: Love is the force behind every level of existence. There is some good in every attraction, but there is a process of refining attraction, of choosing what to love, so that we are energized by a wider, purer love — Kabir Helminski

In my humdrum life I was exalted one day by perfumes exhaled by a world that had been so bland. They were the troubling heralds of love. Suddenly love itself had come, with its roses and its flutes, sculpting, papering, closing, perfuming everything around it. Love had blended with the most immense breath of the thoughts themselves, the respiration that, without weakening love, had made it infinite. But what did I know about love itself? Did I, in any way, clarify its mystery, and did I know anything about it other than the fragrance of its sadness and the smell of its fragrances? Then, love went away, and the perfumes, from shattered flagons, were exhaled with a purer intensity. The scent of a weakened drop still impregnates my life. — Marcel Proust

Though thou loved her as thyself,
As a self of purer clay,
Tho' her parting dims the day,
Stealing grace from all alive,
Heartily know,
When half-gods go,
The gods arrive. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

True love is like a metal tested in a fire. Fires of adversity surround us daily. Are we to love only when it is merely convenient? Like gold or silver, which very hot fire must heat to purge them of impurities, love must be thrust into the fire from time to time to make it purer, stronger and more resilient. And in the same way, live shines its brightest right out of the flames. — James Michael Pratt

I am quite above physical death and believe it to be only the birth throes for a much purer life in a much purer draping. — Elisabeth Of Wied

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath toward you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful enormous serpent is in ours. — Jonathan Edwards

I thank my Maker, that in the midst of judgment he has remembered mercy. I humbly entreat my Redeemer to give me strength to lead henceforth a purer life than I have done hitherto. — Charlotte Bronte

We live in a capitalist system; anyone who believes they are above this system or purer than this system, even while shopping at the cute organic market across the street or taking a hiking vacation to Guatemala, is certifiable. — Katy Lederer

To use books rightly, is to go to them for help; to appeal to them when our own knowledge and power fail; to be led by them into wider sight and purer conception than our own, and to receive from them the united sentence of the judges and councils of all time, against our solitary and unstable opinions. — John Ruskin

As you grow in true spiritual power and understanding you will actually find that many outer rules and regulations will become unnecessary; but this will be because you have really risen above them; never, never, because you have fallen below them. This point in your development, where your understanding of Truth enables you to dispense with certain outer props and regulations, is the Spiritual Coming of Age. When you really are no longer spiritually a minor, you will cease to need some of the outer observances that formerly seemed indispensable; but your resulting life will be purer, truer, freer, and less selfish than it was before; and that is the test. — Emmet Fox

Being young and female in America, you watch a lot of T.V., and you grow up on false images of what love truly is. We think the man with the best rap will protect and save us, about it's not usually that way. Then you learn love is something deeper and purer in form. — Lauryn Hill

Go to the poets, they will speak to thee
More perfectly of purer creatures
— William Wordsworth

Are there not hours of an immortal birth, - Bright visitations from a purer sphere, That cannot live in language? Is there not A mood of glory, when the mind attuned To heaven, can out of dreams create her worlds? - — Robert Montgomery

You are purer than the pure. Never manifold, you are individual Consciousness.
Unborn, unchanging, all-pervasive You are a mountain of joy. — Swami Muktananda

We think the man with the best rap will protect and save us, but it's not usually that way. Love is something deeper and purer. — Lauryn Hill

It is not my strength that grows, so much as God's strength in me, which is given more abundantly as the days roll. It is so given on one condition. If my faith has laid hold of the infinite, the exhaustless, the immortal energy of God, unless there is something fearfully wrong about me, I shall be getting purer, nobler, wiser, more observant of His will; gentler, like Christ; every way fitter for His service, and for larger service, as the days increase. — Alexander MacLaren

As we become purer channels for God's light, we develop an appetite for the sweetness that is possible in this world. A miracle worker is not geared toward fighting the world that is, but toward creating the world that could be. — Marianne Williamson

Philosophers stretch the meaning of words until they retain scarcely anything of their original sense. They give the name of "God" to some vague abstraction which they have created for themselves; having done so they can pose before all the world as deists, as believers of God, and they can even boast that they have recognized a higher, purer concept of God, notwithstanding that their God is not nothing more than an insubstantial shadow and no longer the mighty personality of religious doctrines. — Sigmund Freud

Man is the best mirror, and the purer the man, the more clearly he can reflect God. — Swami Vivekananda

For my own singing, I used to be attracted by the baroque, the flashier the better, but now I prefer a simpler, purer style. — Renee Fleming

Constantinople was the principal seat and fortress of Arianism; and, in a long interval of forty years, the faith of the princes and prelates who reigned in the capital of the East was rejected in the purer schools of Rome and Alexandria. — Edward Gibbon

I sometimes ponder on variation form and it seems to me it ought to be more restrained, purer. — Johannes Brahms

There is a certain period of the soul-culture when it begins to interfere with some of characters of typical beauty belonging to the bodily frame, the stirring of the intellect wearing down the flesh, and the moral enthusiasm burning its way out to heaven, through the emaciation of the earthen vessel; and there is, in this indication of subduing the mortal by the immortal part, an ideal glory of perhaps a purer and higher range than that of the more perfect material form. We conceive, I think, more nobly of the weak presence of Paul than of, the fair and ruddy countenance of David. — John Ruskin

A nation that is capable of limitless sacrifice is capable of rising to limitless heights. The purer the sacrifice the quicker the progress. — Mahatma Gandhi

First, however, I must deal with the matter of Jesus, the so-called savior, who not long ago taught new doctrines and was thought to be a son of God. This savior, I shall attempt to show, deceived many and caused them to accept a form of belief harmful to the well-being of mankind. Taking its root in the lower classes, the religion continues to spread among the vulgar: nay, one can even say it spreads because of its vulgarity and the illiteracy of its adherents. And while there are a few moderate, reasonable, and intelligent people who interpret its beliefs allegorically, yet it thrives in its purer form among the ignorant. — Celsus

In the purer ages of the commonwealth, the use of arms was reserved for those ranks of citizens who had a country to love, a property to defend, and some share in enacting those laws which it was their interest, as well as duty, to maintain. But in proportion as the public freedom was lost in extent of conquest, war was gradually improved into an art, and degraded into a trade. — Edward Gibbon

Love is life's snow. It falls deepest and softest into the gashes left by the fight - whiter and purer than snow itself. — Fridtjof Nansen

The training of children is such a serous thing, and it means so much to them to be surrounded from the very beginning with good influences, that I should have thought the holier a man's vocation and the purer his life, the more fit he is to be a father — Ethel Lilian Voynich

I think it's that thing of growing up all the time watching American movies and listening to American music. It hits you in a way that's a lot purer because you are not in that culture that you're watching. — Ben Mendelsohn