Untainted Quotes

A chord that becomes a melodious delusion,
In polar discrepancy from blue to yellow painted,
In yellow I existed, with digoxin's deadly illusion,
Like Van Gogh's stars in a bright night untainted. ~ Selina A. Mahmood

Because he's the one pure, beautiful thing untainted by ugliness," he repeated his same words from the shower. "And we love him for it. ~ Penelope Douglas

You're so kind, Kazuhiko. That's what I like about you."
I like you, too. I love you so much."
If he weren't so inarticulate, Kazuhiko could have said so much more. How much her expression, her gentle manner, her pure untainted soul meant to him. How important, in short, her existence was to him. But he wasn't able to put into words. He was only a third-year student in junior high, and worst yet, composition was one of his worst subjects. ~ Koushun Takami

But these men had become object lessons for me, men I might love but never emulate, white men and brown men whose fates didn't speak to my own. It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela. And if later I saw that the black men I knew - Frank or Ray or Will or Rafiq - fell short of such lofty standards; if I had learned to respect these men for the struggles they went through, recognizing them as my own - my father's voice had nevertheless remained untainted, inspiring, rebuking, granting or withholding approval. ~ Barack Obama

We can reach untainted experiential freedom, by living in the moment as it is - without contemplation. Here we find the possibility of freedom - of just being - living as our authentic self. We are our true nature. We are one and whole. ~ Jacqueline Simon Gunn

My love is my soul's imagination ...
how do I love you ... imagine. ~ Saul Williams

It has always been asked in the spirit of: 'What are the best sources of our knowledge – the most reliable ones, those which will not lead us into error, and those to which we can and must turn, in case of doubt, as the last court of appeal?' I propose to assume, instead, that no such ideal sources exist – no more than ideal rulers – and that all 'sources' are liable to lead us into errors at times. And I propose to replace, therefore, the question of the sources of our knowledge by the entirely different question: 'How can we hope to detect and eliminate error?' The question of the sources of our knowledge, like so many authoritarian questions, is a genetic one. It asks for the origin of our knowledge, in the belief that knowledge may legitimize itself by its pedigree. The nobility of the racially pure knowledge, the untainted knowledge, the knowledge which derives from the highest authority, if possible from God: these are the (often unconscious) metaphysical ideas behind the question. My modified question, 'How can we hope to detect error?' may be said to derive from the view that such pure, untainted and certain sources do not exist, and that questions of origin or of purity should not be confounded with questions of validity, or of truth. …. The proper answer to my question 'How can we hope to detect and eliminate error?' is I believe, 'By criticizing the theories or guesses of others and – if we can train ourselves to do so – by criticizing our own theories or guesses.' ~ Karl Popper

Rarely, rarely comest thou,
Spirit of Delight!
Wherefore hast thou left me now
Many a day and night?
Many a weary night and day
'Tis since thou art fled away.

How shall ever one like me
Win thee back again?
With the joyous and the free
Thou wilt scoff at pain.
Spirit false! thou hast forgot
All but those who need thee not.

As a lizard with the shade
Of a trembling leaf,
Thou with sorrow art dismayed;
Even the sighs of grief
Reproach thee, that thou art not near,
And reproach thou wilt not hear.

Let me set my mournful ditty
To a merry measure;--
Thou wilt never come for pity,
Thou wilt come for pleasure;
Pity then will cut away
Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay.

I love all that thou lovest,
Spirit of Delight!
The fresh Earth in new leaves dressed,
And the starry night;
Autumn evening, and the morn
When the golden mists are born.

I love snow and all the forms
Of the radiant frost;
I love waves, and winds, and storms,
Everything almost
Which is Nature's, and may be
Untainted by man's misery.

I love tranquil solitude,
And such society
As is quiet, wise, and good;
Between thee and me
What difference? but thou dost possess
The things I seek, not love them less.

I love Love--though he has wings,
And like light can flee,
B ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

I don't call it hate . . . I call it an awakening . . . you were the girl I chose, pure, loyal, untainted, an exemplary wife, and instead I get a schemer, plotting to pursue her own rotten ambition under the rubric of poetry . . . what a mockery, what a marriage. ~ Edna O'Brien

Finally, I must acknowledge the role my lovely wife Annie, to whom I have dedicated the book, played in its production. I had the good luck to have married a woman who is incredibly smart and whose sound intuitions are untainted by philosophy. The price she pays for this is that she is subjected to calls interrupting her own work in which I ask her things like: 'What's an example of a gesture that gives an instruction?' or 'Is the following sentence intuitively true: 'Jeff owns more surfboards than Napoleon'?' She handles this with remarkable grace and humor, while providing excellent answers. In addition, while I was working on the book, she bent over backwards to do things for me that would allow me more time to write at crucial junctures. This even before we were married! And finally, the love and support she gave me while I worked on this book were of incalculable value to me. My friends say she is too good for me. They're right ~ Anonymous

