Purity And Simplicity Quotes

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By two wings is man lifted above earthly things, even by simplicity and purity. Simplicity ought to be in the intention, purity in the affection.
Thomas a Kempis (The Imitation of Christ)
I've heard my teacher say, where there are machines, there are bound to be machine worries; where there are machine worries, there are bound to be machine hearts. With a machine heart in your breast, you've spoiled what was pure and simple; and without the pure and simple, the life of the spirit knows no rest.
Zhuangzi (The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu)
Good design is as little as possible. Less, but better, because it concentrates on the essential aspects, 
and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity.
Dieter Rams (Less but Better / Weniger, aber besser)
As the Nazi emphasis on nonintellectual virtues (patriotism, loyalty, duty, purity, labor, simplicity, “blood,” “folk-ishness”) seeped through Germany, elevating the self-esteem of the “little man,” the academic profession was pushed from the very center to the very periphery of society. Germany was preparing to cut its own head off. By 1933 at least five of my ten friends (and I think six or seven) looked upon “intellectuals” as unreliable and, among these unreliables, upon the academics as the most insidiously situated. Tailor
Milton Sanford Mayer (They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45)
Purity and simplicity are the two wings with which man soars above the earth and all temporary nature.
Thomas a Kempis
When you cannot feel, The purity of love, The tenderness of beauty, The drinkability of wine, The simplicity of a smile, You have to go back and drink coffee
M.F. Moonzajer (A moment with God ; Poetry)
Wild Things in Captivity Wild things in captivity while they keep their own wild purity won't breed, they mope, they die. All men are in captivity, active with captive activity, and the best won't breed, though they don't know why. The great cage of our domesticity kills sex in a man, the simplicity of desire is distorted and twisted awry. And so, with bitter perversity, gritting against the great adversity, they young ones copulate, hate it, and want to cry. Sex is a state of grace. In a cage it can't take place. Break the cage then, start in and try.
D.H. Lawrence
If all emotions are common coin, then what is unique to the good man? To welcome with affection what is sent by fate. Not to stain or disturb the spirit within him with a mess of false beliefs. Instead, to preserve it faithfully, by calmly obeying God – saying nothing untrue, doing nothing unjust. And if the others don’t acknowledge it – this life lived in simplicity, humility, cheerfulness – he doesn’t resent them for it, and isn’t deterred from following the road where it leads: to the end of life. An end to be approached in purity, in serenity, in acceptance, in peaceful unity with what must be.
Marcus Aurelius (Meditations)
Innocence is defined in dictionaries as freedom from guilt or sin, especially from lack of knowledge; purity of heart; blamelessness; guilelessness; simplicity, etc.
William Maxwell
The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility.
Oscar Wilde
Complexity looks at simplicity and laughs at it for being too simple. But this is stupidity. Which is more valuable? The drop of pure rose oil or the cologne that mixes that one drop with many other things in order to make it affordable enough? It takes 60,000 roses to make a single ounce of rose oil. In simplicity there is value, there is meaning. Complexity is what happens when value and meaning are watered down. Don’t play games with pure-hearted people; they don’t need your rubbish. And don’t try to water them down so you can afford them.
C. JoyBell C.
Here are the four fundamentals of true spirituality: recognize simplicity, cherish purity, reduce your possessions, diminish your desires.
Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching)
Everyone’s last wish turned out to be love: may I be consumed by the simplicity and purity of a love story, any love, base love or heroic love or transgressive love or love that is a blind and lame and ridiculous lie—anything the opposite of alone and lonely and sexless, and the absence of someone to care about or talk to.
Lidia Yuknavitch (The Book of Joan)
Purity. Serenity. Simplicity. Seclusion. All one’s concentration and flamboyance and originality reserved for the grueling, exalted, transcendent calling. I looked around and I thought, This is how I will live.
Philip Roth (The Ghost Writer: A Novel)
In the years of its rise the movement little by little brought the community's attitude toward the teacher around from respect and envy to resentment, from trust and fear to suspicion. The development seems to have been inherent; it needed no planning and had none. As the Nazi emphasis on nonintellectual virtues (patriotism, loyalty, duty, purity, labor, simplicity, "blood," "folkishness") seeped through Germany, elevating the self-esteem of the "little man," the academic profession was pushed from the very center to the very periphery of society. Germany was preparing to cut its own head off. By 1933 at least five of my ten friends (and I think six or seven) looked upon "intellectuals" as unreliable and, among those unreliables, upon the academics as the most insidiously situated.
Milton Sanford Mayer (They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45)
What Fats wanted to recover was a kind of innocence, and the route he had chosen back to it was through all the things that were suppose to be bad for you, but which, paradoxically, seemed to Fats to be the one true way to authenticity; to a kind of purity. It was curious how often everything was back to front, the inverse of what they told you; Fats was starting to think that if you flipped every bit of received wisdom on its head you would have the truth. He wanted to journey through dark labyrinths and wrestle with the strangeness that lurked within; he wanted to crack open piety and expose hypocrisy; he wanted to break taboos and squeeze wisdom from their bloody hearts; he wanted to achieve a state of amoral grace, and be baptized backwards into ignorance and simplicity.
