Holiness

Holiness is the quality of times, thoughts and things that are set apart from the world to be devoted to a religious purpose.

• So much of the uncanny—or the holy, for that matter—is inward experience. As such, testimony about it tends to be tainted. People lie. People delude themselves, or others. People are swayed or frightened or convinced they have seen things they have not. People are, frankly, sometimes simply mad.
  • Lois McMaster Bujold, The Hallowed Hunt (2005), Chapter 15

• If I am absolutely, i.e., by nature wicked and unholy, how can holiness and goodness be the objects of my thought – no matter whether these objects are given to me internally or externally? If my heart is wicked, my understanding corrupt, how can I perceive and feel the holy to be holy, the good to be good? How can I perceive a beautiful painting as beautiful if my soul is by nature ugly, and hence incapable of perceiving aesthetic beauty?
  • Ludwig Feuerbach, Introduction to The Essence of Christianity (1843), Z. Hanfi, trans., in The Fiery Brook (1972), p. 126.

• Holy poverty … is the foundation and guardian of all virtues.
  • The Sacred Exchange of Saint Francis with Lady Poverty, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, Volume 1, p. 529

• Jesus ... combines all duties (1) in one universal rule (which includes within itself both the inner and the outer moral relations of men), namely: Perform your duty for no motive other than unconditioned esteem for duty itself, i.e., love God (the Legislator of all duties) above all else; and (2) in a particular rule, that, namely, which concerns man’s external relation to other men as universal duty: Love every one as yourself, i.e., further his welfare from good-will that is immediate and not derived from motives of self-advantage. These commands are not mere laws of virtue but precepts of holiness which we ought to pursue, and the very pursuit of them is called virtue.
  • Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Book IV, Part 1, Section 1, “The Christian religion as a natural religion”.

• We are chosen “according to the foreknowledge of God the Father,-through sanctification of the Spirit;” and this sanctification, it is a comfort to know, is a sanctification we may safely confide in; because it is widely different from the self-sanctification, the fleshly holiness, or wilful separation, to which “he that runneth,” and “he that willeth,” addicts himself, in order that the idol self may be magnified and worshipped.
  • Hermann Friedrich Kohlbrügge, Sermons on the First Epistle of Peter (1855), p. 7.

• The you is older than the I; the you has been pronounced holy, but not yet the I: so man crowds towards his neighbor.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra (1885), W. Kauffman, trans. (1954), § 16 “On Love of the Neighbor”

• Wirf den Helden in deiner Seele nicht weg! Halte heilig deine höchste Hoffnung!
  • Don't throw away the hero in your soul. Hold your highest hopes holy.
    • Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra (1885)

• The word Holy (from Old English: hālig meaning "wholeness") denotes the presence of sacredness in an object, being, person, place or idea.
  • New World Encyclopedia (2008)

• If a state should pass laws forbidding its citizens to become wise and holy, it would be made a byword for all time. But this, in effect, is what our commercial, social, and political systems do. They compel the sacrifice of mental and moral power to money and dissipation.
  • John Lancaster Spalding, Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 62

• A devotee of Utu is among the holy.
  • Sumerian proverb, Collection XXII at The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, 3rd millennium BC.

• For the early Church, "church" and "world" were visibly distinct yet affirmed in faith to have one and the same lord. This pair of affirmations is what the so-called Constantinian transformation changes (I here use the name of Constantine merely as a label for this transformation, which began before AD200 and took over 200 years; the use of his name does not mean an evaluation of his person or work). The most pertinent fact about the new state of things after Constantine and Augustine is not that Christians were no longer persecuted and began to be privileged, nor that emperors built churches and presided over ecumenical deliberations about the Trinity; what matters is that the two visible realities, church and world, were fused. There is no longer anything to call "world"; state, economy, art, rhetoric, superstition, and war have all been baptized.
  • John Howard Yoder, "The Otherness of the Church" (1961) in A Reader in Ecclesiology (2012), p. 200.

Papyrus of Ani (c. 1250 BC), Book of the Dead, translated by Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge

• Homage to you, Osiris, Lord of eternity, King of the gods, whose names are manifold, whose forms are holy, you being of hidden form in the temples, whose Ka is holy.
  • Hymn To Osiris

• The gods rejoice when they see Ra crowned upon his throne, and when his beams flood the world with light. The majesty of this holy god setteth out on his journey, and he goeth onwards until he reacheth the land of Manu; the earth becometh light at his birth each day; he proceedeth until he reacheth the place where he was yesterday.
  • Hymn To Ra

• The scribe Ani, whose word is true, is holy and righteous. He hath not committed any sin, and he hath done no evil against us.
  • About the author, the Theban scribe Ani.

