Philip Roth Quotes

The sun too penetrates into privies, but is not polluted by them.

But no perfection is so absolute, That some impurity doth not pollute.

The cleanest souls are the easiest to soil.

Angels are men of a superior kind; Angels are men in lighter habit clad.

Angels may be very excellent sort of folk in their way, but we, poor mortals, in our present state, would probably find them precious slow company.

It's still easier to find the correct Hoover bag than to find one pure person, one pure faith, on the globe.

Evil is like water, it abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint.

I haven't got purity, and I don't think I ever did. I have always been, even as a child, a very decadent little person.

I'm as pure as the driven slush.

Power is something of which I am convinced there is no innocence this side of the womb.

So far as the Angels are recipients of that spiritual heat and light they are loves and wisdoms, not loves and wisdoms for themselves, but from the Lord.

Purity is a negative state and therefore contrary to nature.

Luce blushed. "Then what kind of angel are you?" "I'm sort of in between gigs right now," Daniel said.

To the innocent there are neither cherubim nor angels.

Angels are the dispensers and administrators of the divine beneficence toward us.

Every angel is terrifying.

I believed that a husband must necessarily be an angel, impossible of corruption or contamination.

Even the good angels, I think, would inspire in humans some sort of fear.

How wicked, my brothers, innocent milk must always seem to me now.

In a sense, we are better prepared to praise God than the angels are, for angels have never known the joy of redemption.

Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.

dogs and angels are not very far apart

The child's laughter is pure until he first laughs at a clown.

Children are holy and pure. Even those of bandits and crocodiles belong among the angels.... They must not be turned into a plaything of one's mood, first to be tenderly kissed, then rabidly stomped at.

Dear, harmless age! the short, swift span Where weeping Virtue parts with man; Where love without lust dwells, and bends What way we please without self-ends. An age of mysteries! which he Must live that would God's face see Which angels guard, and with it play, Angels! which foul men drive away.