"I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"I use to be Snow White, but I drifted."
— Mae West

"Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: But a woman who fears the Lord,
She shall be praised."
— Proverbs 31:30

"Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"I am too pure for you or anyone"
— Sylvia Plath (The Bell Jar)

"Who can find a virtuous woman?
For her price is far above rubies."
— Proverbs 31.10

"The most professional curse ever snarled or croaked or thundered can have no effect on a pure heart."
— Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn)

"Alec looked at her and shook his head. "How do you manage never to get mud on your clothes?"

Isabelle shrugged philosophically. "I'm pure at heart. It repels the dirt.""
— Cassandra Clare (City of Ashes)

"The child's laughter is pure until he first laughs at a clown."
— Angela Carter (Nights at the Circus)

"Queen of my tub, I merrily sing,
While the white foam rises high,
And sturdily wash, and rinse, and wring,
And fasten the clothes to dry;
Then out in the free fresh air they swing,
Under the sunny sky.

I wish we could wash from our hearts and our souls
The stains of the week away,
And let water and air by their magic make
Ourselves as pure as they;
Then on the earth there would be indeed
A glorious washing-day!

Along the path of a useful life
Will heart's-ease ever bloom;
The busy mind has no time to think
Of sorrow, or care, or gloom;
And anxious thoughts may be swept away
As we busily wield a broom.

I am glad a task to me is given
To labor at day by day;
For it brings me health, and strength, and hope,
And I cheerfully learn to say-
"Head, you may think; Heart, you may feel;
But Hand, you shall work always!"
— Louisa May Alcott (Little Women)

""[T]he astonishing purity of pain, how it will not be mixed with any other sensation.""
— Charles Baxter

"The price of purity is purists."
— Calvin Trillin

"The desirable virgin is sexy but not sexual. She's young, white, and skinny. She's a cheerleader, a babysitter; she's accessible and eager to please (remember those ethics of passivity!). She's never a woman of color. SHe's never a low-income girl or a fat girl. She's never disabled. "Virgin" is a designation for those who meet a certain standard of what women, especially young women, are supposed to look like. As for how these young women are supposed to act? A blank slate is best."
— Jessica Valenti (The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women)

"And it is you, spirit--with will and energy, and virtue and purity--that I want, not alone with your brittle frame."
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

"The way to preserve the peace of the church is to preserve its purity."
— Matthew Henry

"FOr women especially, virginity has become the easy answer- the morality quick fix. You can be vapid, stupid, and unethical, but so long as you've never had sex, you're a "good" (i.e. "moral) girl and therefore worthy of praise."
— Jessica Valenti (The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women)

"This is my real bed-rock objection to the eastern systems. They decry all manly virtue as dangerous and wicked, and they look upon Nature as evil. True enough, everything is evil relatively to Adonai; for all stain is impurity. A bee's swarm is evil — inside one's clothes. "Dirt is matter in the wrong place." It is dirt to connect sex with statuary, morals with art.
Only Adonai, who is in a sense the True Meaning of everything, cannot defile any idea. This is a hard saying, though true, for nothing of course is dirtier than to try and use Adonai as a fig-leaf for one's shame.
To seduce women under the pretense of religion is unutterable foulness; though both adultery and religion are themselves clean. To mix jam and mustard is a messy mistake."
— Aleister Crowley (Aleister Crowley and the Practice of the Magical Diary)

"Had he learned nothing from all those years of teaching Hawthorne? Through story after story he’d led his boys to consider the folly of obsession with purity – its roots sunk deep in pride, flowering condemnation and violence against others and self."
— Tobias Wolff