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Chastity   Listen
noun
Chastity  n.  
1.
The state of being chaste; purity of body; freedom from unlawful sexual intercourse. "She... hath preserved her spotless chastity."
2.
Moral purity. "So dear to heaven is saintly chastity, That, when a soul is found sicerely so A thousand liveried angels lackey her."
3.
The unmarried life; celibacy. (Obs.)
4.
(Literature & Art) Chasteness.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Chastity" Quotes from Famous Books



... there a wood nymph passed her quiet days; she was extremely beautiful, and charmed all that beheld her; her looks, her mien, and her behaviour had something of more than human; and indeed she was the daughter of a Dryad, and of a sylvan god. Her chastity and devotion equalled her beauty, she was perfectly resigned to the will of heaven, and never undertook any thing without having first implored our assistance; her heart was pure, and her hands ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton

... honour and virtue: and although she would sooner die than deserve that her modesty should be drawn into question; yet she will think no truth immodest that is to be uttered in the vindicated cause of innocence and chastity. Little, very little difference is there, my dear young lady, between a suppressed evidence, ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson

... copying books. The monk was not permitted to own anything in his own right; he pledged himself to perpetual and absolute poverty, and everything he used was the property of the convent. Along with the vows of obedience and poverty, he also took that of chastity, which bound him never to marry. For not only was the single life considered more holy than the married, but the monastic organization would, of course, have been impossible unless the monks remained single. Aside from these restrictions, the monks were commanded ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... 12. CHASTITY. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dulness, weakness, or the injury of your own ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin

... strength, and fear. Furthermore the three divine virtues: faith, hope and charity. The four cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. The eight beatitudes according to Matt. 5, 3ff. The twelve counsels: poverty, obedience, chastity, love of enemies, meekness, abundant mercy, simplicity of words, not too much care for temporal things, correct purpose and simplicity of deeds, harmony of doctrine and works, fleeing the cause of sin, brotherly admonition. Finally also ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... together, that is to say the quest of the Sangreal. The earthly knights were they the which were clothed all in black, and the covering betokeneth the sins whereof they be not confessed. And they with the covering of white betokeneth virginity, and they that chose chastity. And thus was the quest begun in them. Then thou beheld the sinners and the good men, and when thou sawest the sinners overcome, thou inclinest to that party for bobaunce and pride of the world, and all that must be left in that quest, for in this quest thou shalt have many fellows and thy ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... son of Othra and Neptune, and king of the Athenians; and having married Hippolyta, one of the Amazons, he begat Hippolytus, who excelled in beauty and chastity. When his wife died, he married, for his second wife, Phaedra, a Cretan, daughter of Minos, king of Crete, and Pasiphae. Theseus, in consequence of having slain Pallas, one of his kinsmen, goes into banishment, with his wife, to Troezene, where it happened that Hippolytus was being brought up ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides

... Chastity, Jack, like piety, is an uniform thing. If in look, if in speech, a girl give way to undue levity, depend upon it the devil has got one of his cloven feet in her heart already—so, Hickman, take care of thyself, I advise thee, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson

... faith, the practice of which is strictly forbidden in Russia, entails a life of absolute chastity. This sect can only acquire new members by election, since both sexes so mutilate their persons that they can neither beget nor ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... the other, an arrangement certainly unfavourable to private or particular conversation. These daughters of the sun should, however, neither be censured nor wondered at, if found indulging in pleasures against which even the constitutions of colder regions are not proof. If frozen chastity be not always found among the children of ice and snow, can she be looked for among the inhabitants of climates where frost was never felt? Yet heartily should she be welcomed wherever she may be found, and doubly prized ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... stuffs gives to their pictures; if to these we add their total inattention to expression, and then reflect on the conceptions and the learning of Michael Angelo, or the simplicity of Raffaelle, we can no longer dwell on the comparison. Even in colouring, if we compare the quietness and chastity of the Bolognese pencil to the bustle and tumult that fills every part of, a Venetian picture, without the least attempt to interest the passions, their boasted art will appear a mere struggle without effect; an empty tale told by an idiot, full of sound ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds

... on the part of a man so accomplished and a husband originally at least so tender. But there were certain things she could never take in. To begin with, they were hideously unclean. She was not a daughter of the Puritans, but for all that she believed in such a thing as chastity and even as decency. It would appear that Osmond was far from doing anything of the sort; some of his traditions made her push back her skirts. Did all women have lovers? Did they all lie and even the best have their price? Were there ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James

... in the midst of usurpation, where law is suspended and individual license is the standard authority; where criminals and suspected criminals are turned over to the rude mercy of mobs, masked and irresponsible; where caste corrupts every rivulet that issues from the fountain of aspiration or of chastity;[13] where no man is allowed to think or act for himself who does not conform his thoughts and shape his actions to suit the censorious and haughty dictum of ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune

... me their struggles, and I know of others who even suffered death rather than submit to the outrage of chastity. One poor mother with three beautiful baby girls, driven to despair by realizing their probable doom if allowed to live, sent them back to the God who gave them and then took ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 1, January, 1889 • Various

... women, mewing, (Like cats, who amant misere,) Of their own virtue, and pursuing Their gentler sisters to that ruin, 185 Without which—what were chastity?(2) ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... effect; for the Roman procurator immediately took possession of the whole, and when Boadicea, the widow of the deceased, attempted to remonstrate, he ordered her to be scourged like a slave, and violated the chastity of her daughters. These outrages were sufficient to produce a revolt through the whole island. The Iceni, being the most deeply interested in the quarrel, were the first to take arms; all the other states soon followed the example, and Boadicea, a woman of great beauty and masculine ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... meant to preserve our personal purity, and to guard the holy estate of marriage. It forbids adultery and all impurity. It commands chastity and purity in thought, ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump

... one say, "on my father, for making me marry when a girl, an old sapless stump, whose work in raising desires which he could not gratify has driven me hither." "A thousand curses on my parents," would another say, "for sending me to a cloister to learn chastity; they would not have done worse in sending me to a roundhead to learn generosity, or to a quaker to learn manners, than to a papist to learn honor." "Destruction," said another, "seize my mother for ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne

... have been called the Bible of the Greeks, and children early learned extracts from the works of the great poet, Homer. The Spartan mother was highly respected by her husband and her children, and she was noted for her chastity and nobility of character. She entered fully into the Spartan idea, and cheerfully gave her sons to her country, while she often inspired them to deeds of bravery and patriotism. The lofty and self-sacrificing patriotism of the Spartan ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley

... of saintly representatives serving as active leaders, no man can give himself the title of swami. He rightfully receives it only from another swami; all monks thus trace their spiritual lineage to one common guru, Lord Shankara. By vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience to the spiritual teacher, many Catholic Christian monastic orders resemble the Order ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... is really alluding to the "enforced chastity" of Dian (the moon). The poets ignore that little Endymion ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... us join her, heart and hand—let us take our stand for chastity and morality," Edith earnestly resumed. "Let us pledge ourselves never to admit within our doors any man who bears the reputation of being immoral, or who lightly esteems the purity of any woman, however humble; while, on the other hand, let ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... innumerable lies and calumnies had been forged against the venerable Jesus, none had dared to charge him with an intemperance." (Or. Ep. Cels. 1. 3, num. 36, ed. Bened.) Not a reflection upon his moral character, not an imputation or suspicion of any offence against purity and chastity, appears for five hundred years after his birth. This faultlessness is more peculiar than we are apt to imagine. Some stain pollutes the morals or the morality of almost every other teacher, and of every other lawgiver.* Zeno ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley

... out of the system of metaphysical errors I have roughly analyzed in my first Book, out of the inherent tendency of the mind to make the relative absolute and to convert quantitative into qualitative differences. Our minds fall very readily under the spell of such unmitigated words as Purity and Chastity. Only death beyond decay, absolute non-existence, can be Pure and Chaste. Life is impurity, fact is impure. Everything has traces of alien matter; our very health is dependent on parasitic bacteria; the purest blood in the ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... her protegee in the skimped delaine, for which the "trifling alterations" and the "little cleaning" had done wonders,—and Madeline was, as it were, "clothed on with chastity." And Miss Wimple was jubilant over the charming effect, and "went on" in a manner surprising to behold. First she kissed Madeline, and then she kissed the dress; and she told Madeline, in a small torrent of triumph, what a tremendous fellow of a skimped delaine ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various

... root has a human shape. 'If a hereditary thief who has preserved his chastity gets hung,' the broad-leafed, yellow-flowered mandrake grows up, in his likeness, beneath the gallows from which he is suspended. The mandrake, like the moly, the magical herb of the Odyssey, is 'hard for men to dig.' He who desires to possess a mandrake must stop his ears ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang

... less your chastity, however unusual, has proved a barren virtue. For what have you made of a year of youth? Why, each thing that every man of forty-odd by ordinary regrets having done, you have done again, only more swiftly, compressing ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... their employments, to a constant weekly attendance, at least, on the service of the church; to a decent behaviour in it; to receive the Sacrament four times in the year; to avoid swearing and irreligious profane discourses; and, to the appearance, at least, of temperance and chastity? Might not the care of all this be committed to the strict inspection of proper persons? Might not those of higher rank, and nearer access to her Majesty's person, receive her own commands to the same purpose, and be countenanced, or disfavoured, according as they obey? Might not the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... condition. Many choose it from motives of economy, from timidity, or as a religious step, pleasing to God. The latter is a notion which probably arose from a belief that, somehow, celibacy, strictly observed, means chastity. It simply means continence. The chastest persons have been, and are, not the virgins and celibates, but the married. When this truth is known better, we shall have fewer ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... till Time and Ill-luck make us Lovers; and ask you the Question first, rather than put your Modesty to the blush, by asking me: for alas, I know you Captains are such strict Men, severe Observers of your Vows to Chastity, that 'twill be hard to prevail with your tender Conscience to marry ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... discordant drums and shrinking their laments for the loss of Atys, the beautiful youth, their goddess's paramour. Infidelity again!—even in this ancient legend, what did Cybele care for old Saturn, whose wife she was? Nothing, less than nothing!—and her adorers worshiped not her chastity, but her faithlessness; it is the way of ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... socialism appeared as the very antithesis of law and order, of love and chastity, and of religion itself. It was a tainted creed. There was blood upon its hands and bloody menace in its thoughts. It was a thing to be stamped out, to be torn up by the roots. The very soil in which it grew must be burned out with ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock

... business, not a jest. Out of five hundred who speak glibly of love, not one can spell the first letter of his name. With such it is idleness, or fulness of bread, or fancy, masking in the guise of love. Love requires of his servants chastity in thought, in word and in deed. If one of two lovers is loyal, and the other jealous and false, how may their friendship last, for Love is slain! But sweetly and discreetly love passes from person to person, from heart to heart, ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France

... I've done enough to satisfy thy Jealousy. Here, take your set of Jewels back again; [Gives a Box. Upon my Life Clarina is all Chastity. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn

... control. She had learned Greek and Latin to help the boys with their home-work and had trained their characters in an austere school of aggressive Puritanism. If she were a little intolerant, at least she reared her children to a lofty sense of honour, a cold chastity of life and speech and a fierce refusal to compromise where truth or personal reputation was concerned. Thanks to her, three boys and one girl were now able to fend for themselves; Sybil, factotum and amanuensis to her father ever since she had learned to read, could support herself ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna

... their tribes having both male and female slaves, the Shoshone wife is not broken down by hard labour, as are the squaws of the eastern tribes; to their husbands they are most faithful, and I really believe that any attempt upon their chastity would prove unavailing. They ride as bravely as the men, and are very expert with the bow and arrow, I once saw a very beautiful little Shoshone girl, about ten years old, the daughter of a chief, when her horse was at full speed, kill, with her bow and arrow, in the course of a minute or two, ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... that by man's laws salt is to be accounted most sacred. And this difficulty was increased by the customs of the Egyptian priests, who professing chastity eat no salt, no, not so much as in their bread. For if it be divine and holy, why should ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... Poverty and Obedience; which vows, especially the former, it is said, they observe with great strictness; nay, as I have understood it, they are pledged, and be it by any solemn Nazarene ordination or not, irrevocably consecrated thereto, even before birth. That the third Monastic Vow, of Chastity, is rigidly enforced among them, I find ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... too, is extremely spirited in all its characters; Arbaces holds up a mirror to all men of virtuous principles but violent passions. Hence he is, as it were, at once magnanimity and pride, patience and fury, gentleness and rigor, chastity and incest, and is one of the finest mixtures of virtues and vices that any poet ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... death. Let woman beware that her influence is of the purest and highest; let her spiritual nature be so attractive that man will be drawn toward it. Forever "the eternal womanly draweth man" onward and upward. Soul unity will become the rule when the same chastity and purity are demanded of the sexes alike. Woman's chastity is never secure as long as there are two standards ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... was spreading in western Europe in Augustine's time, and the monkist vows included "chastity". There followed a long struggle to force the whole priesthood to adopt a celibate life, and this finally succeeded so far as repeated decrees of the Church could effect it. Marriage was proper for ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson

... sentimentalist and every observer with a straight eye—namely, that in all the various classes of young women in our cities who support, or partly support, themselves in vocations which bring them into personal contact with men, female chastity is a vanishing tradition. In the lives of the "main and general" of these, all those considerate which have their origin in personal purity, and cluster about it, and are its signs and safeguards, have almost ceased ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... Lacedaemonians, epitaphs were only allowed to men who died bravely in battle; and to women, who were remarkable for their chastity. The Romans often erected monuments to illustrious persons whilst living, which were preserved with great veneration after their decease. In this country, according to Sir Henry Chauncy, "Any person may erect a tomb, sepulchre, or monument for the deceased in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 332, September 20, 1828 • Various

... perpetual symbol of the degradation and sinfulness of man. Herself the supreme type of vice, she is ultimately the most efficient guardian of virtue. But for her the unchallenged purity of countless happy homes would be polluted, and not a few who, in the pride of their untempted chastity, think of her with an indignant shudder, would have known the agony of remorse and despair. She remains while creeds and civilisations rise and fall, the eternal priestess of humanity, blasted for the sins of ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden

... results in striking contrast to the farce of materialization: the one produces the results of chastity and purity, the other the downward tendencies and earthward gravitation of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the will of the master, for the moral government of God: that it annihilates the rights of conscience; debars from the enjoyment of religious rights and privileges by specific enactments; and enjoins disobedience to the Divine lawgiver: that it discourages purity and chastity, encourages crime, legalizes concubinage; and, while it places the slave entirely in the hands of his master, provides no real protection for his life or ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... enemy trod me down, and seduced me, for that I was easy to be seduced. Neither did the mother of my flesh (who had now fled out of the centre of Babylon, yet went more slowly in the skirts thereof as she advised me to chastity, so heed what she had heard of me from her husband, as to restrain within the bounds of conjugal affection (if it could not be pared away to the quick) what she felt to be pestilent at present and for the future dangerous. ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine

... inserted, though forced to compound for a heap of irony that related to the antiquity of her family, and for many unintelligible allusions to vulgar stories which the Ghibelline party had treasured up against the Guelfs. The most lucid part of the epistle pronounced a sentence of eternal chastity on Azora, not without some sarcastic expressions against the promiscuous amours of Orondates, which ought in common decorum to have banished him long ago from the mansion of a ...
— Hieroglyphic Tales • Horace Walpole

... without noble traits, among which a chastity rare for the time, and a liberality and beneficence bordering on wastefulness were prominent. Many of his laws and regulations breathed the spirit of Christian justice and humanity, promoted the elevation of the female sex, improved the condition of slaves ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... heart of England was sound the while. The national spirit of enterprise was not dead in any class, from knight to shipman; and faithfulness and chastity in woman were still esteemed the highest though not the universal virtues of her sex. The value of such evidence as the mind of a great poet speaking in his works furnishes for a knowledge of the times to which he belongs is inestimable. For it shows us what has survived, as well as what ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... chess, but even from having a chess-board in their house." Who could believe, that while half the ceremonies of religion consisted in the grossest buffoonery, a prince preferred death rather than cure himself by a remedy which offended his chastity! Louis VIII. being dangerously ill, the physicians consulted, and agreed to place near the monarch while he slept a young and beautiful lady, who, when he awoke, should inform him of the motive which had conducted her to him. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... table, swinging his legs to and fro, and big with all the reflected importance of a billet-doux. There stood the pert haberdasher, with his box of silver-fringed gloves, and lace which Diana might have worn. At that time there was indeed no enemy to female chastity like the former article of man-millinery: the delicate whiteness of the glove, the starry splendour of the fringe, were irresistible, and the fair Adorna, in poor Lee's tragedy of "Caesar Borgia," is far from the only lady who has been killed by ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... demonstrated from the adventure of the Yanguesian carriers) proceeded from no bodily defect or cause whatsoever, but from the temperance and orderly current of his blood.—And let me tell you, Madam, there is a great deal of very good chastity in the world, in behalf of which you could not say more for ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... undertone. All scurrility, jests, and idle words were to be avoided; and after any foolish saying, the repetition of the Lord's Prayer was enjoined. All professed knights were to wear white garments, both in summer and winter, as emblems of chastity. The esquires and retainers were required to wear black or, in provinces where that coloured cloth could not be procured, brown. No gold or silver was to be used in bridles, breastplates, or spears, and if ever that furniture was given them in charity, it was to be discoloured to prevent an appearance ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... shadow of that worthless man who had spurned her love and flouted her to a chance comer in his drunken delirium. It was too bitter to bear. How could God lightly lay such a burden on his shoulders who had all his life tried to walk in sobriety and chastity and in all worthy and manly ways! It was unfair! It was unfair! If he could do anything for her? Anything! Anything! . . . And so the unending whirl of ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... before that happened—" We told her to keep to the point. "Well," she resumed, "when Professor Hobkin was out, I examined his life work, an edition of Sappho. It's a queer looking book, six or seven inches thick, not all by Sappho. Oh, no. Most of it is a defence of Sappho's chastity, which some German had denied, and I can assure you the passion with which these two gentlemen argued, the learning they displayed, the prodigious ingenuity with which they disputed the use of some implement which looked to me for all the world like a ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf

... concerned, except where old men, like "Aspen," "Frederick II." &c. occur, and all such parts found an excellent representative in an American actor, called Placide. Descended of a long line of talented players, he possesses a natural talent I have rarely seen surpassed, together with a chastity and simplicity of style that would do credit to the best school of comedy; yet he has never been away from his own country. I trust the model may not be lost on those ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... and the ignominious lashes which they had formerly received were washed away in the blood of the guilty or obnoxious families. The matrons and virgins of Rome were exposed to injuries more dreadful, in the apprehension of chastity, than death itself; and the ecclesiastical historian has selected an example of female virtue for the admiration ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... have shown, where the men are naked and the women covered, clothing is regarded as a sort of disgrace, and men can only with difficulty be persuaded to adopt it. Before marriage a woman was often free, and not bound to chastity, and at the same time was often naked; after marriage she was clothed, and no longer free. To the husband's mind, the garment appears—illogically, though naturally—a moral and physical protection against any attack on his property.[53] ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... the post. Tradition had it that the track was worn by night raiders, bearing contraband fluids from store to barracks in the days before such traffic was killed by that common sense promoter of temperance, soberness and chastity—the post exchange. Along that bluff line, from the storehouse toward the hospital, invisible, doubtless, from either building or from the bluff itself, but thrown in sharp relief against that rectangular inlet of starry sky, two black figures, crouching ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... men, and a certain infliction on women, not, however, from religious motives, but to guard against the consequences of a disease not uncommon among them. The infliction upon women is the result of infidelity, or a sacrifice of chastity to loose gratification. As a preliminary, they retire to the bunda, or penitentiary, and are there secluded from all sexual intercourse. When the season of penitence is over, the operation is performed by the rude application of two stones, fashioned ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry

... with (R. L. Stevenson never said a wiser thing than that the end must be the necessary result of, and as it were foretold in, the beginning), he has lessened if not wholly destroyed the jar of the situation by (most unusually and considering the mad chastity-worship of the time rather audaciously) associating the deserted wife directly with the Saint's "gustation ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... disrespectfully of his rival's art. He claimed for his own portraits greater purity of look and style. 'The ladies of Lawrence,' he said, 'show a gaudy dissoluteness of taste, and sometimes trespass on moral as well as professional chastity.' This was purposed to be a terrible blow to Lawrence. Of course there was plenty of repetition of the remark, and people laughed over it a good deal. But in the end it injured Hoppner rather than Lawrence. ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... he is the most evil man in all the world; and they parade him in their pulpits, attempting to ascertain and publish what belongs to God alone alone—[asking] whether the continence of the governor and his endeavor not to furnish a bad example, is the virtue of chastity, or the fault of nature. These things, Sire, are taught here in the pulpits by the Dominican friars. The guardian of St. Francis said publicly in the pulpit of the cathedral church (because the computer of accounts had presented an account against ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Various

... could see my face," she said, again with a chuckle, "I would grimace amen. I'm so sick of tending inert human flesh that ... well, I'm glad they're only women and girls, because if I also had to massage and inject men I'd take a vow of chastity!" ...
— The Burning Bridge • Poul William Anderson

... health in school and college. Other things equal, intelligent, cultured, educated people enjoy the best health. There is for the same reason a very intimate relation between health and morals. A house divided against itself can not stand. Intemperance, violation of chastity, and vice of all kinds are discordant notes in the human economy which tend to destroy the great harmony of life. The body is but a servant of the mind. A well-balanced, cultured, and well-disciplined ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... uncleanness of my life. For it is well known, methinks, that philosophers, and still more those who have devoted their lives to arousing the love of sacred study, have been strong above all else in the beauty of chastity. ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard

... many scandals in the matter of chastity, not sparing any woman, whatever may be her rank or condition; and he keeps some worthless women who serve as procuresses for conveying to him those whose society will give him most pleasure. In this scandal the zeal ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various

... This innocent enjoyment lost, the normal desires seek abnormal satisfactions. The most brutal prize-fighter is compelled to recognize the connection between purity and vigor, and becomes virtuous when he goes into training, as the heroes of old observed chastity, in hopes of conquering at the Olympic Games. The very word ascetic comes from a Greek word signifying the preparatory exercises of an athlete. There are spiritual diseases which coil poisonously among ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... these thoughts. The real truth is that they have lost their faith, and that they do not love one another; ambition, anger, envy and even hatred, drive away internal peace; and corruption begins to filter in under these other sins; a sign of a deeper decadence now begins to show itself, for chastity has been lost. That which is, par excellence, the standard of Christianity, the sign of respect for life, the consecration of the purity which leads to eternal life, has been overthrown together with faith. The love of man is not compatible ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori

... of the higher order, one elevated thought, or philosophical deduction, marked his numerous writings. 'No garden-flower grew wild' in the narrow field of his imagination; and, although the words decency and chastity were continually dropping from his lips, I suspect that the reverse of these qualities was always settled round his heart.[80] Thus you see, my dear Philemon," concluded Lysander, "that the love of paradox, of carelessness, and ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... he holds; doing a steady trade of two assassinations or abductions weekly; and utterly inviolable by cord, shot, or steel, up to the final blue-fire tableau of the dreary drama. I believe that my mate is now prepared to admit, that a certain amount of piety and chastity is not incompatible with tenure of the highest dignities in the Anglican Church—that a youth need not necessarily be a savage Sybarite, because he happens to be heir to a dukedom—that matronly virtue ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... had foreseen finally came to pass. She became enceinte. Then, filled with an unspeakable happiness, she locked her door every night when she retired, vowing herself from henceforth to eternal chastity, in gratitude to the vague ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... point he not merely proved his artistic ingenuity, but gave dramatic dignity and moral elevation to a degraded and repellent theme. In the old versions Isabella yields her virtue as the price of her brother's life. The central fact of Shakespeare's play is Isabella's inflexible and unconditional chastity. Other of Shakespeare's alterations, like the Duke's abrupt proposal to marry Isabella, seem hastily conceived. But his creation of the pathetic character of Mariana 'of the moated grange'—the legally affianced bride of Angelo, Isabella's would-be ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... may have this one, Captain Plum. It will surely interest you. In it I have set forth the troubles existing between my own people and the cyprian-rotted criminals that infest Mackinac and the mainland and have described our struggle for chastity and honor against these human vultures. It was published two years ago. But conditions are different to-day. Now—now I am king, and the oppressors in the filth of their crime ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood

... them. He did not dream how ardent and masculine his gaze was, nor that the warm flame of it was affecting the alchemy of her spirit. Her penetrative virginity exalted and disguised his own emotions, elevating his thoughts to a star-cool chastity, and he would have been startled to learn that there was that shining out of his eyes, like warm waves, that flowed through her and kindled a kindred warmth. She was subtly perturbed by it, and more than once, though she knew not why, it disrupted ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... grudging, but the moment you feel you love me no more, don't pollute your own body by yielding it up to a man you have ceased to desire; don't do injustice to your own prospective children by giving them a father whom you no longer respect, or admire, or yearn for. Guard your chastity well. Be mine as much as you will, as long as you will, to such extent as you will, but before all things be your own; embrace and follow every instinct of pure love that nature, our mother, has imparted within you." No woman, in turn, ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen

... idiot I met mooning about inside his high collar, attended by a valet. He condescended to tell me that "you can't be too careful who you talk to in these parts." And stalked on, fearing, I suppose, every minute for his social chastity. ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling

... such oaths as theirs, were fit to be made soldiers? That wretches brought out of the temple of obscenity could be trusted with arms? That those contaminated with the foul debaucheries of these meetings should be the champions for the chastity of the wives and children of the Roman people?" "Let us now closely examine how far the Eleusinian and Bacchanalian feasts resembled the Christian Agapae—whether the latter, modified and altered a little according to the change ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... who openly reject the rigid constraints of such a life, and who seek to share the rank of the gods, seem to lose all self-restraint when they put off the veil: like Ishtar, they exchange a life of severe chastity for the lowest debauchery, and they subject their followers to the same irregular life which they themselves have led. "Every woman born in the country must enter once during her lifetime the enclosure of the temple of Aphrodite, must there sit down and unite herself to a stranger. Many who ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... religious men and women did ordinarily make three vows, to wit, those of chastity, poverty, and obedience, it was therefore constituted and appointed that in this convent they might be honourably married, that they might be rich, and live at liberty. In regard of the legitimate time of the persons to be ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... and influence of the double monastery in England may perhaps be better understood by a reference to the position of women generally in Anglo-Saxon society. Nothing astonished the Romans more than the austere chastity of the Germanic women, and the religious respect paid by men to them, and nowhere has their influence been more fully recognised or more enduring than among the Anglo-Saxons. This fact largely accounts for the extreme importance attached by them to marriage alliances, particularly those between ...
— Early Double Monasteries - A Paper read before the Heretics' Society on December 6th, 1914 • Constance Stoney

... and the history of the Church is the record of a struggle against idleness and corruption. To shave a man's head, give him a new name, and clothe him in strange garments, does not change his nature. Monks grown rich and powerful will become idle, and the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience are then mere ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... above the usual vows of poverty, chastity, remaining in the cloister, obedience, they make a further vow of separation and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, as ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... surrounded their love, gave her, too, a little happiness, and drew her out of the dumb despair into which she had fallen. Since she had thus watched over them she had begun to look like her old self, with her little white face, the face of a nun vowed to chastity; her calm ash-colored eyes, which expressed the resignation of her thirty years of servitude. When, after the eternal potatoes and the little cutlet at four sous, undistinguishable among the vegetables, ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola

... tears to move From marble pillars. The catastrophe Shall show you fair Matilda's tragedy, Who (shunning John's pursuit) became a nun, At Dunmow[247] Abbey, where she constantly Chose death to save her spotless chastity. Take but my word, and if I fail in this, Then let my pains be baffled with ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... religious quality, of the alleged most sacred sort. He instances saintly women who have lived the most ascetic lives, and whose religious status was achieved because, and by means of, their perfect chastity. In fact, this word "chastity" (which he translates as entire renunciation of the whole sex nature) becomes the test word of his whole treatise, and its practice is upheld as the true road to all goodness ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long

... has proved the "unfaithful one." Though she is immured in the convent, it was only harsh relatives and "the unhappy consequences of our love and your disgrace" that made her put on the habit of chastity. She is not penitent for the past. At one moment she is swayed by the sentiment of piety, and next moment she yields up her imagination to all that is amorous and tender. "Among those who are wedded to God I am wedded to a man; among the heroic supporters of the Cross I am the slave of a human ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... substantially the same everywhere. The candidate was asked what he desired, and on replying that he desired admission to the order of the Knights of the Temple, he was warned of the strict and severe life that was demanded of members of the order; of the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience; and, moreover, that he must be ready to go and fight the enemies of Christ ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... deck, "stript her in a manner naked," and carried her as a prize to the Spanish captain, Pedro Poleas, who immediately took her to the "great cabin and there with horrible oaths and curses insolently assaulted her Chastity." Her loud cries of distress brought Captain Johnson into the cabin, who, seeing what was on hand, drew his pistol and threatened to blow out the brains of any man who attempted the least violence upon her. He next commanded everything belonging to Mrs. Groves to be returned ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse

... useful for them to learn, and they are taught nothing else. Every part of their education tends evidently to some useful purpose; either to improve the natural attractions of their person, or to form their mind to reserve, to modesty, to chastity, and to economy; to render them both likely to became the mistresses of a family, and to behave properly when they have become such. In every part of her life, a woman feels some conveniency or advantage from every part of her education. It seldom happens that a man, in any ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... be contrary to fact to pretend that the bulk of them supported their teaching by personal example. I was acquainted with a great number of the friars, and their offspring too, in spite of their vow of chastity; whilst many lived in comparative luxury, ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... full measure of its strength. Every day had made her less a being of calculated, artificial reserves, of inculcated modesties, and more a human animal, governed by instincts that belonged to her age and sex. She was normal and chaste and her chastity had made her shrink from the man whose touch left her cold, and yield to the one to whom her first antagonism had been first response. When she had given Courant her kiss she had given herself. There was no need for intermediary courtship. After that vacillations of doubt and conscience ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... bright, charming girl, As the enchanting ring doth nearer whirl; He grasps her in his arms, and she doth yield The treasure of her lips, where sweets distilled Give him a joy without a taint of guilt. It thrills his heart-strings till his soul doth melt, A kiss of chastity, and love, and fire, A joy that few can dare to here aspire. The beauteous spirit has her joy, and flees With all her sister spirits 'neath the trees. And lo! the gesdin[2] shining stands, With crystal branches in the golden sands, ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... early life, and his utter abandonment in his latter days,—and not be stricken with a salutary dread of the inscrutable judgments of a just God? Who can read the life of Judith, and not wonder?—of Susanna, and not love chastity and confide in God? Who has read the prophecies of Isaiah, and not believed the gospel which he foretold? And what example of a suffering Saviour so full, so perfect, and expressive, as that exhibited in the life of Jeremiah? If thus, then, from the beginning to the day ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... and its pleasures, and in the Holy Church of the Resurrection, in the presence of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, they embraced vows of perpetual chastity, obedience, and poverty, after the manner of monks. Uniting in themselves the two most popular qualities of the age, devotion and valor, and exercising them in the most popular of all enterprises, the protection of the pilgrims and of the road to the Holy ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... Wellington, nor, indeed, any of the great warriors, whose deeds historians have recorded with so much ostentation, ever met with so strange an accident, or one which led to so many embarrassments. And although Captain Luke had never had occasion to doubt the chastity of his wife, whose face, being as ugly as could well be conceived, he had always held to be an adequate protection, his first impulse now was to take summary revenge for what he considered an unwarrantable trespass ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... Cambridge, England, a court consisting of the Master and Fellows of a college, who sit in the Combination Room, and pass sentence on any young offender against the laws of soberness and chastity.—Gradus ad Cantabrigiam. ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... Love, yet all's Law' so clearly is the same truth held in these stories with their divergent ends. The lawlessness of Nature is the lawlessness of man, untempered and ungoverned by that principle of chastity which is the law of love; and again Nature, lawless in herself, becomes beneficent, law-abiding, when controlled by that higher law of instinct in man which is the seal and sign of the Divine upon his soul. Without moralizing, ...
— James Lane Allen: A Sketch of his Life and Work • Macmillan Company