• The Spirits fall headlong in the darkness, but the Eye of Horus hath made me holy, and Upuati hath nursed me. I will hide myself among you, O ye stars which are imperishable.
  • Chapter about not dying in Neter-khertet

• I look upon the holy things which are hidden. I see the being who is therein. ... I shall see the gods [and] the Eye of Horus burning with fire before my eyes. They shall reach out their hands to me. I shall stand up. I shall be master of him that would subject me to restraint. They shall open the holy paths to me, they shall see my form, they shall listen to my words.
  • The chapter of makking the transformation into a divine hawk.

• Homage to you, O ye gods of the Tuat, whose faces are turned back, whose powers advance, conduct ye me to the Star-gods which never rest. Prepare ye for me the holy ways to the Hemat house, and to your god, the Soul, who is the mighty one of terror. Horus hath commanded me to lift up your faces; do ye look upon me. I have risen up like a divine hawk. Horus hath made me to be a Spirit-body by means of his Soul, and to take possession of the things of Osiris in the Tuat.
  • The chapter of makking the transformation into a divine hawk.

• Homage to thee, O thou who comest as the Soul of Souls, the Holy One in Amentet.
  • Praise to Imentet

• Grant thou that I may reach the heaven of eternity, and the region where thy favoured ones dwell. May I unite with those holy and perfect Spirit-souls of Khert-Neter.

• Homage to you, O ye divine Lords of things, ye holy beings, whose seats are veiled! Homage to you, O ye Lords of Eternity, whose forms are concealed, whose sanctuaries are mysteries, whose places of abode are not known!

• I am exalted like that holy god who dwelleth in the Great House. The gods rejoice greatly when they see my beautiful appearances from the body of the goddess Nut, and when the goddess Nut bringeth me forth.

• I am the holy lotus that cometh forth from the light which belongeth to the nostrils of Ra, and which belongeth to the head of Hathor. I have made my way, and I seek after him, that is to say, Horus. I am the pure lotus that cometh forth from the field [of Ra].
  • Chapter of making the transformation into the Lotus.

• Thy throne hath descended unto thy son Horus, and the god Tem hath decreed that thy course shall be among the holy princes. In truth he shall rule from thy throne, and he shall be heir to the throne of the Dweller in the fiery Lake [Neserser]. In truth it hath been decreed that in me he shall see his likeness, and that my face shall look upon the face of the Lord Tem. How long then have I to live? It is decreed that thou shalt live for millions of years, a life of millions of years. Let it be granted to me to pass on to the holy princes, for indeed, I have done away all the evil which I committed, from the time when this earth came into being from Nu, when it sprang from the watery abyss even as it was in the days of old.
  • Chapter of not dying a second time

• I am holy because I know the names of two feet wherewith thou wouldst walk upon me.
  • The ground of the Hall of Maati

The Bible

• Speak unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, and say unto them, Ye shall be holy: for I the LORD your God am holy.
  • Leviticus 19:2 KJV

• Do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance. Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
  • 1 Peter 1:14-16 NRSV

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 368-69.

• Might make a saintship of an anchorite.
  • Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto I (1812), Stanza 11.

• Where'er we tread 'tis haunted, holy ground.
  • Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto II (1812), Stanza 88.

• God attributes to place
  No sanctity, if none be thither brought
  By men who there frequent.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book XI, line 836.

• Whoso lives the holiest life
  Is fittest far to die.
  • Margaret Junkin Preston, Ready.

• But all his mind is bent to holiness,
  To number Ave-Maries on his beads;
  His champions are the prophets and apostles,
  His weapons holy saw of sacred writ,
  His study is his tilt-yard, and his loves
  Are brazen images of canonized saints.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part II (c. 1590-91), Act I, scene 3, line 58.

• He who the sword of heaven will bear
  Should be as holy as severe;
  Pattern in himself to know,
  Grace to stand, and virtue go;
  More or less to others paying
  Than by self-offences weighing.
  Shame to him whose cruel striking
  Kills for faults of his own liking!
  • William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure (1603), Act III, scene 2, line 275.

• Our holy lives must win a new world's crown.
  • William Shakespeare, Richard II (c. 1595), Act V, scene 1, line 24.

• Holiness is the architectural plan upon which God buildeth up His living temple.
  • Charles Spurgeon, Gleanings Among the Sheaves, Holiness.

• Piety
• Righteousness
• Sacredness