J.K. Rowling (The Casual Vacancy)
I’m asking for simplicity, for purity and ease of choice and no pressure. I’m asking for something that no politics is going to provide, something that probably you only get in preschool.
Ned Vizzini (It's Kind of a Funny Story)
The Wanderer in every moment spent awake faces two alternatives: a choice is to be made between the ambitions stretching between past and future, or the quiet, simplicity, purity and emptiness, full of vibrating life, of the present. It is, however, only the latter that brings to the life of the Wanderer the Witnessing Presence!
Frank Wanderer
I wish the world were like this, if I just woke up and marked the food I’d be eating and it came to me later in the day. I suppose it is like that, except you have to pay for whatever you want to eat, so maybe what I’m asking for is communism, but I think it’s actually deeper than communism—I’m asking for simplicity, for purity and ease of choice and no pressure. I’m asking for something that no politics is going to provide, something that probably you only get in preschool. I’m asking for preschool.
Ned Vizzini (It's Kind of a Funny Story)
Our Saviour's meaning, when He said, He must be born again and become a little child that will enter in the Kingdom of Heaven is deeper far than is generally believed. It is only in a careless reliance upon Divine Providence, that we are to become little children, or in the feebleness and shortness of our anger and simplicity of our passions, but in the peace and purity of all our soul. Which purity also is a deeper thing than is commonly apprehended. For we must disrobe infant-like and clear; the powers of our soul free from the leaven of this world, and disentangled from men's conceits and customs. Grit in the eye or yellow jaundice will not let a man see those objects truly that are before it. And therefore it is requisite that we should be as very strangers to the thoughts, customs, and opinions of men in this world, as if we were but little children. So those things would appear to us only which do to children when they are first born. Ambitions, trades, luxuries, inordinate affections, casual and accidental riches invented since the fall, would be gone, and only those things appear, which did to Adam in Paradise, in the same light and in the same colours: God in His works, Glory in the light, Love in our parents, men, ourselves, and the face of Heaven: Every man naturally seeing those things, to the enjoyment of which he is naturally born.
Thomas Traherne (Centuries of Meditations)
I have always loved simplicity. With you, everything’s black and white, Richie had said, like an accusation; but the truth is that almost every murder case is, if not simple, capable of simplicity, and that this is not only necessary but breathtaking, that if there are miracles then this is one. In these rooms, the world’s vast hissing tangle of shadows burns away, all its treacherous grays are honed to the stark purity of a bare blade, two-edged: cause and effect, good and evil. To me, these rooms are beautiful. I go into them the way a boxer goes into the ring: intent, invincible, home.
Tana French (Broken Harbor (Dublin Murder Squad, #4))
Body. Soul. Mind. Sensations: the body. Desires: the soul. Reasoning: the mind. To experience sensations: even grazing beasts do that. To let your desires control you: even wild animals do that—and rutting humans, and tyrants (from Phalaris to Nero . . .). To make your mind your guide to what seems best: even people who deny the gods do that. Even people who betray their country. Even people who do <. . .> behind closed doors. If all the rest is common coin, then what is unique to the good man? To welcome with affection what is sent by fate. Not to stain or disturb the spirit within him with a mess of false beliefs. Instead, to preserve it faithfully, by calmly obeying God—saying nothing untrue, doing nothing unjust. And if the others don’t acknowledge it—this life lived with simplicity, humility, cheerfulness—he doesn’t resent them for it, and isn’t deterred from following the road where it leads: to the end of life. An end to be approached in purity, in serenity, in acceptance, in peaceful unity with what must be.
Marcus Aurelius (Meditations)
The Simplicity Is Hardest Things To Define The Purity Of Love.
Yaganesh Derasari
When life feels heavy, these two remedies relieve life’s complexities: simplicity and purity. Simplicity seeks God. Purity enjoys him.
Thomas a Kempis (The Imitation of Christ: The Beatitudes Edition)
Simplicity ought to be in the intention, purity in the affection.
Thomas a Kempis (The Imitation of Christ (Optimized for Kindle))
Here are the four fundamentals of true spirituality: recognize simplicity, cherish purity, reduce your possessions, diminish your desires.
Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching)
Here are the four fundamentals of true spirituality: recognize simplicity, cherish purity, reduce your possessions, diminish your desires. 20
Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching)
recognize simplicity, cherish purity, reduce your possessions, diminish your desires.
Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching)
Through all the scenes of her eventful life may be traced the energy of a naturally powerful mind—the fearlessness and child-like simplicity of one untrammelled by education or conventional customs—purity of character—an unflinching adherence to principle—and a native enthusiasm, which, under different circumstances, might easily have produced another Joan of Arc. With all her fervor, and enthusiasm, and speculation, her religion is not tinctured in the least with gloom. No doubt, no hesitation, no despondency, spreads a cloud over her soul; but all is bright, clear, positive, and at times ecstatic. Her trust is in God, and from him she looks for good, and not evil. She feels that ‘perfect love casteth out fear.
