Sullied Quotes & Sayings

A boy's mind is not so easily sullied as a girl's ... Undesirable knowledge is not an equal shock to the moral nature. — Elizabeth Missing Sewell

True beauty is what lies inside of us, not what the world sees. A beautiful shell that houses a vile soul becomes sullied over time. But an outer shell, imperfect as it may be, that houses a beautiful, shines with that beauty, radiating it for all who have eyes to see. — Sara B. Larson

Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard. It can be light as the hug we give a friend or heavy as the sacrifices we make for our children. It can be romantic, platonic, familial, fleeting, everlasting, conditional, unconditional, imbued with sorrow, stoked by sex, sullied by abuse, amplified by kindness, twisted by betrayal, deepened by time, darkened by difficulty, leavened by generosity, nourished by humor, and "loaded with promises and commitments" that we may or may not want or keep. — Cheryl Strayed

Between the radiant white of a clear conscience and the coal black of a conscience sullied by sin lie many shades of gray
where most of us live our lives. Not perfect but not beyond redemption. — Sherry L. Hoppe

The mirror reflects all objects without being sullied — Confucius

He was the real hero, Tenzing," Gyan had said, "Hilary couldn't have made it without sherpas carrying his bags." Everyone around had agreed. Tenzing was certainly first, or else he was made to wait with the bags so Hilary could take the first step on behalf of that colonial enterprise of sticking your flag on what was not yours.
Sai had wondered, should humans conquer the mountain or should they wish for the mountain to possess them? Sherpas went up and down, ten times, fifteen times in some cases, without glory, without claim of ownership, and there were those who said it was sacred and shouldn't be sullied at all. — Kiran Desai

To speak truth, sir, I don't understand you at all: I cannot keep up the conversation, because it has got out of my depth. Only one thing I know: you said you were not as good as you should like to be, and that you regretted your own imperfection
one thing I can comprehend: you intimated that to have a sullied memory was a perpetual bane. It seems to me, that if you tried hard, you would in time find it possible to become what you yourself would approve; and that if from this day you began with resolution to correct your thoughts and actions, you would in a few years have laid up a new and stainless store of recollections, to which you might revert with pleasure. — Charlotte Bronte

Many a sin has sullied me in body and in soul because I did not restrain my thoughts nor guard my lips: nevertheless it is to Thee, O God of majesty and love, that I turn in my extremity, for Thou art the fount of mercy; to Thee, as quickly as I may, I speed: for Thou alone canst heal me; I take refuge under Thy protection. — Saint Ambrose

The reputation of a woman may also be compared to a mirror of crystal, shining and bright, but liable to be sullied by every breath that comes near it. — Miguel De Cervantes

The most haunting thing was not that he didn't love her anymore. She could have accepted that eventually. The most haunting thing was that he did. He loved her from afar. He loved her in a way that was preserved in time, that couldn't be sullied. And she tended it in her careful, curatorial way. — Ann Brashares

In matters of conscience that is the best sense which every wise man takes in before he hath sullied his understanding with the designs of sophisters and interested persons. — Jeremy Taylor

Credit is like a looking-glass, which when once sullied by a breath, may be wiped clear again; but if once cracked can never be repaired. — Walter Scott

A woman who will be like a rock in a riverbed, enduring without complaint, her grace not sullied but shaped by the turbulence that washes over her. — Khaled Hosseini

Great art must not be sullied by politics. One would never, after all, seek to embellish the Mona Lisa, not even with a swastika. — Timur Vermes

Oh, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew, Or that the Everlasting had not fixed. His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! — William Shakespeare

The painting you saw in your mind was beautiful when it was your secret. Once it's on the canvas it's as if someone else has got hold of your secret and sullied it, distorted it. — Glenn Haybittle

He wanted me to be clean, and I'd sullied myself, debased myself, not with sex but violence. I was supposed to be his escape, and I'd walked into a trap where I was empowered to commit murder. — Pepper Winters

As for the military advantage of such a bombardment, I simply cannot grasp it. I have seen housewives disemboweled, children mutilated; I have seen the old itinerant market crone sponge from her treasure the brains with which they were spattered. I have seen a janitor's wife come out of her cellar and douse the sullied pavement with a bucket of water, and I am still unable to understand what part these humble slaughterhouse accidents play in warfare. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Perhaps the sweetest moment in writing is the arrival of that idea for a book which never has to be written, which is never sullied with a definite shape, which never needs to be exposed to a less loving gaze than that of its author. — Julian Barnes

A struggle for liberty is in itself respectable and glorious ... When conducted with magnanimity, justice and humanity, it ought to command the admiration of every friend to human nature. But if sullied by crimes and extravagancies, it loses its respectability. — Alexander Hamilton

The angel destroyed me! He seduced me with a pure voice, spoke kind words, and stroked my hair to lower my guard, to make me trust him, to trick me! He sullied my body, my voice, my heart; remade me as a terrifying monster; turned me into his companion! The angel was a disfigured phantom wearing a mask! — Mizuki Nomura

