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pure quotes

  • I'm as pure as the driven slush.

    -Tallulah Bankhead
    Quoted by Maurice Zolotow, in The Saturday Evening Post,12 Apr1947.

  • Shall mortal man be more just than God? shall a man be more pure than his maker?

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Job 4:17.

  • And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him: And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs isthe kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. Blessedarethepeacemakers: for theyshall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness'sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessedare ye, whenmenshall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St Matthew 5:1^12.

  • Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, thinkon these things.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Philippians 4:8.

  • Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Titus1:15.

  • Be warm, but pure; be amorous, but be chaste.

    -Rochdale
     English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, l.306.

  •    O pure of heart! thou need'st not ask of me What this strong music in the soul may be! What, and wherein it doth exist, This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist, This beautiful and beauty-making power.

    - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
      'Dejection:  An Ode', stanza 5.

  •    Be riche in patience, gif thow in gudis be pure; Quho levis mirry, he levis michtely: Without glaidnes availis no tresour.

    - Alexandre, pe'  re Dumas
    early 16c 'No Tressour Availis without Glaidnes', l.22^4.

  • Avoid,Profaneness; come not here: Nothing but holy, pure, and clear, Or that which groaneth to be so, May at his peril further go.

    - George Herbert
    'Superliminare', collected in The Temple, Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations (published posthumously,1633).

  • The zipless fuck is absolutely pure. It is free of ulterior motives.There isno power game.The man isnot 'taking' and the woman is not 'giving'. No one is attempting to cuckolda husband orhumiliateawife.No oneistrying to proveanythingorget anythingoutofanyone.Thezipless fuck is the purest thing there is. And it is rarer than the unicorn. And I have never had one.

    - Erica ne  e Mann Jong
      Fear of Flying, ch.1.

  • Here lies a prince whose intentions were pure, but who had the misfortune to see all his plans collapse.

    -Joseph II
    Epitaph for himself. Quoted in T C  W Blanning Joseph II (1994), p.1.

  • That virtue therefore which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure; her whiteness is but an excremental whiteness.

    -John Milton
      Areopagitica: a speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing.

  • And chiefly thou O spirit, that does prefer Before all temples th'upright heart and pure, Instruct me, for thou know'st; thou from the first Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread Dove-like sat'st brooding on the vast abyss And mad'st it pregnant: what in me is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support; That to the highth of this great argument I mayassert Eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men. 580

    -John Milton
      Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.1, l.16^25.

  • If we are ever to have pure knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body and contemplate things by themselves with the soul by itself.

    -Plato
    Phaedo, 66d (translated by H Tredennick).

  • Old Hodge stays not his hand, but whips to kennel The renegade.God's peace betide the souls Of the pure in heart. But in the box that fennel Grows around, are two red eyes that stare like coals.

    -John Crowe Ransom
      Two Gentlemen in Bonds,'Dog'.

  • Information, freefrominterestorprejudice, freefromthe vanity of the writer or the influence of a Government, is as necessary to the human mind as pure air and water to the human body.

    -William Rees-Mogg, Baron Rees-Mogg
      Christian Science Monitor, 22 Sep.

  • No one ever complains if a great artist says that he was driven to create a masterpiece by a hunger for recognition and money.But a scientist? Well, he ismeant to be disinterested, pure, his ambition merely to descry the cement of the universe. He isn't meant to use it to start laying his own patio.

    -Will Self
    The QuantityTheory of Insanity and Five Supporting Propositions,'The QuantityTheory of Insanity'.

  • The academic atmosphere, produced mainly by the humanities, is the onlyatmosphere in which pure science can flourish.

    - E W Steacie
      Collected inJ D Babbitt (ed) Science in Canada: Selections from the Speeches of E.W. Steacie (1965).

  • Live pure, speak true, right wrong, follow the King Else, wherefore born?

    -Tennyson
      Idylls of the King,'Gareth and Lynette', l.117^18.

  • Absurdo, so  lo t  u eres puro. Absurdo, este exceso so  lo ante ti se suda de dorado placer. Absurdity, only you are pure. Absurdity, only before you is this excess sweated out of golden pleasure.

    - Ce  sarAbraham Vallejo
      Trilce (translated1973), no.73.

  • The truth is rarely pure, and never simple.

    - Oscar Fingal O'FlahertieWills Wilde
      Algernon.The Importance of Being Earnest, act1.

  • For the beginning is assuredly the endsince we know nothing, pure and simple, beyond our own complexities.

    -William Carlos Williams
      Paterson, bk.1, preface.

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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