... who had not conversed with women since our departure from the Cape, found these ladies very agreeable, and from the manner in which their advances were received, it appeared very plainly that chastity was not rigorously observed here, and that the sex were far from being impregnable. However, their favours did not depend upon their own inclination, but the men, as absolute masters, were always to be consulted upon the occasion; if a spike-nail, or a shirt, or a similar present, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr

... "truly gird:" it may not be feigned, or falsely girt, but in verity and truth. There be many bachelors, as yet men unmarried, which seem to be girt with the girdle of continence, and yet it is not in truth, it is but feignedly. And some religious persons make a profession of continence or chastity, and yet not in truth, their hearts be not truly chaste. Such feigned girding of the loins cannot make a man strong to resist the assaults of the great captain or enemy in the evil day. Yet some get them girdles with great knots, as though they would ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer

... "'Silver your chastity, Golden your beauty shines, O my beloved, White pearls are falling now Out of your weeping eyes, ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov

... man's death? Some want love and gratification and some don't. There are people who want children and people who don't want to be bothered by children but who are full of vivid desires. There are people whose only happiness is chastity, and women who would rather be courtesans than mothers. Some of us would concentrate upon a single passion or a single idea; others overflow with a miscellaneous—tenderness. Yes,—and you smile! Why spit upon and insult a miscellaneous tenderness, Benham? Why grin at it? Why try every one by ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... have been told that the ladies here would frequently divert themselves by going a little aside with our gentlemen, as if they meant to be kind to them, and then would run away laughing at them. Whether this was chastity or coquetry, I shall not pretend to determine; nor is it material, since the ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook

... full well that Martha had gone through a yard or so of books on the subject that covered everything from the advanced medical to the lurid expose and from the salacious to the ribald. Janet could only hope that her daughter valued her chastity according to convention despite the natural human curiosity which in Martha would be multiplied by the girl's advanced education. Janet knew that young people were marrying younger and younger as the years went on; she saw young James Holden no longer ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith

... spiritual guide, were shocked and affrighted. Only the Mahdi's wives, if we may credit Slatin, 'rejoiced secretly in their hearts at the death of their husband and master,' and, since they were henceforth to be doomed to an enforced and inviolable chastity, the cause of their satisfaction is as obscure as its manifestation was unnatural. The body of the Mahdi, wrapped in linen, was reverently interred in a deep grave dug in the floor of the room in which he had died, nor was it disturbed until ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... understanding which is then the courtesan of the will. So stupid is it made by debauchery with the will that it is unable to see that marital love is spiritual and heavenly love itself, a reflection of the love between the Lord and the church from which it is derived; is in itself sacred and chastity itself, purity and innocence; causes men to be forms of love, since partners can love each other from inmosts and so form themselves into loves; nor can it see that adultery destroys this form and with it the Lord's image; and what is abhorrent, that the adulterer mingles ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg

... conversations were made useful to him, and those miserable feelings were subdued, and he now lives happily with the woman he had before hated, even to an intention of murder. This is another evidence, although a distressing one, that a want of chastity ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb

... violent passion for this damsel, and his father was at first inclined to give her up to him, but afterwards, repenting of his complaisance, consecrated her to the service of Mithra, a cult which imposed on her the obligation of perpetual chastity. Darius, exasperated by this treatment, began to contemplate measures of vengeance, but, being betrayed by his brother Ochus, was put to death with ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... The deplorable want of chastity that exists among the Indian women of this tribe seems to have been more the result of their intercourse with the settlers in the country than from any previous disposition to this vice. The jealousy of their ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... love's counterfeit the most disintegrating. Happiness cannot spring from the ashes of lust. Love looks toward the future. Its glory is its altruism. To shirk responsibility is to destroy the home. The equal marriage demands equal purity of heart, equal chastity of intention. Open vice brings with certainty disease and degradation. Secret lust comes to the same end, but all the more surely because the folly of lying is added to other sources of decay. That society is so severe in its condemnation of "the double life" ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan

... four days and nights of agony before death came to their relief. It is superfluous to add that the outrages upon women were no less universal in Zutphen than they had been in every city captured or occupied by the Spanish troops. These horrors continued till scarcely chastity or life ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... legitimation by subsequent marriage, which obtained in the Roman law, and still obtains in the law of Scotland. JOHNSON. 'I think it a bad thing; because the chastity of women being of the utmost importance, as all property depends upon it, they who forfeit it should not have any possibility of being restored to good character; nor should the children, by an illicit connection, attain ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... to Chastity, avoids consort with men, retires into the woods, and there diverts herself with hunting, whence she is reckoned the goddess of the woods and the chase. Pallas is esteemed the goddess of shepherds and ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant



Words linked to "Chastity" :   sexual abstention, religious belief, chaste, sexual morality, unchaste, abstinence, faith, pureness, honour, honor, purity, celibacy, morality, virtue



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