Every friend, every neighbor, and every family member wishes that you retain your golden heart. No one wants to see your love sullied. Yet, they all know a dark circumstance will find you eventually. Know this: You are being hunted
like game. Life will knock you down with some unexpected misfortune. Resolve now, to help your partner get back up. Only a determined family kills its wounded. When everyone else abandons him, come back for your husband.
pg 55 — Michael Ben Zehabe

The angel tumbles down to Earth into my own personal realm of lust, hedonism and shame. With eyes the color of the ocean and her halo of fire burning as bright as the desert sun, she speaks to me. And while she is raw and sullied, tainted by this beautiful hell, her words breathe life into the darkest, loneliest parts of me. — S.L. Jennings

Where wasteful Time debateth with decay
To change your day of youth to sullied night,
And all in war with Time for love of you,
As he takes from you, I engraft you new — William Shakespeare

Then at once they reached and hovered upon the imminent verge of sleep - but an intruder came, now, that would not "down". It was conscience. They began to feel a vague fear that they had been doing wrong to run away; and next they thought of the stolen meat, and then the real torture came [ ... ] So they inwardly resolved that so long as they remained in the business, their piracies should not again be sullied with the crime of stealing. Then conscience granted a truce, and these curiously inconsistent pirates fell peacefully to sleep. — Mark Twain

A sullied green "S" stood out on a graying backdrop that made for a road marker up there. We called it the wasteland. — Katherine McIntyre

Oh! my ministering brethren! Much of our praying is but giving God advice! Our praying is discolored with ambition, either for ourselves or for our denomination. Perish the thought! Our goal must be God alone. It is His honor that is sullied, His blessed Son who is ignored, His laws broken, His name profaned, His Book forgotten, His house made a circus of social efforts. — Leonard Ravenhill

She compared America to Rome. She said she thought the glory days of this country had long ago passed, and even those glory days were sullied: They had been built on the bodies of others. "And we can't get the message," she said. "We don't understand that we are embracing our deaths. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

I looked up in curiosity. Behind us stood the Brown and Eagle Wool Warehouse and Schneider's Cap Factory, both constructed with that wholehearted devotion to industry that sullied the word architecture. — Lyndsay Faye

Seen with the terrestrially sullied eye, we are in a situation of travelers in a train that has met with an accident in a tunnel, and this at a place where the light of the beginning can no longer be seen, and the light of the end is so very small a glimmer that the gaze must continually search for it and is always losing it again, and, furthermore, both the beginning and the end are not even certainties. Round about us, however, in the confusion of our senses, or in the supersensitiveness of our senses, we have nothing but monstrosities and a kaleidoscopic play of things that is either delightful or exhausting according to the mood and injury of each individual. What shall I do? or: Why should I do it? are not questions to be asked in such places. — Franz Kafka

Some of you seek for faith much in the same way as you would dig for a well. You turn the eye inward upon yourself and search amidst the depths of your polluted heart to find if faith is there; you search amid all your feelings at sermons and sacraments to see if faith is there; and still you find nothing but sin and disappointment. Learn Martha's plan. She looked full in the face of Jesus; she saw his dust-soiled feet and sullied garment, and his eye of more than human tenderness. She drank in his word: 'I am the resurrection and the life'; and in spite of all she saw and all she felt, she could not but believe. The discovery that Jesus made of his love and power, as the head of dead believers and the head of living believers, revived her fainting soul, and she cried: 'Yea, Lord, I believe.' Faith comes by hearing the voice of Jesus. — Robert Murray McCheyne

Old-school viewers remain adamant that 'The Real World' has deteriorated, as if the original enterprise were some pristine experiment that got sullied as the conditions in the lab got sloppier. — Andrea Seigel

A pale, thin, small woman, perfectly coiffed, perfectly dressed, without makeup, without a single piece of jewelry, ascetic (viperous?) (her heart sullied by the world's contagion?) stands beside Eduardo, making him gigantic: she smiles mechanically. — Margo Glantz

The captain called for her in her suite as she was finishing her morning cup of spiced milk. He declined to sit while she drank. When he blinked at her dress and hid a brief smirk, Kestrel knew that she wouldn't like wherever they were going. When he didn't suggest that she change into something that wouldn't be so easily sullied, she knew that she didn't like him. — Marie Rutkoski

Gossip and slander are not victimless crimes. Words do not just dissipate into midair ... Words can injure and damage, maim and destroy - forcefully, painfully, lastingly ... Plans have been disrupted, deals have been lost, companies have fallen, because of idle gossip or malicious slander. Reputations have been sullied, careers have been ruined, lives have been devastated, because of cruel lies or vicious rumors ... Your words have such power to do good or evil that they must be chosen carefully, wisely, and well. — Wayne D. Dosick

Von Schnitzler's job was to show extracts from western television broadcast into the GDR - anything from news items to game shows to 'Dallas' - and rip it to shreds. 'That man radiated so much nastiness he simply wasn't credible. You'd come away feeling sullied, as if you'd spent half an hour atrociously badmouthing someone. — Anna Funder

So a maiden, while she remains untouched, remains dear to her own; but when she has lost her chaste flower with sullied body, she remains neither lovely to boys nor dear to girls. — Catullus