Sojourner Truth (Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Bondswoman of Olden Time, with a History of Her Labors and Correspondence Drawn from Her Book of Life)
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. The artful minimalism of the speech gave it simplicity, purity, and charm.
Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)
The ascent of consciousness is the transformation of imperfection into perfection, impurity into purity, and complexity into simplicity. Each day you are waging war with your tendencies and shortcomings. You try to gain new ground while holding the line and preventing losses.
Kamlesh D. Patel (Spiritual Anatomy: Meditation, Chakras, and the Journey to the Center)
The purity of unison singing, unaffected by alien motives of musical techniques, the clarity, unspoiled by the attempt to give musical art an autonomy of its own apart from the words, the simplicity and frugality, the humaneness and warmth of this way of singing is the essence of all congregational singing. This,
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Life Together)
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 (The Temple of Dawn (The Sea of Fertility, #3))
There are many Christians who serve God with great purity of soul and perfect self-sacrifice in the active life….They know how to find God by devoting themselves to Him in self-sacrificing labors in which they are able to remain in His presence all day long….They lead lives of great simplicity in which they do not need to rise above the ordinary levels of vocal and affective prayer. Without realizing it, their extremely simple prayer is, for them, so deep and interior that it brings them to the threshold of contemplation. Such Christians…may reach a higher degree of sanctity than other who have been apparently favored with a deeper inner life.
James Martin (Becoming Who You Are: Insights on the True Self from Thomas Merton and Other Saints (Christian Classics))
...the truth is that every murder case is, if not simple, capable of simplicity, and that this is not only necessary but breathtaking, that if there are miracles then this is one. In these rooms, the world's vast hissing tangle of shadows burns away, all its treacherous grays are honed to the stark purity of a bare blade, two-edged:cause and effect, good and evil.
Tana French (Broken Harbor (Dublin Murder Squad, #4))
In the years of its rise the movement little by little brought the community’s attitude toward the teacher around from respect and envy to resentment, from trust and fear to suspicion. The development seems to have been inherent; it needed no planning and had none. As the Nazi emphasis on nonintellectual virtues (patriotism, loyalty, duty, purity, labor, simplicity, “blood,” “folk-ishness”) seeped through Germany, elevating the self-esteem of the “little man,” the academic profession was pushed from the very center to the very periphery of society. Germany was preparing to cut its own head off. By 1933 at least five of my ten friends (and I think six or seven) looked upon “intellectuals” as unreliable and, among these unreliables, upon the academics as the most insidiously situated.
Milton Sanford Mayer (They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45)
Every word he wrote would be strong with that sweet purity and simplicity that was his gift alone, placing him higher than any living poet, secure on his pedestal apart from the world, like a great silent god above the little dwarfs of men tossed hither and thither in the stream of life. From the crystal clearness of his brain the images became words, and the words became magic, and the whole was transcendent of beauty, one thread touching another, alike in their perfection and their certitude of immortality. Thus it seemed to me he was not a living figure of flesh and blood, but a monument to the national pride of his country, his England, and now and then he would bow gravely from his pedestal and scatter to the people a small quantity of his thought, which they would grub for on their poor rough ground, then clasp to their hungry hearts as treasure.
Daphne du Maurier (I'll Never Be Young Again)
Have you ever thought, not only about the airplane but whatever man builds, that all of man’s industrial efforts, all his computations and calculations, all the nights spent working over draughts and blueprints, invariably culminate in the production of a thing whose sole and guiding principle is the ultimate principle of simplicity? It is as if there were a natural law which ordained that to achieve this end, to refine the curve of a piece of furniture, or a ship’s keel, or the fuselage of an airplane, until gradually it partakes of the elementary purity of the curve of the human breast or shoulder, there must b experimentation of several generations of craftsmen. In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The detailed gorgeousness of Orthodoxy was the reversed image of the sparse purity of Islam. One offered the abstract simplicity of the desert horizon, a portable worship that could be performed anywhere as long as you could see the sun, a direct contact with God, the other images, colors, and music, ravishing metaphors of the divine mystery designed to lead the soul to heaven. Both were equally intent on converting the world to their vision of God.
Roger Crowley (1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West)
The faces we see in the mirrors are not really ours. Just reflections. We can find our true selves only in the faces of the Other. The absolutists, they venerate purity, we hybridity. They wish to reduce everyone down to a single identity. We strive for the opposite: to multiply everyone into a hundred belongings, a thousand beating hearts. If I am a human, I should be big enough to feel for people everywhere. Look at history. Observe life. It evolves from simplicity to complexity. Not vice versa, that would be devolution. Our brains are wired for twists and turns.
