Profane Quotes - Page 2

• In imitating the exemplary acts of a god or of a mythic hero, or simply by recounting their adventures, the man of an archaic society detaches himself from profane time and magically re-enters the Great Time, the sacred time.

  Mircea Eliade

  Hero, Adventure, Men

  "Myths, Dreams and Mysteries". Book by Mircea Eliade translated by Philip Mairet (p. 23), 1967.

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• Doubts must be resolved alone within the soul. Otherwise one would profane one's own powerful solution.

  Wassily Kandinsky

  Powerful, Soul, Doubt

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• To contact the cosmic giggle, to have the flow of casuistry begin to give off synchronistic ripples, whitecaps in the billows of the coincidental ether, if you will. To achieve that, a precondition is a kind of unconsciousness, a kind of drifting, a certain taking-your-eye-off-the-ball, a certain assumptions that things are simpler than they are, almost always precedes what Mircea Eliade called ‘the rupture of plane’ that indicates that there is an archetypal world, an archetypal power behind profane appearances.

  Terence McKenna

  Eye, Giving, Balls

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• The practice of hinting by single letters those expletives with which profane and violent persons are wont to garnish their discourse, strikes me as a proceeding which, however, well meant, is weak and futile. I cannot tell what good it does - what feeling it spares - what horror it conceals.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Practice, Feelings, Doe

  Emily Bronte, Anne Brontë, Charlotte Brontë (1851). “Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey: In Two Volumes”, p.16

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• The war of good and evil present in all religions does not always end, in every faith, with the victory of good, but in every one it establishes a clear order of existence. The sacred as well as the profane rests on that universal order.

  Stanislaw Lem

  War, Order, Evil

  Stanislaw Lem (2012). “One Human Minute”, p.109, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The scholar was not raised by the sacred thoughts amongst which he dwelt, but used them to selfish ends. He was a profane person,and became a showman, turning his gifts to marketable use, and not to his own sustenance and growth. It was found that the intellect could be independently developed, that is, in separation from the man, as any single organ can be invigorated, and the result was monstrous.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Selfish, Men, Growth

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1528, Delphi Classics

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• In the Greek cities, it was reckoned profane, that any person should pretend a property in a work of art, which belonged to all who could behold it.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Cities, Greek

  The Conduct of Life "Wealth" (1860)

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• But lest I should mislead any when I have my own head and obey my whims, let me remind the reader that I am only an experimenter.Do not set the least value on what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if I pretended to settle any thing as true or false. I unsettle all things. No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker with no Past at my back.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Truth, Past, True Or False

  Essays Circles (p. 297)

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• Religion worships God, while superstition profanes that worship.

  Seneca the Younger

  Superstitions, Worship, Worship God

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• There are countries in which public establishments are considered by the government as its own personal affair, so that it admits persons to them only according to its pleasure, just as a proprietor refuses at his pleasure admission into his house; they are a sort of administrative sanctuaries, into which no profane person can penetrate. These establishments, on the contrary, in the United States, are considered as belonging to all. The prisons are open to everyone who chooses to inspect them ad every visiter may inform himself of the order which regulates the interior.

  Gustave de Beaumont

  Country, Government, Order

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• All fear of 'offensive' speech is bourgeois and reactionary. Historically, profane or bawdy language was common in both the upper and the lower classes, who lived together in rural areas amid the untidy facts of nature. Notions of propriety and decorum come to the fore in urbanized periods ruled by an expanding middle class, which is obsessed with cleanliness, respectability, and conformism.

  Camille Paglia

  Class, Together, Rural Areas

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• I do not believe in God, but I believe God is man’s greatest idea. Those incapable of religious feeling or those (like hard-core gay activists) who profane sacred ground do not have the imagination to educate the young. … Until the left comes to its senses about the cultural power of religion, the right will continue to broaden its appeal.

  Camille Paglia

  Religious, Believe, Gay

  "Vamps and Tramps". Book by Camille Paglia, 1994.

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• The great Creator to revere
  Must sure become the creature;
  But still the preaching cant forbear,
  And ev'n the rigid feature:
  Yet ne'er with wits profane to range
  Be complaisance extended;An atheist laugh's a poor exchange
  For deity offended.

