quotations about chastity
Chastity consists in a fixed abhorrence of all forbidden sensual indulgences, a recollection of past impurities with shame and sorrow; a resolute guard over our thoughts, passions, and actions for the future; a steady abstinence from the distant approaches of evil desires and indecency.
REV. J. BEAUMONT
attributed, Day's Collacon
I call not that virginity a virtue, which resideth only in the bodies integrity; much less if it be with a purpose of perpetually keeping it: for then it is a most inhumane vice. - But I call that Virginity a virtue which is willing and desirous to yield itself upon honest and lawful terms, when just reason requireth; and until then, is kept with a modest chastity of body and mind.
JOHN DONNE
Paradoxes and Problemes
She stands and moves within the invisible pentacle of her own virginity. She is an unbroken egg: she is a sealed vessel; she has inside her a magic space the entrance to which is shut tight with a plug of membrane; she is a closed system; she does not know how to shiver.
ANGELA CARTER
The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories
Release yourself upon me
Free the hounds of chastity
K.D. LANG
"Sexuality"
My poor belated chastity fell foul
Of grown up games
ELVIS COSTELLO
"Little Atoms"
The price the Virgin demanded was purity, and the way the educators of Catholic children have interpreted this for nearly two thousand years is sexual chastity. Impurity, we were taught, follows from many sins, but all are secondary to the principal impulse of the devil in the soul--lust.
MARINA WARNER
Alone of All Her Sex
Chastity--you can carry it too far.
MARK TWAIN
speech at the dedication of the New York Engineers' Club, Dec. 9, 1907
You can put a chastity belt around the body, but you cannot put it around the mind.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips and Quotes
An untempted woman cannot boast of her chastity.
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
Essays
There are few virtuous women who are not bored with their trade.
FRANCOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULT
Maxims and Moral Reflections
Nothing makes a woman more esteemed by the opposite sex than chastity; whether it be that we always prize those most who are hardest to come at, or that nothing besides chastity, with its collateral attendants, truth, fidelity, and constancy, gives a man a property in the person he loves, and consequently endears her to him above all things.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, Jun. 23, 1711
Of all the sexual aberrations, chastity is the strangest.
ANATOLE FRANCE
Heretic's Handbook of Quotations
Chastity is the cement of civilization and progress. Without it there is no stability in society, and without it one cannot attain the Science of Life.
MARY BAKER EDDY
Science and Health
Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc. In a word, God paints in many colours; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.
G. K. CHESTERTON
Tremendous Trifles
There is no chastity so agreeable to God as a faithful marriage.
IZARN
attributed, Day's Collacon
Chastity without charity is a lamp without oil.
SAINT BONAVENTURE
The Life of Christ
Many a girl will fight for her honor until the man is just about ready to give up.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
Celibacy, like the fly in the heart of an apple, dwells in perpetual sweetness, but sits alone, and is confined and dies in singularity.
JEREMY TAYLOR
The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor
My chastity's the jewel of our house,
Bequeathed down from many ancestors.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
All's Well That Ends Well
Chastity is the seal of grace.
LADY HUNTINGTON
attributed, Day's Collacon