Elif Shafak
If all the rest is common coin, then what is unique to the good man? To welcome with affection what is sent by fate. Not to stain or disturb the spirit within him with a mess of false beliefs. Instead, to preserve it faithfully, by calmly obeying God—saying nothing untrue, doing nothing unjust. And if the others don’t acknowledge it—this life lived with simplicity, humility, cheerfulness—he doesn’t resent them for it, and isn’t deterred from following the road where it leads: to the end of life. An end to be approached in purity, in serenity, in acceptance, in peaceful unity with what must be.
Marcus Aurelius (Meditations)
If Shakespeare be considered as a MAN born in a rude age and educated in the lowest manner, without any instruction either from the world or from books, he may be regarded as a prodigy; if represented as a POET capable of furnishing a proper entertainment to a refined or intelligent audience, we must abate much of this eulogy. In his compositions, we regret that many irregularities, and even absurdities, should so frequently disfigure the animated and passionated scenes intermixed with them; and, at the same time, we perhaps admire the more those beauties on account of their being surrounded by such deformities. A striking peculiarity of sentiment, adapted to a single character, he frequently hits, as it were, by inspiration; but a reasonable propriety of thought he cannot for any time uphold. Nervous and picturesque expressions as well as descriptions abound in him; but it is in vain we look either for purity or simplicity of diction. His total ignorance of all theatrical art and conduct, however material a defect, yet, as it affects the spectator rather than the reader, we can more easily excuse than that want of taste which often prevails in his productions, and which gives way only by intervals to the irradiations of genius. [....] And there may even remain a suspicion that we overrate, if possible, the greatness of his genius; in the same manner as bodies often appear more gigantic on account of their being disproportioned and misshapen.
David Hume
George Washington possessed the gift of inspired simplicity, a clarity and purity of vision that never failed him. Whatever petty partisan disputes swirled around him, he kept his eyes fixed on the transcendent goals that motivated his quest. As sensitive to criticism as any other man, he never allowed personal attacks or threats to distract him, following an inner compass that charted the way ahead. For a quarter century, he had stuck to an undeviating path that led straight to the creation of an independent republic, the enactment of the constitution and the formation of the federal government. History records few examples of a leader who so earnestly wanted to do the right thing, not just for himself but for his country. Avoiding moral shortcuts, he consistently upheld such high ethical standards that he seemed larger than any other figure on the political scene. Again and again, the American people had entrusted him with power, secure in the knowledge that he would exercise it fairly and ably and surrender it when his term of office was up. He had shown that the president and commander-in-chief of a republic could possess a grandeur surpassing that of all the crowned heads of Europe. He brought maturity, sobriety, judgement and integrity to a political experiment that could easily have grown giddy with its own vaunted success and he avoided the back biting envy and intrigue that detracted from the achievements of other founders. He had indeed been the indispensable man of the american revolution.
Ron Chernow (Washington: A Life)
Have you ever thought, not only about the airplane but whatever man builds, that all of man’s industrial efforts, all his computations and calculations, all the nights spent working over draughts and blueprints, invariably culminate in the production of a thing whose sole and guiding principle is the ultimate principle of simplicity? It is as if there were a natural law which ordained that to achieve this end, to refine the curve of a piece of furniture, or a ship’s keel, or the fuselage of an airplane, until gradually it partakes of the elementary purity of the curve of the human breast or shoulder, there must be experimentation of several generations of craftsmen. In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
If we say God is Light, Love, Truth, Power, Goodness, Law, Principle, we confound attributes with existence. If we say God is a Spirit, God is space, we merely fill the imagination, not satisfy the understanding: it is feeding the thoughts with air, and leaving the intellect hungry. A Trinitarian Deity is one of the scholastic perplexities of the intellect. The first rule of arithmetic is against it. If it means three Gods in one, it is an enigma. If it means three doctrinal aspects of God, it confuses all simplicity of feeling. In the simple, moral heart of man, God is one, and his name is Love; not a weak, vapoury sentimentality, but an austere, healthy love, whose expression is strength, purity, truth, justice, service, and tenderness. But this conception of Deity belongs to the empire of the emotions, it is a matter of feeling, not of proof, and can authorise no intolerance towards others, itself existing only by the sufferance of the intellect, which has chastened its expression, and is supreme over it.
George Holyoake (The Limits Of Atheism Or, Why should Sceptics be Outlaws?)
16. Body. Soul. Mind. Sensations: the body. Desires: the soul. Reasoning: the mind. To experience sensations: even grazing beasts do that. To let your desires control you: even wild animals do that—and rutting humans, and tyrants (from Phalaris to Nero …). To make your mind your guide to what seems best: even people who deny the gods do that. Even people who betray their country. Even people who do <…> behind closed doors. If all the rest is common coin, then what is unique to the good man? To welcome with affection what is sent by fate. Not to stain or disturb the spirit within him with a mess of false beliefs. Instead, to preserve it faithfully, by calmly obeying God—saying nothing untrue, doing nothing unjust. And if the others don’t acknowledge it—this life lived with simplicity, humility, cheerfulness—he doesn’t resent them for it, and isn’t deterred from following the road where it leads: to the end of life. An end to be approached in purity, in serenity, in acceptance, in peaceful unity with what must be.