It is not so incomprehensible as you pretend, sweet pea. Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard. It can be light as the hug we give a friend or heavy as the sacrifices we make for our children. It can be romantic, platonic, familial, fleeting, everlasting, conditional, unconditional, imbued with sorrow, stoked by sex, sullied by abuse, amplified by kindness, twisted by betrayal, deepened by time, darkened by difficulty, leavened by generosity, nourished by humor and "loaded with promises and commitments" that we may or may not want or keep.
The best thing you can possibly do with your life is to tackle the motherfucking shit out of it. — Cheryl Strayed

His joy was somewhat sullied by immediate awareness that his brother did not fully share it . . . in truth, he seemed more distressed than was possible save in one about to discorporate because of some shameful lack or failure. But Smith had already learned that these creatures, so much like himself in some ways, could endure emotions dreadful to contemplate and still not die. His Brother Mahmoud underwent a spiritual agony five times daily and not only did not die but had urged the agony on him as a needful thing. His Brother Captain van Tromp suffered terrifying spasms unpredictably, any one of which should have, by Smith's standards, produced immediate discorporation to end the conflict - yet that brother was still corporate so far as he knew. — Robert A. Heinlein

What is an aristocrat? A woman who is never sullied by vulgarity, although she may be surrounded by it. — Muriel Barbery

Labor is like motherhood to most of our political leaders: a calling so fine and noble that it would be sullied by talk of vulgar, mundane things like pay. — Barbara Ehrenreich

Many a crown shines spotless now that yet was deeply sullied in the winning. — Friedrich Schiller

Sometimes stars do fall to earth. It was true. They did and then became commonplace like the rest of the dirt on the planet.
His star was one of a kind.
He would never allow her to be like any other. Never allow her to be common or sullied.
No, her place was in the sky. With her family.
With her stinking pet wolf. Never with him. Have a nice life, princess. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I do not know, at this point, whether Joshua Joseph Spork is the man of my life. He could be. I have given it considerable thought. The jury is still out. The issue between you and me is that you wish to deprive me of the opportunity to find out. Joe Spork is not yours to give or to withhold from me, Mr. Cummerbund. He is mine, until I decide otherwise. You have caused him grief, sullied his name, and you have hurt him. If anyone is going to make him weep, or lie about him, or even do bad things to him, it is me. — Nick Harkaway

Damn, he was good. I'd been professionally sullied without a single item of clothing removed. — Kylie Scott

Without question, love in its various permutations is what we need more of in this world. The idea that the concept of marriage will be sullied by same-sex marriage is ridiculous. Heterosexuals haven't been doing that well at it on their own. — Hugh Hefner

Laila watches Mariam glue strands of yarn onto her doll's head. In a few years, this little girl will be a woman who will make small demands on life, who will never burden others, who will never let on that she too had sorrows, disappointments, dreams that have been ridiculed. A woman who will be like a rock in a riverbed, enduring without complaint, her grace not sullied but shaped by the turbulence that washes over her. Already Laila sees something behind this young girl's eyes, something deep in her core, that neither Rasheed nor the Taliban will be able to break. something as hard and unyielding as a block of limestone. Something that, in the end, will be her undoing and Laila's salvation.
The little girl looks up. Puts the doll down. Smiles. — Khaled Hosseini

This New World utopia, this promised land, was soon buried under the ashes and cinders that erupted over the Western World in the nineteenth century, thanks tot he resurrection and intensification of all the forces that had originally brought 'civilization' itself into existence. The rise of the centralized state, teh expansion of the bureaucracy and the conscript army, the regimentation of the factory system, the depredations of speculative finance, the spread of imperialism, as in the Mexican War, and the continued encroachment of slavery-all these negative movements not only sullied the New World dream but brought back on a larger scale than ever the Old World nightmares that the immigrants to America had risked their lives and forfeited their cultural treasures to escape. — Lewis Mumford

The triumph of the Romans was indeed sullied by their treatment of the captive king, whom they hung on a gibbet without the knowledge of their indignant general. This disgraceful act of cruelty which might be imputed to the fury of the troops, was followed by the deliberate murder of Withicab, the son of Vadomair; a German prince, of a weak and sickly constitution, but of a daring and formidable spirit. — Edward Gibbon

The Japanese covet important symbols - their heroic past as enshrined in Yasukuni, the Imperial family which has never been sullied by scandal. — F. Sionil Jose

I think it has sullied his presidency. As brilliant a politician as Bill Clinton is, as magnetic a personality as he can be, there is one little screw loose somewhere. — Morley Safer

Austrians were allowed to paper over their pasts and portray themselves as unwilling participants. They felt sorry for themselves, and for the proud family names sullied with the taint of Nazi collaboration. The Cold War began in earnest, and the West was eager to hang on to Austria. A 1948 amnesty brought a premature end to Austrian de-Nazification. Austrians began to deny their jubilant welcome of Hitler and to claim that Austria had been "occupied" by Germany, like — Anne-Marie O'Connor

I think kids, in general as an audience, are the way forward because they're not sort of sullied by intellectual expectation or this or that. It's a very pure kind of response to the work. — Johnny Depp