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Purity   /pjˈʊrəti/  /pjˈʊrɪti/   Listen
Purity

noun
1.
Being undiluted or unmixed with extraneous material.  Synonym: pureness.
2.
The state of being unsullied by sin or moral wrong; lacking a knowledge of evil.  Synonyms: innocence, pureness, sinlessness, whiteness.
3.
A woman's virtue or chastity.  Synonyms: honor, honour, pureness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Purity" Quotes from Famous Books



... home's sin-stained threshold; honour's fall Dislodging from her throne love's household pet, And wan-faced purity a tyrant's thrall, With wild ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 2, 1890. • Various

... Synagogues special services were held, and the exertions of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore in the cause of suffering humanity, and in the vindication of the purity of the religious tenets of Israel, were warmly acknowledged by ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore

... decline, his mind reverts to Him who in them prescribed the purpose of his life, and bestowed its grace. But, religious as is the mood of every good affection, none is so devotional as that of love, especially so called. The soul is then the very temple of adoration, of faith, of holy purity, of heroism, of charity. At such a moment the human creature shoots up into the angel: there is nothing on earth too defiled for its charity— nothing in hell too appalling for its heroism—nothing in ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... the bone—that with such the disease of dirt more especially lies. We beg pardon, no less in the hair. Now such persons do not know that they are dirty—that they are unclean beasts. On the contrary, they often think themselves pinks of purity—incarnations of carnations—impersonations of moss-roses—the spiritual essences of lilies, "imparadised in form of that sweet flesh." Now, were such persons to change their linen every half hour night and day, that is, were they to put on forty-eight ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 277, October 13, 1827 • Various

... still brook within the woodland's green Sings softly to itself the live-long day, Unconscious of its gentle roundelay, Its open purity and silver sheen— Knowing not how in all that wild demesne, Its music is a strain the angels play And its fair face a jewel amid the gray, Beshadowed places that ...
— The Rose-Jar • Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel) Jones

... by, reading intently, as he walks, a well-worn volume of verses—his faded straw hat shading the tip of his long nose. Following him, a boy of twenty, delicately featured, with that purity of expression one sees in the faces of the good—the result of a life, perhaps, given to his ideal in art. He wears his hair long and curling over his ears, with a long stray wisp over one eye, the whole cropped evenly at the back as it reaches his black velvet collar. ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith

... high-class Chinese literature, which is pure enough to satisfy the most strait-laced. Chinese poetry, of which there is in existence a huge mass, will be searched in vain for suggestions of impropriety, for sly innuendo, and for the other tricks of the unclean. This extraordinary purity of language is all the more remarkable from the fact that, until recent years, the education of women has not been at all general, though many particular instances are recorded of women who have themselves ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles

... good order are scrupulously observed. The happy consequences of this are extremely visible and important, for hardly any country exhibits fewer instances of vice. And as no respect whatever is paid to persons, and at the same time the laws preserve their pristine and original purity, without any alterations, explanations, and misconstructions, the subjects not only imbibe, as they grow up, an infallible knowledge of what ought or ought not to be done, but are likewise enlightened ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery

... dated. It is conceived in the general spirit of the ballads but is simpler, more purely a poem of sentiment, than either "Christabel" or "The Ancient Mariner," and makes no use of the supernatural. Its simplicity and absolute purity of tone are, however, something more than a negative virtue. Coleridge himself declared of it and "The Ancient Mariner" that they might be excelled, but could not ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... obsession. He adored his parents—reverenced his father—worshiped his mother. The latter he was wont to compare to the flowers, to the bright-plumed birds, to the butterflies that hovered in the sunlight of their little patio. He indited childish poems to her, and likened her in purity and beauty to the angels and the Virgin Mary. Her slightest wish was his inflexible law. Not that he was never guilty of childish faults of conduct, of little whims of stubbornness and petulance; but his character rested on a foundation of honesty, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... more recent formation. Whence have these people derived characters so much superior to those of other South Sea islanders, many of whom, enjoying as fine a climate, and a more bountiful soil, resemble beasts of prey? I attribute this in some measure to the superior purity of manners among the females. Experience teaches us, that wherever that sex is held in its due estimation, morals are ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue

... borders of the salt lake of that name, which in several physical features closely resembles the Dead Sea. Urumiyeh is a place of some celebrity, for it gave birth to Zoroaster, the preacher of a creed of considerable moral purity, which has spread over a great part of Asia. Entering a more fertile country, she reached Tabreez in safety, and was once more within the influence of law and order. Tabreez, the residence of the viceroy, is a handsomely-built town, with numerous silk and leather manufactories, and is reputed ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous

... claimed respect for laws divine and human, for the domestic hearth and public order. The conscience of the nation was troubled. Agnes herself applied to the pope, urging her youth, her ignorance of the world, the sincerity and purity of her love for her husband. Innocent III. was touched, and before long gave indisputable evidence that he was, but without budging from his duty and his right as a Christian. For four years the struggle went on. At last Philip yielded to the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... least one in the garden worthy of being grouped with the beauties in the basket. It was The Bride, typical, in its snowy chastity and by reason of a pale green tint at the base of its petals, of that purity and innocence which are the ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... and sense. They were safely upon Pearl Island, as they had named it. They had secured the prize for which they had come so many thousand miles, and they were, as the world goes, wealthy men. More than that, they had found a pearl of such marvelous size and purity that, being dedicated to little Inez Hawthorne, it was a great fortune ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis

... scholar were bound to feel gratitude for the corrupt but splendid Church and courts, which gave them so much both in the way of maintenance and opportunity. It may be asked, has all the honesty and the not always evident purity of Protestantism done so much for the world as those dissolute Popes and Princes? And the artist, judging with a hasty bias perhaps, is ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... marriage, I have never desired of you any other favour than the one you are granting me now, for lack of which and with which I shall cheerfully yield up my spirit to God. He is perfect love and charity. He knows the greatness of my love and the purity of my desire, and I beseech Him, while I hold my desire within my arms, to receive my spirit into ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... more, found purity; and returned to the library. But here the air seemed faintly impregnated with Orduma cigarettes. "Curious!" he said as he composed himself once more to read—and presently the odour seemed to wear away and vanish. Mr. Atwater was relieved; the last thing he could ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington

... a noble opportunity of acting as pastor to a great commonwealth. It missed this great opportunity, for which it was perhaps constitutionally disqualified, and devoted itself to edifying its own members and guarding its own purity. So it was that, saving its soul, it lost it. The vineyard must be ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... round, still resting his small delicate hands against the oaken door of the Cathedral, and with the tears yet wet upon his cheeks, smiled. What a sad face he had!—worn and weary, yet beautiful!—what eyes, heavy with the dews of sorrow, yet tender even in pain! Startled by the mingled purity and grief of so young a countenance, the Cardinal retreated for a moment in amaze,—then approaching more closely he repeated his former question with increased ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... Alpheus passed beneath the sea, and emerged without injury to the purity of its waters.' Rather stale that, to be sure, but, if properly dressed and dished up, will look quite as fresh ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... the Purity Department Woman's Christian Temperance Union; Author of "What a Young Girl Ought to Know," "Marvels of Our Bodily Dwelling," "Child Confidence Rewarded," "Teaching Truth," "Almost a ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen

... optics the degree of admixture with white, the saturation diminishing as the amount of white is increased. In other words, the highest degree of saturation belongs to a given color when in the state of greatest purity. ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell

... between them they immediately, and implicitly refer it to the determination of their king. They will not so much as make it the subject of private debate, lest they should hence be provoked to resentment and ill will. Their delicacy and cleanliness are suited to the purity of their morals. From the specimen which is given of the language of Savu, it appears to have some affinity with that of the South Sea islands. Many of the words are exactly the same, and the terms of numbers are derived ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis

... painted-glass-window country with its rich tones of crimson and violet, its palely luminous skies, and the solemnity of its blended hues. Always there was a haunting effect of sadness, even in the spring purity of those white blossom-arches which decorated the brown monotony ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... disdains A sympathy in joys and pains With dwellers in the long, green lanes, With wings that shady groves explore, With watchers at the torrent's roar, And waders by the reedy shore; For thou, through purity of mind, Dost hear, and art ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... Protestant, but Mary, Star of the Sea, still walking in sadness and in beauty upon many a mountain and by many a shore, who cast those tassels at the feet of the child. It is indeed fitting that man pray to her who is the mother of peace, the mother of dreams, and the mother of purity, to leave them yet a little hour to do good and evil in, and to watch old Time telling the ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats

... your state wi' theirs compar'd, An' shudder at the niffer[220], But cast a moment's fair regard, What mak's the mighty differ? Discount what scant occasion gave That purity ye pride in, An' (what's aft mair than a' the lave) Your better art ...
— English Satires • Various

... opens with a speech of the chief, who rises and addresses the agent. He generally begins with the Great Spirit, or the sun, or the moon 'whose purity is equalled by that of his own heart,' &c. &c. always finishing with a petition for presents;—whiskey is sure to find honourable mention: these are what English lawyers ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen

... better than that of China, because the animal feeds on aromatic plants in the mountains of Thibet, while in China it has to subsist upon the ordinary pastures; and because the inhabitants of Thibet preserve their cods of musk in its natural state of purity, while the Chinese adulterate all that gets into their hands; for which reason the musk of Thibet is in great request among the Arabs. The most exquisite of all the sorts of musk, is that which the musk animals leave behind them, in rubbing ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr

... on which Colliver had an amazing amount of information. Sometimes, too, he would sing—quaint songs which I had never heard before, to airs which I suspect, without well knowing why, were of his own composition. His voice was of large compass—a silvery tenor of surpassing' purity and sweetness, inasmuch as I have seen the sailors stand spellbound, and even with tears in their eyes, at some sweet song of love and home. Often, again, the words would be weird and mysterious, but the voice was always delicious whether he spoke or sang. I asked him once why with such a ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... ignorant, diseased, criminal, unfortunate humanity is temporary and transient, effecting no radical improvement anywhere. The real work that will tell on all time and the eternities, is building the new life and character, laying the foundation-stones of future generations in justice, liberty, purity, peace, and love, the work of the rising generation of fathers and mothers at this hour. Those of us who have long since passed the meridian of life, can give you the result of our experience and researches into social science, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various

... but seldom. They are known strictly to avoid all conversation of an unchaste kind in their camps, except among the most degraded of them; and instances of young females having children, before they pledge themselves to those they love, are rare. This purity of morals, among a people living as they do, ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb

... jail now, alive, who has shot and disfigured and nearly killed two good white men, and such an example of social equality as burying one in a white graveyard will demoralise them still further. We must preserve the purity and prestige of our race, and we can only do it by keeping ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt

... she was my—wife—and when I was given a parish and had introduced her to my people, they loved her for the white gentleness which seemed purity, and for acquiescent amiability ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey

... my child, I hope for grandsons too." But she detesting wedlock as a crime, (Suffus'd her features with a bashful glow) Around his aged neck, her beauteous arms, Winds blandishing, and cries, "O sire, most dear! "One favor grant,—perpetual to enjoy "My virgin purity;—the mighty Jove "The same indulgence has to Dian' given." Thy sire complies;—but that too beauteous face, And lovely form, thy anxious wish oppose: Apollo loves thee;—to thy bed aspires;— And looks with anxious hopes, his wish to gain: Futurity, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... not opaque, or dark—it gives admission to the light, and reflects it back again in all its beauty, brilliancy, and purity. I do not wish to see my little boy a green-house, or a glass-house merely, for then he would be brittle, and not strong—easily damaged, if not broken up. But crystals are hard bodies; they resist all injuries, they can bear a beating without breaking; for they are regularly formed, and complete ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick

... was in love twice; but I had a sort of cold purity that I was proud of. The bare idea of—of that ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... the bows, as the men, with slow, deliberate strokes of their long poles, pressed the boat forward softly over the shallow water. The world and the world's turmoil seemed left behind forever on the land; the silence was the silence of enchantment—the delicious interflow of the soft purity of the sky and the ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... holds language somewhat as follows: "Probably everything has its good points and there is something to be said for both vice and virtue, crime and honesty, sin and innocence, rudeness and politeness, licence and purity. These are all simply different forms of an activity which cannot be wholly wrong in any of its manifestations; and it is precisely because every one of these has its value that there may be nothing to lose in being honest, nay, perhaps something ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet

... interval in which her mind seemed to stop working, that of which she became conscious next was a world of extraordinary purity. Nothing was ever so white as this snow or this moonlight; nothing was ever so like the ether beyond the atmosphere as this air; nothing was ever so golden as the stars in this purple sky, or so mystically solemn as these pines. As they climbed upward it was like ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King

... Wentworth, among many other expressions of his care and zeal to preserve the purity and secure the well-being of this seminary against such evils as have been the ruin of, or at least have a very threatening aspect upon others which have come within his knowledge, has insisted upon it as a condition of location, to which all the trustees have cheerfully subscribed, that wherever ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... impure life, can act in the great drama, nor can any except natives take part. And as the ambition of every man, woman, and child in Oberammergau is to form part of this glorious company, the reason for the purity of their aspect is at once to be seen. No murder, robbery, or crime of any description has been committed in ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell

... hit upon the distinctive feature of the girl—a purity as thin and clear as the air of the uplands in which she drew breath. He stooped and smoothed down the blankets of his bunk, for no trace of him must be seen if any other man should come during this night. He would go far away—see and be seen—apart ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand

... the customary laws of different tribes and confederations were at variance as to the compensation due in different cases. It therefore became habitual to take the sentence-finder from among such families, or such tribes, as were reputed for keeping the law of old in its purity; of being versed in the songs, triads, sagas, etc., by means of which law was perpetuated in memory; and to retain law in this way became a sort of art, a "mystery," carefully transmitted in certain families from generation to generation. Thus in Iceland, and in other Scandinavian lands, ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin

... very idea of seeing her filled his soul with intense loathing. He did not break his oath, but he would not go back to her. Let hers be the sin of that separation; of the sacred bond broken. He revelled in the extreme purity of his heart, and he would not go back to her. Let her come back to him. He had the comfortable conviction that he would never see her again, and that through her own fault only. In this conviction he told himself ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad

... dinner, and was standing behind the ivy that draped the little balcony, watching the moon in its setting of Swiss skies and mystic landscape. How white and calm and spotless it appeared! It was not a man's face she saw there—but that of a woman—the face of a nun in its saintly, virgin purity, suggesting only sweet inspiring thoughts of the glory of fidelity to duty, of the comfort and peace and rest that ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous

... once with a little distilled water, then pour upon it four ounces of distilled water, and add 650 grains of iodide of potassium, which should perfectly redissolve the silver and form a clear fluid. Should it not (for chemicals differ occasionally in their purity), then a little more should be very cautiously added until ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various

... boundless benefits. It was the plan which Dumouriez and he had drawn up in the spring of that year. Probably the Executive Council took no notice of it; for certain papers found in the iron chest at the Tuileries cast doubts on the purity of Talleyrand's patriotism. Further, as Pache, Minister at War, hated Dumouriez, personal bias told strongly against the moderate proposals coming from London and The Hague. Nevertheless the Executive Council now decided to defer for the present the invasion of Holland, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... building naturally costs a large sum of money every year to keep in repair, and in this respect the parishioners of the ancient borough owe much to Bournemouth, whose visitors, by their fees, provide more than sufficient funds for this purpose. The wonderful purity of the air has been a great factor in preserving the crispness of the masonry, and in keeping the mouldings and carvings almost as sharp in profile as when they were first cut ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath

... several kingdoms; the matter, reformation, and to seek the God of their fathers; to this they all swear, like as the inhabitants of England, Scotland and Ireland, meet all in one duty, even a covenant, and that to one end, to seek and serve God in the purity of His ways, after the purity of His will; to this, as Asa ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various

... doubtless, due to the piling of stage upon stage, without making them gradually increase in lightness and richness towards the top, as at Bishops Lydeard. But it is not a case to find fault; the vast height, the grandeur of design, the purity of detail at so late a time, all mark this tower as one of the noblest works of the late French Gothic. A little way to the west is another tower, attached to a now desecrated church, we believe of Saint John, which was clearly built as a rival to the Magdalen tower. ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman

... quality of its speculations: and which it is (more than any other cause) that has degraded the office of casuistical learning amongst us. Questions are raised, problems are entertained, by the Romish casuistry, which too often offend against all purity and manliness of thinking. And that objection occurs forcibly here, which Southey (either in The Quarterly Review or in his Life of Wesley) has urged and expanded with regard to the Romish and also the Methodist practice of auricular confession—viz., that, as it ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... high voice that she took at first to be angry, plashed in the stillness of rows of faces thrust out like empty jugs. "It MUST do us good—it's all so hideous," Mrs. Beale had immediately declared; manifesting a purity of resolution that made these occasions quite the most harmonious of all the many on which the pair had pulled together. Maisie certainly had never, in such an association, felt so uplifted, and never above all been so carried off her feet, as at the moments of Mrs. Beale's breathlessly ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James

... this wonderful worship, and all, she feared, for love of her—and above all of her father, who had regarded it with such repugnance:—yes, thought Isabel, but he knows all now. Then she thought of Mistress Margaret again. After all, the nun had a spiritual life which in intensity and purity surpassed any she had ever experienced or even imagined; and yet the heart of it all was the mass. She thought of the old wrinkled quiet face when she came back to breakfast at the Dower House: she had soon learnt to read from that face whether mass had been said that ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... feelings towards her could hardly have been different from what they were now. Although he had often felt that Euphra was not very good, not a suspicion had crossed his mind as to what he would have called the purity of her nature. Like many youths, even of character inferior to his own, he had the loftiest notions of feminine grace, and unspottedness in thought and feeling, not to say action and aim. Now he found that he had loved ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... read the transactions of the night upon his countenance. He strove to pray; His bosom no longer glowed with devotion; His thoughts insensibly wandered to Matilda's secret charms. But what He wanted in purity of heart, He supplied by exterior sanctity. The better to cloak his transgression, He redoubled his pretensions to the semblance of virtue, and never appeared more devoted to Heaven as since He had broken through his engagements. ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis

... passionately, and was loved in return. The mother, indeed, was vain enough to think of the possibility of such an alliance, and to prepare for its accomplishment; but the calm good sense of the old man never gave such an ambitious hope a moment's consideration. But they were both convinced of the purity of my love, and could do nothing but pray for ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso

... daylight. Between the walls of the small houses at either hand a long line of figures was marching with many silken banners. There seemed to be an interminable line of young girls—first communicants, I fancied,—in all the purity of their white veils and gowns against the somber dull grays of the church. This mass of pure white was of dazzling, startling effect, something like a ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards

... and soundness of judgment seemed to me the most conspicuous. I have never met with anyone with whom it was so possible to discuss with profit many great questions in a short time. No one, too, could know him intimately without being impressed with his high sense of honour, with his transparent purity of motive, with the fundamental kindliness of his disposition, with the remarkable modesty of his estimate of his own past. He was eminently tolerant of difference of opinion, and he had in private life an imperturbable ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid

... high, and is of marble, one hundred and ten feet high. Its chief apartment is two hundred feet long by ninety wide, and contains a throne for the emperor, who holds his receptions here on New Year's Day, his birthday, and on other great occasions. The 'Palace of Heavenly Purity' is where the monarch meets his cabinet at dawn for business; and you see that he must be an early riser. Within these enclosures are temples, parks, an artificial lake a mile long, a great temple in which ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic

... the Romans, the Rutilii, and Galbae, and Scauri, men of eminent reputation for purity of life and manners, and for frugality; and in the succeeding generations, many men of censorian and consular rank, and even many who had celebrated triumphs, such as the Crassi, the Antonii, the Philipii, the Scaevolae, and numbers of others, after having commanded armies ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... practically to the fact (disputed by too many from their own worse experience) that it is quite possible to live from youth to age in many scenes and under many circumstantial difficulties, preserving still through them all the innocent purity of childhood. True, the crown of greater knowledge is added to the Man; but although it be a knowledge both of evil and of good, theoretically,—it need not practically be a guilty knowledge. If one of any age, from the youngest to the oldest, has not the power of self-control perpetually ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... revenge themselves with a monotonous enthusiasm. Ah, these fellatian moralists! It is folly to take their hypocrisies to heart. The plot is too delicious for tears. These two-fisted citizens, these purity braggarts masturbating with one finger unemployed and pointing ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht

... unto whom the gift is actually made with water.[286] The gift of maidens should be made in the following way. The wise know it for certain. A superior Brahmana should wed a maiden that is not unwilling, that belongs to a family equal to his own in purity or status, and that is given away by her brother. Such a girl should be wed in the presence of fire, with due rites, causing her, amongst other things, to circumambulate for the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... methodise my ideas I found a difficulty, which extended itself to the whole work. It was not easy to determine by what rule of distinction the words of this dictionary were to be chosen. The chief intent of it is to preserve the purity, and ascertain the meaning of our English idiom; and this seems to require nothing more than that our language be considered, so far as it is our own; that the words and phrases used in the general intercourse of life, or found in the works of those whom we commonly ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... at the sufferings of the Huguenots remaining in France since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes; at the purity, self-denial, honesty, and industry of their lives; at the devotion with which they adhered to religious duty and the worship of God; we cannot fail to regard them—labourers and peasants though ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles

... disdain, to look abroad for foreign help. Raffaelle's materials are generally borrowed, though the noble structure is his own. The excellency of this extraordinary man lay in the propriety, beauty, and majesty of his characters, his judicious contrivance of his composition, correctness of drawing, purity of taste, and the skilful accommodation of other men's conceptions to his own purpose. Nobody excelled him in that judgment, with which he united to his own observations on nature the energy of Michael Angelo, and the beauty and simplicity of the antique. To the question, ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds

... whose joy was so excessive that they waded up to their arm-pits through a heavy surf, and insisted on carrying us on shore on their backs! I never clearly ascertained whether they had been actuated by the purity of love ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid

... diffidence, and are men of quiet voices and ways: for us there is hope. It may be that to love one's neighbour is also a part of manhood, to suffer quietly for another as true a piece of bravery as to fell him for a careless word; it may be that purity, constancy, and reverence are as sure criteria of manhood as their opposites. It may be, I say; but be certain that a strong beard, a harsh voice, and a bull-dog physiognomy are ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne

... a people of very great devotion and purity of manners. They hold that the nearest way to gain Paradise is to kill some one of a contrary religion; which is the reason they have often been seen, being but one or two, and without armour, to attempt against powerful enemies, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... But every village might possess a hero whom the imagination of Ellinor could clothe with unreal graces, and to whom the lovingness of her disposition might bias her affections. Both, however, eminently possessed that earnestness and purity of heart, which would have made them, perhaps in an equal degree, constant and devoted to the object of an attachment, once formed, in defiance of change and to the ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... every evening he made over his box with the money to the tayon of the ostrog where he slept, and felt much easier, having so disposed of it, than he would perhaps have done in any inn in St Petersburgh." No doubt, the superior purity of the country air would occasion some difference in his feelings! The hospitality of the Kamtschadales forms another topic of eulogium. With such moral virtues, then, in alliance with great industry, and considerable ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... vote, but that is as far as we can go." I rejoice in your presence this morning. I, for one, need not assert that I am from my whole heart and conviction thoroughly of opinion that the nature of woman, the purity and sweetness of the family, the integrity and strength of the State, will all be advantaged when woman shall be, like man, a ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... of the human race! Great cleanser of the human face! Thy potent art removes each stain From dirtiest mortal on this sphere mundane. 'Tis sad to think thy mystic spell Can't penetrate within the shell, And to a soiled, perverted heart Cleanliness and purity impart. Thy subtle essence, heretofore confined In bars of Windsor toilet cakes refined; In Colgate's honey for the barber's brush, And shapeless masses much resembling slush, Has now, according to our evening sheet, Been found in ledges, known as "feet." To use the ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau

... a girl who, if they had not been so plaguily intent on honouring his fame, might have now been replacing the Mayoress at his side. True, the girl was merely a Jewess, and he disliked the breed. But Mabel Aaronsberg was unexpected. She had a statuesque purity of outline and complexion; seemed, indeed, worthy of being a creation of his own. How the tedious old manufacturer could have produced this marmoreal prodigy provided a problem for the sculptor, as he almost silently ate his way through the ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... answered his adjuration. This was followed by a burst of music, transcendently lovely, but unlike any music I had ever heard. There were sounds of delicate and entrancing tenderness such as no instrument made by human hands could produce; there was singing of clear and tender tone, and of infinite purity such as no human voices could be capable of. I listened, perplexed, alarmed, yet entranced. Suddenly I distinguished a melody running through the wonderful air-symphonies—a melody like a flower, fresh and perfect. Instinctively ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli

... and gluttony, of lust and avarice, of intensified craft, wickedness and cruelty, provoking their victims to horrible crimes, and revelling in their commission". From this class and the last are drawn the tempters—the devils of ecclesiastical literature; but their power fails utterly before purity of mind and purpose; they can do nothing with a man unless he has first encouraged in himself the vices into which they ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater

... conglomerate country that she is, made up of a commingling of the blood of other races. It is a well-known fact in the crossing of breeds that the best traits predominate in the result. We in this land, have gained much from the purity of those bloods; we have suffered ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... "the graveyard face! Go! I cannot bear those sad, reproachful eyes—those arms outstretched, asking mercy! Send foul fiends to torture me, and make my dreams hideous nightmares, but not this beautiful form to mock me with its purity, and kill me with its mild reproach. It has gone. But it will come again! It steals on me in the awful hours of night, when the air seems supernatural, and the mind is accessible to fear. It stood by my hammock last night; my conscious soul looked through ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... unreasonable to fear this, for such crimes had often been committed by rival against rival in the English royal line. A man might be in those days a very brave and gallant knight, a model in the eyes of all for the unsullied purity of his chivalric honor, and yet be ready to poison or starve an uncle, or a brother, or a nephew, without compunction or remorse, if their rights or interests conflicted with his own. The honor of chivalry was not moral principle or love ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... filled with an intense longing for innocence and purity, for a blameless, peaceful life. She would go to confession as soon as possible next morning. She would confess everything, so that she could breathe once more as quietly as her child. Even at the last examination of conscience she had not been able to find the right ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig

... spread through the naves, bringing out of the darkness the spotless whiteness of the Toledan Cathedral, the purity of its stone making it the lightest and most beautiful of temples. One could now see all the elegant and daring beauty of the eighty-eight pillars soaring audaciously into space, white as frozen snow, and the delicate ribs interlacing to carry the vaulting. In the upper storey ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... carried out in common life, in the same proportion is the lost happiness of man recovered. Too many in the present day, who are not behind-hand in profession, keep their principles more for show than use. They acknowledge the purity of them, and have some faint perception of their moral beauty, but secretly believe, and sometimes, openly avow them to be impracticable in the present state of the world. They who exhibit proof of the contrary, ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge

... and do the best that could be done to outrage, to scourge, to challenge, to deride her with all the insolent artillery of camp ribaldry, and show her how a child of the people could laugh at her rank, and affront her purity, and scorn her power. Definite idea there was none to her; she had come on impulse. But a vague longing in some way to break down that proud serenity which galled her so sharply, and bring hot blood of shame into that delicate face, and cast indignity on ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... present writer it is as certain as anything in the future can be that the works of Brahms are destined to enter into the pantheon of the classical in musical art; and are entitled to that distinction by the purity and beauty of their style no less than by the intense originality of the ideas themselves and of their treatment. Musical students, therefore, are earnestly recommended not to permit themselves to be discouraged ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews

... and perilous theological questions have come, by "a haphazard chance," before a court which was never meant to decide them. It cannot be doubted that those who are most interested in the Church of England feel deeply and strongly about keeping up what they believe to be the soundness and purity of her professed doctrine; and they think that, under fair conditions, they have clear and firm ground for making good their position. But it seems by no means unlikely that in the working of the ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church

... seen before in all her life. There was a gravity that had no connection with shadows, nor even suggested them; a curious loftiness of mien, which had nothing to do with external position or internal consciousness; and a purity, which was like the grave purity of a child, without the child's want of knowledge or immaturity of mental power. Mrs. Barclay was attracted, and curious. At the same time, the dress and the apron were of ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner

... spoken of a sinless nature!)—"He looked round on them with anger!" Never did He grieve for Himself. His intensest sorrows were reserved for those who were tampering with their own souls, and dishonoring His God. The continual spectacle of moral evil, thrust on the gaze of spotless purity, made His earthly history one consecutive history of grief, one perpetual "cross ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff

... self-possession I groped for my eye-glass, seized it, screwed it firmly into my eye, and looked long and earnestly at the girl. As I looked, my eyes softened, my monacle dropped, and I forgot everything in the beauty and purity of the face before me. My heart began to beat against my stiff, white waistcoat. Had I dared—yes, dared to think of this wondrous little beauty as a female tourist? Her pale, sweet face, turned towards the sea, ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers

... instinct against any fusion, for instance, of white and black peoples. Mixture is in itself no evil if the two nations, being approximately equal, but having complementary gifts, can modify them without ultimate loss, and possibly to advantage. Indeed the so-called pure races, since their purity has gone with isolation and inexperience, have borne comparatively little spiritual fruit. Large contact and concentrated living bring out native genius, but mixture with an inferior stock can only tend to obliterate it. The Jews, the Greeks, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... me, hiding her face in her hands. I heard her sobbing and murmuring incoherent cries to her god. I took the poor lady's hand, and bore with her as long as I could, until, being at the end of my patience with prudery and purity and chivalry, and all the rest of the highfalutin romanticism of the South, I said: "Mrs Tuis, it is necessary that you should get yourself together. You have a serious duty before you—that you owe both to Sylvia ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair

... private or otherwise. But if it's relationship, we'll go right through with it to the end. Any kind of information you may want we'll give you here; scientific, biographical, business, healthfulness of localities, genuineness of antiquities, age and standing of individuals, purity of liquors or teas from sample, Bible items localized, china verified; in fact, anything you want to know we can tell you. Of course we don't pretend that we know all these things, but we know the people who do know, or who can find them out. By coming to us, and paying a ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton

... at him? he asked himself. He stood half-checked while her steady eyes left his face, roamed from him—contrasting, as ashamed he felt, the purity of the still night with the clamour of his turbulent passions—and settled on ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson

... who mingled in herself the different beauty of the Saxon and the Spaniard, ripened by the African sun and dignified by the long companionship of Nature. There was a grace about her movements, a purity in her face, a mystery in the wide eyes and curved and smiling lips, such as Leonard had never seen before, and which overcame him utterly. Alas for the fickleness of the human heart! from that moment the adoration of his ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard

... ethnological study. It is the only region on the whole continent where the highest type of culture attained by its aborigines—the village community in stone or adobe buildings—has been preserved on the respective territories of the tribes. These tribes have shrunk, the purity of their stock has been affected, their customs and beliefs encroached upon by civilization. Still enough is left to make of New Mexico the objective point of serious, practical archaeologists; for, besides ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier

... excluded from court perhaps for years. Again, who knew how soon the favourite might fall into disgrace, or be banished once more by some unexpected event? There was much talk and fervid declarations of noble sentiments, loyalty to the Duchess, love of purity, and the rest; but when Wilhelmine invited the entire court to visit her at the Jaegerhaus, on the occasion of a grand evening rout, it was noticeable that those few who did not appear sent copious excuses, pretending illness, and adding almost medical descriptions ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... round, Nothing so firmly good is found, Whose substance, with such closeness knit, Corruption's Touch will not admit; But, spite of all incroaching stains, Its native purity retains: Whose texture will nor warp, nor fade, Though moths and weather shou'd invade, Which Time's sharp tooth cannot corrode, Proof against Accident and Mode; And, maugre each assailing dart, ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd

... in the world I saw at the altar of the Lord," said the good Bishop, "the young maidens went to the Lord's Table. Roses were blushing and pale roses shining on their fresh cheeks. A young girl stood there. She looked with all the love and purity of her spirit up to heaven. That was the expression of the ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott

... long. In-and-in breeding is a mistake, and can only commend itself, and that for selfish reasons, to the Aztec in physique and the imbecile in mind. The families which take most pride in their purity are the most degenerate; the stock which is the most robust and handsome is that which has in it a liberal infusion of foreign bloods. In my opinion, the coming man, the highest form of well-balanced qualities—moral, ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea

... walking one night in the verandah of a small house in which I lived, outside the hamlet of Saranac. It was winter; the night was very dark; the air extraordinary clear and cold, and sweet with the purity of forests. From a good way below, the river was to be heard contending with ice and boulders: a few lights appeared, scattered unevenly among the darkness, but so far away as not to lessen the sense of isolation. For the making of a story here were fine conditions. I was besides moved ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson

... were mostly drawn from the traditions and written records of New England, and gave the "beautiful strangeness" of imagination to objects, incidents, and characters which were familiar facts in the popular mind. The style, while it had a purity, sweetness, and grace which satisfied the most fastidious and exacting taste, had, at the same time, more than the simplicity and clearness of an ordinary school-book. But though the subjects and the style were thus popular, there was something in the shaping and informing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