What seems certain is that Pythagoras developed the idea of mathematical logic ... He realized that numbers exist independently of the tangible world and therefore their study was untainted by inaccuracies of perception. This meant he could discover truths which were independent of opinion of prejudice and which were more absolute then any previous knowledge. ~ Simon Singh

The mother of goodwill is freewill, if untainted by evil. ~ Christian Hunt

The bleached ceilings, walls, and floors gleam in perfection. Drained of color, wiped of contamination, forever untainted they exist; a cold reminder of my purity. ~ Celeste Simone

I think she is marvelous. She is untouched by politics, unmarred and untainted. She is absolutely, brilliantly humble. Honest, hardworking. And it would be my honor that she accept to be my wife. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a country to govern and a woman to woo. ~ Katy Evans

Every living being longs always to be happy, untainted by sorrow; and everyone has the greatest love for himself, which is solely due to the fact that happiness is his real nature. Hence, in order to realize that inherent and untainted happiness, which indeed he daily experiences when the mind is subdued in deep sleep, it is essential that he should know himself. For obtaining such knowledge the inquiry 'Who am I?' in quest of the Self is the best means. ~ Ramana Maharshi

It only hurts us to love when we do so with expectation. And that's not really love, anyway. Love has no expectations, no qualifiers, no conditions. Love is pure, untouched by our mind's demands, untainted by our desperation and fear. Love can only be beautiful. It can only be divine. No, love doesn't hurt, not when it's real. Love empowers. It strengthens. It reminds us who we really are and why we're really here. Love, more than anything else in this entire world, heals us. ~ Scott Stabile

We both want this so badly. I can feel it resonating between us like the hot pull of our first attraction, tangible and intense. We want our marriage to be a haven of warmth and pleasure again. We want our pure lustiness back, untainted by fear and mistrust. We want the unending spirals of bliss we can create only with each other. We want to shut the rest of the world out while locking ourselves in together. We want to be united
in this pregnancy and impending parenthood. ~ Nina Lane

What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted! Thrice is he arm'd, that hath his quarrel just ... ~ William Shakespeare

The yogi should meditate on a firm seat, one that is clean - untainted by dirt or unspiritual vibrations of others. The thought or life force emanating from an individual saturates the objects he uses and his dwelling. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda

Fate looks at nothing. It has no discretion. He no longer considered it eminently desirable all round to establish publicly the identity of the man who had blown himself up that morning with such horrible completeness. But he was not certain of the view his department would take. A department is to those it employs a complex personality with ideas and even fads of its own. It depends on the loyal devotion of its servants, and the devoted loyalty of trusted servants is associated with a certain amount of affectionate contempt, which keeps it sweet, as it were. By a benevolent provision of Nature no man is a hero to his valet, or else the heroes would have to brush their own clothes. Likewise no department appears perfectly wise to the intimacy of its workers. A department does not know so much as some of its servants. Being a dispassionate organism, it can never be perfectly informed. It would not be good for its efficiency to know too much. Chief Inspector Heat got out of the train in a state of thoughtfulness entirely untainted with disloyalty, but not quite free of that jealous mistrust which so often springs on the ground of perfect devotion, whether to women or to institutions. ~ Joseph Conrad

Why is the half of humanity with a special sensitivity to the preciousness of life, the half untainted by testosterone poisoning, almost wholly unrepresented in defense establishments and peace negotiations worldwide? [blurb on Daniella Gioseffi's _Women on War_; quoted in Carol Lynn Pearson's _The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy_] ~ Carl Sagan

The co-presence of mind and object simply is not sufficient for an apprehension or comprehension of any object. Before one can seize an object, one must be equipped with a whole mass of sensitivities, concepts, expectations, background assumptions. A layman looking at a car engine just sees a jumble of metal objects and wires; a person who knows about car engines can immediately identify the parts and see their interconnection. Countless similar examples can be invoked: the capacity to perceive depends on the possession of the appropriate concepts. ... And here's the rub: the concepts, the anticipatory classifications and interpretations, contain theories which a) had to be discovered and built up by a long process, and b) may yet in the future turn out to be false. So even the purest of hearts, free of inner deception, will not perceive and understand an object unless endowed with proper intellectual equipment. Perception is never, so to speak, the innocent encounter of a pure mind with a naked object, and therefore capable of serving as an untainted foundation for an edifice of knowledge; perception is the encounter with some given element, which cannot be seized or isolated in its purity, but depends on a corpus of knowledge acquired up to that time, but open to revision in the future. ~ Ernest Gellner

