Pure Identity

Famous quotes containing the words pure and/or identity:

    So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high
    Through the dear might of him that walk’d the waves,
    Where other groves and other streams along
    With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves
    And hears the unexpressive nuptial song
    In the bless’d kingdoms meek of joy and love.
    There entertain him all the saints above
    In solemn troops and sweet societies,
    That sing, and singing in their glory move,
    And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.
    John Milton (1608–1674)

    Unlike Boswell, whose Journals record a long and unrewarded search for a self, Johnson possessed a formidable one. His life in London—he arrived twenty-five years earlier than Boswell—turned out to be a long defense of the values of Augustan humanism against the pressures of other possibilities. In contrast to Boswell, Johnson possesses an identity not because he has gone in search of one, but because of his allegiance to a set of assumptions that he regards as objectively true.
    Jeffrey Hart (b. 1930)