Marcus Aurelius (Meditations)
He perceived too in these still hours how little he had understood her hitherto. He had been blinded, — obsessed. He had been seeing her and himself and the whole world far too much as a display of the eternal dualism of sex, the incessant pursuit. Now with his sexual imaginings newly humbled and hopeless, with a realization of her own tremendous minimization of that fundamental of romance, he began to see all that there was in her personality and their possible relations outside that. He saw how gravely and deeply serious was her fine philanthropy, how honest and simple and impersonal her desire for knowledge and understandings. There is the brain of her at least, he thought, far out of Sir Isaac's reach. She wasn't abased by her surrenders, their simplicity exalted her, showed her innocent and himself a flushed and congested soul. He perceived now with the astonishment of a man newly awakened just how the great obsession of sex had dominated him — for how many years? Since his early undergraduate days. Had he anything to put beside her own fine detachment? Had he ever since his manhood touched philosophy, touched a social question, thought of anything human, thought of art, or literature or belief, without a glancing reference of the whole question to the uses of this eternal hunt? During that time had he ever talked to a girl or woman with an unembarrassed sincerity? He stripped his pretences bare; the answer was no. His very refinements had been no more than indicative fig-leaves. His conservatism and morality had been a mere dalliance with interests that too brutal a simplicity might have exhausted prematurely. And indeed hadn't the whole period of literature that had produced him been, in its straining purity and refinement, as it were one glowing, one illuminated fig-leaf, a vast conspiracy to keep certain matters always in mind by conspicuously covering them away? But this wonderful woman — it seemed — she hadn't them in mind! She shamed him if only by her trustful unsuspiciousness of the ancient selfish game of Him and Her that he had been so ardently playing.... He idealized and worshipped this clean blindness. He abased himself before it.
H.G. Wells (The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman)
AESTHETIC SIMPLICITY For some people simplicity is an aesthetic value, so one further sense that might be attached to the notion of simple living is a preference for an uncomplicated, uncluttered living environment. Imagine, for instance, an apartment with white walls, white trim, bare wood floors, simple wooden furniture, plain white kitchenware, white towels in the bathroom, and white blankets on the simple wooden beds. Or a house where the brick walls and overhead beams are left exposed, the furniture is rustic, and any artwork on display is clearly local and amateurish. Or a study containing nothing but a desk and a chair. All these are interiors that people deliberately create for themselves. Simplicity of this sort is not necessarily frugal. The uncluttered apartment could be in the center of Paris; the plain wooden furniture might be custom-made. Wittgenstein designed a house in Vienna for his sister Margaret characterized by austere, almost minimalist aesthetic lines, yet built with no concern for cost. But although such setups may not be cheap, they make no exhibition of expense. And the styles have symbolic significance. They bespeak sympathy with the plain, the unpretentious, the unostentatious. They connote honesty, purity, and a mind focused on essentials. In the case of country retreats, closeness to nature may also be sought and expressed.
Emrys Westacott (The Wisdom of Frugality: Why Less Is More - More or Less)
The passion for truth and justice often gives those who experience it a start. Those who experience it? But surely to desire truth and justice is the same thing as to be a man, to be human. However unequally distributed such a passion may be, it marks the extent to which each man is human – to which human dignity is due to him. Marcel Proust wrote in Jean Santeuil: It is always with a joyful and positive emotion that we hear those bold statements made by men of science who, for a mere question of professional honour, come to tell the truth – a truth which only interests them because it is true, and which they have to cherish in their art without hesitating to displease those who see it in a very different light and who regard it as part of a mass of considerations which interest them very little.1 The style and the content of this passage are very different from A la Recherche du temps perdu. Yet, in the same book, the style changes, but not the thought: What moves us so much in Phaedo is that, as we follow Socrates’ arguments, we suddenly have the extraordinary feeling that we are listening to an argument whose purity is unaltered by any personal desire. We feel as if truth were superior to everything, because we realise that the conclusion that Socrates is going to draw is that he must die.2 Marcel Proust wrote about the Dreyfus case around 1900. His dreyfusard sympathies are known to us all, but after A la Recherche du temps perdu, written ten years later, he lost his ingenuous aggressiveness. We ourselves have also lost that simplicity. The same passion may occasionally arouse us, but, on the whole, we are too tired, too indifferent. A Dreyfus case in our day would probably cause little stir …
Georges Bataille (Literature and Evil)
Assyrian more than Hebrew preserved the simplicity of the vowels, but in the matter of consonants was more akin to Phoenician and Hebrew; Arabic preserved the greatest purity in both respects.
John Courtenay James
The simplicity and purity of enjoying a growing friendship
William Paul Young (The Shack: Where Tragedy Confronts Eternity)
when it comes to interior design, Zen is a true reflection of balance, peace and harmony. Even though Zen is not an official design style and does not come with a list of strict rules, it is often sought after due to its minimalism, simplicity and purity of lines. It is more of a way to arrange your home such that it creates an atmosphere that will offset the stresses and problems of your daily life.