The villager, born humbly and bred hard,
Content his wealth, and poverty his guard,
In action simply just, in conscience clear,
By guilt untainted, undisturb'd by fear,
His means but scanty, and his wants but few,
Labor his business, and his pleasure too,
Enjoys more comforts in a single hour
Than ages give the wretch condemn'd to power. ~ Charles Churchill

Stepping back and connecting reconciliation to God's story also helps us move away from dramatic visions of fixing the world, as if our job were to provide solutions to problems outside us. If Christians believe anything, it is that no one - including ourselves and the church - is separate from the brokenness as an untainted solution to the problems of our world. The new creation contends with the old. The dividing line between good and evil runs straight through each one of us. So the journey of reconciliation begins with a transformation of the human person. ~ Chris Rice

The kiss, dear maid ! thy lip has left

Shall never part from mine,

Till happier hours restore the gift

Untainted back to thine.


Thy parting glance, which fondly beams,

An equal love may see:

The tear that from thine eyelid streams

Can weep no change in me.


I ask no pledge to make me blest

In gazing when alone;

Nor one memorial for a breast,

Whose thoughts are all thine own.


Nor need I write --- to tell the tale

My pen were doubly weak:

Oh ! what can idle words avail,

Unless the heart could speak ?


By day or night, in weal or woe,

That heart, no longer free,

Must bear the love it cannot show,

And silent ache for thee. ~ George Gordon Byron

Why am I so dead set on her?
Because she's innocent, and I'm not.
Because she's wholesome, and I'm not.
Because she's untainted, and I'm not.
And most importantly of all, because she'll be so pretty when I make her cry. ~ Callie Hart

Man must vanquish himself, must do himself violence, in order to perform the slightest action untainted by evil. ~ Emile M. Cioran

There are schools of thought and political movements that seek to purge human culture of imperialism, leaving behind what they claim is a pure, authentic civilisation, untainted by sin. These ideologies are at best naive; at worst they serve as disingenuous window-dressing for crude nationalism and bigotry. Perhaps ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Maybe we don't ever feel that sweetly untainted and wholly majestic kind of love that takes every longing captive because we are hopelessly entangled in the illogical fear that despite all of love's grand goodness, it might not be good enough to keep us safe. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Our fated untainted soul gives us free reign, only doth backward pull our clouded minds when we ourselves falsely protect from pain. ~ Truth Devour

The novelist must look on humanity without partiality or prejudice. His sympathy, like that of the historian, must be unbounded, and untainted by sect or party. ~ Goldwin Smith

Keep breathing. Exhale all the hurt and sorrow, inhale the untainted air. ~ Mercedes Lackey

Limitlessness is the emotion that sunny mornings evoke in me now. A new appreciation for the present moment, untainted by the past or unknown future. ~ Kaleb Kilton

It's not black and white," he said. "If it were, I wouldn't be here right now, and neither would you. We're the gray area, angel. We're the pieces of the puzzle they don't know what to do with, the pieces that don't quite fit into their perfect little picture, so they choose to discard us, to keep their image untainted,but we can only be ignored for so long. ~ J.M. Darhower

The recommendation by the Arkansas Supreme Court Disciplinary Committee that President Clinton be disbarred is like a tender green shoot of integrity rising from the stinking junkyard of American public life. At last, some official body has come to a decision about Clinton's conduct that is untainted by politics, cowardice or cynicism. ~ Mona Charen

I never dealt with excessive body fur. But having barely made love to a tampon, my privates were truly untainted. ~ Maggie Young

Country picnics always sound nicer than they are. I think we should just have the idea of them, and be pleased with it, and then not go. The only true pleasures are indoors, artificial, and untainted with healthiness. ~ Jude Morgan

Beside her, Rich had gone very still. It was like he'd fallen into himself and was poised under the surface, waiting to come back. The part of Lou that read interactions like this - knew these things the way she knew how an engine worked - felt the urge to push, but this time she held back. She wanted to hear his untainted answer. ~ Danika Stone

My father's voice had nevertheless remained untainted, inspiring, rebuking, granting or withholding approval. 'You do not work hard enough, Barry. You must help in your people's struggle. Wake up, black man! ~ Barack Obama

Truth is irrefutable and untainted by bias. Sunrise, Abram, death: these are truths. ~ Nora Sakavic

