True beauty lies in purity of the heart.

Purity is the power to contemplate defilement.

Only a pure heart can recognize a beautiful and a happy soul.

I come to understand what purity is: it means to feel something so wholeheartedly that it shrivels up all doubts, all cowardice and all considerations within one. (p. 199)

As pure as a pearl,
And as perfect: a noble and innocent girl.

I'm pure at heart. It repels the dirt.

Purity, a concept that recalled flowers, the piquant mint taste of a mouthwash, a child clinging to its mother’s gentle breast, was something that joined all these directly to the concept of blood, the concept of swords cutting down iniquitous men, the concept of blades slashing down through the shoulder to spray the air with blood. And to the concept of seppuku. The moment that a samurai “fell like the cherry blossoms,” his blood-smeared corpse became at once like fragrant cherry blossoms. The concept of purity, then, could alter to the contrary with arbitrary swiftness. And so purity was the stuff of poetry. For Isao, to die purely seemed easy. But what about laughing purely? How to be pure in all respects was a problem that disturbed him. No matter how tight a rein he kept upon his emotions, there were times when some trivial thing would arise to make him laugh. Once, for example, he had laughed at a puppy frolicking at the side of the road, with a woman’s high-heeled shoe, of all things, in its mouth. It was the kind of laugh that he preferred others not to see.

Purity of heart is what enables us to see.

A lineage that is pure is one that catapults us ultimately out the other end; it isn’t designed to make us followers of the lineage. It is designed to take us through itself and free us at the other end.

To see a thing uncolored by one’s own personal preferences and desires is to see it in its own pristine simplicity.

The purest love is between parents and children. Other loves may be more thrilling, but none are as deep or enduring.

Unselfishness is purity.

Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing

The purest worship is to simply love — to see the image of God in every human; to love them as they are, now they are, who they are — without demand, without condition, without fear.