  Robert Burns

  Atheist, Laughing, Deities

  'Epistle to a Young Friend' (1786) st. 9

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• It is one thing to be eloquent and charming in profane speech, and another when the one speaking as a religious.

  Ignatius of Loyola

  Religious, Speech, Charming

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• I try not to be too profane around children or old people. Other than that, that's how I speak.

  Paula Malcomson

  Children, People, Trying

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• By definition, sacred beings are separated beings. That which characterizes them is that there is a break of continuity between them and the profane beings.

  Emile Durkheim

  Sacred, Definitions, Break

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• Some of us are afraid of dying; others of human loneliness. Profane was afraid of land or seascapes like this, where nothing else lived but himself.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Loneliness, Land, Dying

  Thomas Pynchon (2012). “V.”, p.11, Penguin

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• One word is too often profaned For me to profane it, One feeling too falsely disdain'd For thee to disdain it. One hope too like dispair For prudence to smother, I can give not what men call love: But wilt thou accept not The worship the heart lifts above And heaven rejects not: The desire of the moth for the star, The devotion of something afar From the sphere of our sorrow?

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Stars, Heart, Men

  Percy Bysshe Shelley, “To”

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• I think the highest forgiveness is to accept that creation is thoroughly tangled, with every possible quality given outlet for expression. People need to accept once and for all that there is only one life and each of us is free to shape it through the choices we make. Seeking can’t get anyone out of the tangle because everything is tangled up…it’s much easier to keep up the fight between good and evil, holy and profane, us and them. But as awareness grows, these opposites begin to calm down in their clashes, and something else emerges- a world you feel at home in.

  Deepak Chopra

  Home, Fighting, Thinking

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• The real voice is stiller and smaller and seems to know, without confusion, the difference between right and wrong and the subtle delineation between the beautiful and profane. It's not an agitated voice, but ever patient as though it approves a million false starts. The voice I am talking about is a deep water of calming wisdom.

  Donald Miller

  Beautiful, Real, Deep Water

  Donald Miller (2009). “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life”, p.87, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• I shall possess this woman; I shall steal her from the husband who profanes her: I will even dare ravish her from the God whom she adores. What delight, to be in turns the object and the victor of her remorse! Far be it from me to destroy the prejudices which sway her mind! They will add to my happiness and my triumph. Let her believe in virtue, and sacrifice it to me; let the idea of falling terrify her, without preventing her fall; and may she, shaken by a thousand terrors, forget them, vanquish them only in my arms.

  Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

  Husband, Believe, Fall

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• Beauty can be consoling, disturbing, sacred, profane; it can be exhilarating, appealing, inspiring, chilling. It can affect us in an unlimited variety of ways. Yet it is never viewed with indifference: beauty demands to be noticed; it speaks to us directly like the voice of an intimate friend. If there are people who are indifferent to beauty, then it is surely because they do not perceive it.

  Roger Scruton

  Beauty, Voice, People

  Roger Scruton (2011). “Beauty: A Very Short Introduction”, p.11, Oxford University Press

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• Now the images and temples constructed by mechanics are made of inert matter, so that they too are inert, material, and profane. Even if you perfect the art, it partakes of mechanical coarseness. Works of art cannot then be sacred and divine.

  Clement of Alexandria

  Religious, Art, Perfect

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• None of us like the concept of law because none of us like the restraints it puts on us. But when we understand that God has given us his law to aid us in guarding our souls, we see that the law is for our fulfillment, not for our limitation. The law reminds us that some things, some experiences, some relationships are sacred. When everything has been profaned, it is not just my freedom that has been lost- the loss is everyone's. God gave us the law to remind us of the sacredness of life, and our created legal systems only serve to remind us of the profane judgments we make.

  Ravi Zacharias

  Loss, Law, Soul

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• The spirit only can teach. Not any profane man, not any sensual, not any liar, not any slave can teach, but only he can give, whohas; he only can create, who is. The man on whom the soul descends, through whom the soul speaks, alone can teach. Courage, piety, love, wisdom, can teach; and every man can open his door to these angels, and they shall bring him the gift of tongues. But the man who aims to speak as books enable, as synods use, as the fashion guides, and as interest commands, babbles. Let him hush.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Education, Fashion, Liars

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1123, Delphi Classics

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