In a nation distracted by faction, there are, no doubt, always a few, though commonly but a very few, who preserve their judgment untainted by the general contagion. They seldom amount to more than, here and there, a solitary individual, without any influence, excluded, by his own candour, from the confidence of either party, and who, though he may be one of the wisest, is necessarily, upon that very account, one of the most insignificant men in the society. ~ Adam Smith

No hemming or hawing, no hinting or manipulation, no sledgehammer–subtlety may hold us back from claiming a climate of transparency and capturing an untainted and luminescent skyline, when the boldness of the truth is coming defiantly to the fore. ("Did not expect it would ever happen there" ) ~ Erik Pevernagie

Consuming what is natural, good and untainted frees you, protects you, and realigns you with what is natural, peaceful and safe. ~ Bryant McGill

He is a demon, Clarissa," said Valentine, still in the same soft voice. "A demon with a man's face. I know how deceptive such monsters can be. Remember, I spared him once myself."
"Monster?" echoed Clary. She thought of Luke, Luke pushing her on the swings when she was five years old, higher, always higher; Luke at her graduation from middle school, camera clicking away like a proud father's; Luke sorting through each box of books as it arrived at his store, looking for anything she might like and putting it aside. Luke lifting her up to pull apples down from the trees near his farmhouse. Luke, whose place as her father this man was trying to take. "Luke isn't a monster," she said in a voice that matched Valentine's, steel for steel. "Or a murderer. You are."
"Clary!" It was Jace.
Clary ignored him. Her eyes were fixed on her father's cold black ones. "You murdered your wife's parents, not in battle but in cold blood," she said. "And I bet you murdered Michael Wayland and his little boy, too. Threw their bones in with my grandparents' so that my mother would think you and Jace were dead. Put your necklace around Michael Wayland's neck before you burned him so everyone would think those bones were yours. After all your talk about the untainted blood of the Clave - you didn't care at all about their blood or their innocence when you killed them, did you? Slaughtering old people and children in cold blood, that's monstrous. ~ Cassandra Clare

The truth was loose: I was the son of a son of a bitch, an ancestral prodigy born to clobber my way through loathsome dungheaps of idiot labor. My genes were cocked and loaded. I was a meteor, a gunslinger, a switchblade boomerang hurled from the pecker dribblets of my forefathers' untainted jalopy seed. I was Al Kaline peggin' home a beebee from the right field corner. I was Picasso applyin' the final masterstroke to his frenzied Guernica. I was Wilson Pickett stompin' up the stairway of the Midnight Hour. I was one blazin' tomahawk of m-fuggin' eel snot. Graceful and indomitable. Methodical and brain-dead. The quintessential shoprat. The Rivethead. ~ Ben Hamper

The angling fever is a very real disease and can only be cured by the application of cold water and fresh, untainted air. ~ Theodore Gordon

Nothing can produce so great a serenity of life as a mind free from guilt and kept untainted, not only from actions, but purposes that are wicked. By this means the soul will be not only unpolluted but also undisturbed. The fountain will run clear and unsullied. ~ Plutarch

Lalla Ruk
Dearest dream, my soul's enchantment
Lovely guest from heav'n above,
Most benevolent attender
To the earthly realm below,
You gave me blissful satisfaction
Momentary but complete:
Bringing with you happy tidings -
Like a herald from the skies.

I dreamed dreams of life eternal
In that Promised Land of peace;
I dreamed dreams of fragrant regions,
Of a tranquil, sweet Kashmir;
I could witness celebrations,
Festivals of roses vernal
Honoring that lovely maiden
From lands strange and far away.

And, with glistening enchantment
Like an angel from above, -
This untainted, youthful vision
Came before my dreaming eyes;
Like a veil, a shining shroud
Screened her lovely face from view,
Tenderly she did incline
Her shy gazes toward the earth.

All her traits - her timid shyness
Underneath her shining crown,
Childlike her animation,
And her face's noble beauty -
Glowing with a depth of feeling,
Sweet serenity and peace -
All of these completely artless
Indescribably sublime!

As I watched, the apparition
(Captivating me in passing)
Never to return, flew by;
I pursued - but it had gone!
T'was a vision merely fleeting,
Transient illumination
Leaving nothing but a legend
Of its passing through my life!

T'is not ours to harbor
Beauty's spirit - ~ Vasily Zhukovsky

We should seek neither to escape suffering nor to suffer less, but to remain untainted by suffering. ~ Simone Weil

She was what an aristocrat should be, porcelain and silk, unreachable, gracious, untainted by the dust of all this common death. ~ Tanith Lee