... little church possessed. It was hung round the pulpit, and about the wall at the back of his pew; and as he sat upright, perfectly still, and with his face set into a grave, immobile expression, the dark background appeared to add purity to the fair clear tints of his hair and complexion, and make every line of his ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... markets, he had the whole vocabulary of the place on the tip of his tongue. With his hands on his hips he often mimicked Grandmother Mehudin in her anger, and at these times the coarsest and vilest expressions would stream from his lips in a voice of crystalline purity that might have belonged to some little chorister chanting the Ave Maria. He would even try to assume a hoarse roughness of tone, seek to degrade and taint that exquisite freshness of childhood which made him resemble a bambino on the Madonna's knees. The fish-wives laughed at him ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... the university had given Pat. They had, in fact, privately cautioned the school that they would have to watch out for such things themselves. Instead, however, of finding a somewhat lawless man in their new coach, the head-master was surprised to discover a purity campaign on foot, a ban on swearing and cigarette-smoking such as they had never been able to establish before. It came to their ears that Pat had personally conducted an offender along these lines out to the boundaries of the school grounds, well behind the gymnasium, where ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... by brigands and offered to a slave-merchant. A modest blush suffused her cheeks, her eyes were lowered, her hands hung at her sides, strength seemed to abandon her, and her tears protested against the violence done to her purity. Poussin cursed himself, and repented of his folly in bringing this treasure from their peaceful garret. Once more he became a lover rather than an artist; scruples convulsed his heart as he saw the eye of the old painter regain its youth and, ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac

... the Duke of Monmouth," he answered. "If he succeeds he will be called the deliverer of our country, if he fails he will be branded as a traitor. It all depends on the prudence with which he acts, no less than on the purity of his views. If his cause is so intrinsically just, he is likely to obtain general support. If not, should he fail, he will be guilty of the ruin and destruction of those who engage with him. Undoubtedly ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston

... society's premature and violent action was even made a point against him. He was so much the more dangerous to the state because he had the sagacity to know that the times were not yet ripe for independence, and the honesty and purity of purpose to make only demands which the state herself well ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... led me astray, and I wish now to correct a statement which I made to you twenty-eight years ago." He then enumerates some particular statement about the height of mountains in the moon, and corrects it. Truth was more to Herschel than consistency. Indeed, the earnestness, purity of purpose, and simplicity of his mind stamp him as one of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... heathen conception that God requires human blood to propitiate His justice and bring His mercy—needs to be understood. The real blood or Life of Spirit is not yet discerned. Love bruised and bleeding, yet mounting to the throne of glory in purity and peace, over the steps of uplifted humanity,—this is the deep significance of the blood of Christ. Nameless woe, everlasting victories, are the blood, the vital currents of Christ Jesus' life, purchasing the freedom of mortals from ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy

... Jefferson Davis—these and many other leaders of thought and action, east and west, north and south, at different periods of the nation's growth, and at different stages of their own careers, have, for various reasons, and with widely varying purity of motive, headed or joined in separatist movements. Many of these men were actuated by high-minded, though narrow, patriotism; and those who, in the culminating catastrophe of all the separatist agitations, appealed to the sword, proved the sincerity of ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt

... stages of philosophy which I have attempted to characterize have never been found in purity. We always observe different methods of explanation existing side by side, and the type of a philosophy is determined by the prevailing characteristics of its explanation of phenomena. Fragments of the earlier are always found side by side with, the greater body of the later philosophy. Man has ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell

... it and our spiritual eyes a glass clouded with earthly murkiness, through which we now see darkly. Only as mankind grows in spiritual stature, and lifts his head above the clouds, can he hope to see the ray in all its purity and glory." ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson

... he read them again he understood them better. Yes, he could translate them. They were the farewells of a man tossed by a whirlwind of passionate remorseful grief. The child had been loved—her very purity had been loved while she had been destroyed and deceived. The writer poured forth heart-sick longing and heart-sick remorse. He had not at first meant to conceal from her that he was not a free man—then he had lost control ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... Does anybody remember The Voice? It was a weekly paper issued in the interest of prohibition. I doubt if we would have quarreled with it for this, but it denounced Yale and held up in contrast the purity of Oberlin. Oberlin! And therefore we hated it, and once a week we burned its issue in the stone ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks

... men of the Confederate Army were patriots of diamond purity, and all would have willingly died a martyr's death that ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... his private Character, viz., great cruelty to his Slaves in Virginia & Immorality of Life, tho' they acknowledge so very secret that it is difficult to detect. To me who have had so good opportunities to know the Purity of the latter & equally believing the Falsehood of the former from the known excellence of his disposition, it appears so nearly bordering upon frenzy, that I can pity the wretches rather than ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford



Words linked to "Purity" :   plainness, condition, virtue, pure, impure, honour, status, chastity, impurity, purify, sinlessness, cleanness, sexual morality



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