Alexis G. Roldan (Zen: The Ultimate Zen Beginner’s Guide: Simple And Effective Zen Concepts For Living A Happier and More Peaceful Life)
the original ground: the primordial purity of natural simplicity.
Sogyal Rinpoche (The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying)
In simplicity, I can find my purity
Leo Lourdes (A World of Yoga: 700 Asanas for Mindfulness and Well-Being)
...it is a matter of grave importance that Fairy tales should be respected.... a nation without fancy, without some romance, never did, never can, never will hold, a great place under the sun.... To preserve them in their usefulness, they must be as much preserved in their simplicity, and purity, and innocent extravagance, as if they were actual fact. Whosoever alters them to suit his own opinions, whatever they are, is guilty, to our thinking, of an act of presumption, and appropriates to himself what does not belong to him. ("Frauds on the Fairies" from Household Words, October 1, 1853)
Charles Dickens
A devout widow should chiefly seek to cultivate the graces of perfect modesty, renouncing all honours, rank, title, society, and the like vanities; she should be diligent in ministering to the poor and sick, comforting the afflicted, leading the young to a life of devotion, studying herself to be a perfect model of virtue to younger women. Necessity and simplicity should be the adornment of her garb, humility and charity of her actions, simplicity and kindliness of her words, modesty and purity of her eyes,--Jesus Christ Crucified the only Love of her heart.
Francis de Sales (Introduction to the Devout Life)
May they not forget to keep pure the great heritage that puts them ahead of the West: the artistic configuration of life, the simplicity and modesty of personal needs, and the purity and serenity of the Japanese soul.
Albert Einstein
[The] Tao [Self] Is simplicity, stillness, Indifference, purity. Here the highest knowledge Is unbounded.71
David H. Rosen (The Tao of Jung: The Way of Integrity (Compass))
Perhaps there is another reason we are told so little about these people we meet ever so briefly. It raises our curiosity and, in order to satisfy our curiosity, we must go beyond what we are told and ask questions. Take, for example, John the Forerunner. We are told more about John than most you will meet, yet we are told very little. We know Mary and Elizabeth were relatives. We know that Mary visited Elizabeth when they were both pregnant. Does this mean that Jesus and John grew up together? They lived eighty miles apart, a significant distance in that time. How often did they see one another? Jesus grew up in the village of Nazareth in a northern area called Galilee. John lived south in the hills of Judea, practically growing up in the wilderness. Were one or both influenced by the Essenes who had withdrawn into the desert to live in simplicity and purity and to usher in the coming of the Messiah? The wilderness was their home and they lived near Qumran. Here the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered by a shepherd boy in 1947.
Wendell E. Mettey (Meet Those Who Met the Master)
Always Prefer to be Simple & Fair, that Leads toward Purity
Arbab J. Edhi
A beautiful sidenote is, once the toxins and dramas are removed, you purify your life. Simplify and purify. What better way to live your life? Simple and pure!
Tony Curl (Seriously Simple Stuff to Get You Unstuck)
Simplicity is the most sophisticated complexion and the reason why man begins with it, is because that is the instinct which she/he was born with. It is the mark of purity (contrary to Jew Covenant and Roman Baptism beliefs) which were given to her/him by God in the womb.
Ibrahim Ibrahim (Quotable: My Worldview)
In Hebrew and Aramaic the vowels have undergone vast modifications, whilst in Arabic they have retained to a large extent their primitive purity and simplicity.
John Courtenay James (The Language of Palestine and Adjacent Regions)
There's a kind of purity to a relationship unencumbered by convention, a sense of simplicity and freedom.
J.P. Delaney (The Girl Before)
Nanak’s sole purpose in life was to reform and restore the Hindu religion to its ancient purity. He forbade the burning of widows, the killing of girl children, and the element of sacrifice in worship. He required truth and the utmost simplicity in worship, without ritual of any kind. Wherever
Carveth Wells (The Road to Shalimar: An Entertaining Account of a Roundabout Trip to Kashmir)
In Western tradition, white is beautiful because it is the colour of virtue. This remarkable equation relates to a particular definition of goodness. All lists of the moral connotations of white as symbol in Western culture are the same: purity, spirituality, transcendence, cleanliness, virtue, simplicity, chastity. In
Richard Dyer (White: Essays on Race and Culture)
And each Catholic father and mother who give their all to their children, laboring day in and day out to shelter these breaths of God from contamination by the world, focusing all their attention on the formation of their minds and hearts to that in afterlife purity will be prized before any pleasure, honesty above all gain, and sinlessness beyond all station in society; every engaged Catholic young man and woman who spend the time of courtship in deepening the realization of the sublimity and the sanctity of the state they plan to enter; the Catholic men and women who have given themselves to a profession or a career and accent the fact that they are Catholics first and professional or career people afterwards, are speaking to the world with the same eloquence as those behind cloister, grate, curtain, and grille. This is a startling simplicity to our Catholic way of life. There is a power to our Catholic example which is irresistible. But we forget. We forget that the world watches. We forget that it hears our testimony though we speak not a word. We forget that we are witnesses at every moment and that the testimony we give will either convert man or condemn Christ!
M. Raymond (God, A Woman, And The Way: Mediator And Mediatrix)
We must not be wise and prudent according to the flesh. Rather, we must be simple, humble and pure. ― Francis of Assisi Everyone should be wise but with simplicity, prudent but with humility, and dignified but with purity. ― Ehsan Sehgal
Ehsan Sehgal
Everyone should be wise but with simplicity, prudent but with humility, and dignified but with purity.
Ehsan Sehgal
His life was nothing. He was nothing. For a few scant moments, this revelation was spiritual in its purity and simplicity. He felt release.
Storm Constantine (The Crown of Silence (The Chronicles of Magravandias, #2))
Qasil Powder is renowned for its health benefits. It is one of the healthiest soaps for the skin due to the purity and simplicity of the ingredient. Qasil Powder is rich in vitamins A and E, and essential minerals and antioxidants which is great for the skin. This powder brings endless benefits for the skin, such as moisturizing dry skin, gently exfoliates, and cleanses your skin leaving it feeling hydrated and refreshed.
Huda organics
God would have His children appreciate His works and delight in the simple, quiet beauty with which He has adorned our earthly home. He is a lover of the beautiful, and above all that is outwardly attractive He loves beauty of character; He would have us cultivate purity and simplicity, the quiet graces of the flowers.
Ellen Gould White (Steps to Christ (Selections from))
In efforts to restore us to primitive Christianity, in all the simplicity in which it came from the lips of Jesus. Had it never been sophisticated by the subtleties of commentators, nor paraphrased into meanings totally foreign to its character, it would at this day have been the religion of the whole civilized world. But … the maniac ravings of Calvin, tinctured plentifully with the foggy dreams of Plato, have so loaded it with absurdities and incomprehensibilities, as to drive into infidelity men who had not time, patience, or opportunity to strip it of its meretricious trappings, and to see it in all its native simplicity and purity. I trust however that the same free exercise of private judgment which gave us our political reformation will extend its effects to that of religion.
Bill O'Reilly (Killing the Witches: the Horror of Salem, Massachusetts (Bill O'Reilly's Killing Series))
Prayer How lovely is Your dwelling place, Father. It is there that My heart longs to be; learning of Your heart and Your ways, beholding Your majestic beauty. I repent for letting the busyness of life keep me from the most important thing—time spent in devotion to Christ, in purity and simplicity. Jesus, I don’t want to be a casual listener; I want to sit at Your feet and listen intently as You lovingly speak. Be it a loud trumpet call or a gentle whisper, I want to follow every leading of Your heart. Father, I ask for wisdom and revelation, that I may truly come to know Your Son. Holy Spirit, help me to apply my heart to understand the messages the Father conveys, such that they’ll penetrate and transform every part of me. Let my life be founded upon the wisdom of Your Word that would lead me to walk in the fear of the Lord, lay all else aside in yieldedness, and abide with You, my King. Jesus, I choose to slow down today and invite You in for a time to connect heart to heart. Once again, let me enjoy the pleasure of Your company. ————— (Prayer taken from: Psalm 27:4; Luke 10:38–42; 1 Kings 19:12–13; Proverbs 2; 2 Corinthians 11:3; Hebrews 12:1; John 15:1–11)
Dutch Sheets (The Pleasure of His Company: A Journey to Intimate Friendship With God)
Natural beauty breezes within the simplicity that's the purity, and the essence of natural beauty too
Ehsan Sehgal
Fuck!” he said, the purity and forcefulness of the profanity cleansing in its simplicity. Fuck. Odd, he thought, how the word considered the most unutterable should be the one that represented, for many, the greatest pleasure of which the human body was capable. The sacred and the profane, he supposed, the ultimate proof of the perversity of human nature, to make a curse of the very act that kept the species in existence.
Michael Thomas Ford (Changing Tides)
I'm asking for simplicity, for purity and ease of choice and no pressure. I'm asking for Preschool.
Ned Vizzini (It's Kind of a Funny Story)
O liberation desiring! Become aware and discard like poison the subject-object identification; drink the nectar of forgiveness, simplicity, mercy, purity, and truth.
Rajen Jani (Old Chanakya Strategy: Aphorisms)
That word again. 'Freedom.' It is the golden tuning fork wielded by pied pipers and charlatans alike to realign a vast demographic of people who fundamentally crave simplicity. Since the birth of the steam engine and the rapid march of industrialism, a ceaseless parade of phony advocacy has tried to wield the hate and frustration of an American underclass that has been zapped and eroded time and time again by future shock. The playbook is simple: play off of differences, vilify anyone who can be made to appear as other, stress moral purity, canonize simplicity, decry any sort of establishment within convenient hating distance, code power with subtle signs of sex, and convert a foundation of fear to its stronger, more virile corollary--military power. When in doubt, capitalize on deeply ambiguous ideological symbols such as 'freedom,' re-appropriate historical moments as examples of conservative triumph, and constantly wave the red, white, and blue.
Dan Johnson (Catawampusland)
On Him, on the Stone, is faith based, and on faith is reared up all the structure. For the habitation of the house is required pure fasting, and it is made firm by faith. There is also needed for it pure prayer, and through faith is it accepted. Necessary for it too is love, and with faithis it compounded. Furthermore alms are needed, and through faith are they given. He demands also meekness, and by faith is it adorned. He chooses too virginity, and by faith is it loved. He joins with himself holiness, and in faith is it planted. He cares also for wisdom, and through faith is it acquired. He desires also hospitality, and by faith does it abound. Requisite for Him also is simplicity, and with faith is it commingled. He demands patience also, and by faith is it perfected. He has respect also to long-suffering, and through faith is it acquired. He loves mourning also, and through faith is it manifested. He seeks also for purity, and by faith is it preserved. All these things does the faith demand that is based on the rock of the true Stone, that is Christ. These works are required for Christ the King, Who dwells in men that are built up in these works.
Aphraates the Persian Sage (Aphrahat demonstrations (Catholic theological studies in India))
Purity, simplicity, love.
Kate Morton (The Clockmaker's Daughter)
Salvation Comes To children, to people of brilliance, to madmen, to those of simplicity and purity of heart more easily to ordinary people than to those preoccupied with worldly desires. Sonnets of a man changed forever by His Hand--- Pastor John M Sheehan, ThD.
John M Sheehan
He summarized His approach to dealing with Sabbath laws in three simple statements: The Sabbath was made for mankind, not mankind for the Sabbath—Mark 2:27 The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath—Mark 2:28 It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath—Mark 3:4 His teaching on this subject was miraculous and revolutionary in its simplicity and purity. In addition, His teaching was more than just a commentary about the Sabbath. In the Jewish world there is a position called “Posek Ha Dor”—the top rabbi who passes judgment and determines what becomes law in his generation. Yeshua was speaking as “Posek Ha Dor.” He was not suggesting law, He was setting the law. He was not making commentary about the law, He was determining it.43
Michael L. Brown (The Real Kosher Jesus: Revealing the Mysteries of the Hidden Messiah)
Ordinary gestures, done with simplicity and purity of heart, take on new meaning
Paul Wilkes (Beyond the Walls: Monastic Wisdom for Everyday Life)
Animals love us with constant hearts. They of fer us pure joy, a place to love with simplicity and purity. In caring for our pets, we structure our lives. Their regular needs become our soothing habits. We walk the dog but the dog walks us. Adding a pet to our lives adds richness and warmth. Losing a pet, we lose an irreplaceable friend, the companion of fond memories. Our pets are both our wealth and our witnesses. They sweetly and softly gentle our days.
Julia Cameron (Transitions)
In the years of its rise the movement little by little brought the community’s attitude toward the teacher around from respect and envy to resentment, from trust and fear to suspicion. The development seems to have been inherent; it needed no planning and had none. As the Nazi emphasis on nonintellectual virtues (patriotism, loyalty, duty, purity, labor, simplicity, “blood,” “folk-ishness”) seeped through Germany, elevating the self-esteem of the “little man,” the academic profession was pushed from the very center to the very periphery of society. Germany was preparing to cut its own head off. By 1933 at least five of my ten friends (and I think six or seven) looked upon “intellectuals” as unreliable and,
Milton Sanford Mayer (They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45)
Moments of profound fear have a kind of beautiful purity, Anderson said. All of the gray areas of life disappear, and there is only the matter of living or dying. “And the simplicity of that, the crystal clarity of that, is so powerful, so beautiful and it’s—it’s hard to put that into words, but calling it adrenaline, or chalking it up to being an adrenaline junkie, that’s not it at all, that totally misses the point.
Huffman, Alan (Here I Am: The Story of Tim Hetherington, War Photographer)
George Washington possessed the gift of inspired simplicity, a clarity and purity of vision that never failed him. Whatever petty partisan disputes swirled around him, he kept his eyes fixed on the transcendent goals that motivated his quest. As sensitive to criticism as any other man, he never allowed personal attacks or threats to distract him, following an inner compass that charted the way ahead. For a quarter century, he had stuck to an undeviating path that led straight to the creation of an independent republic, the enactment of the Constitution, and the formation of the federal government. History records few examples of a leader who so earnestly wanted to do the right thing, not just for himself but for his country. Avoiding moral shortcuts, he consistently upheld such high ethical standards that he seemed larger than any other figure on the political scene. Again and again the American people had entrusted him with power, secure in the knowledge that he would exercise it fairly and ably and surrender it when his term of office was up. He had shown that the president and commander in chief of a republic could possess a grandeur surpassing that of all the crowned heads of Europe. He brought maturity, sobriety, judgment, and integrity to a political experiment that could easily have grown giddy with its own vaunted success, and he avoided the backbiting, envy, and intrigue that detracted from the achievements of other founders. He had indeed been the indispensable man of the American Revolution.
Ron Chernow (Washington: A Life)