Famous quotes containing the words pure and/or identity:
“What sought they thus afar?
Bright jewels of the mine?
The wealthy of seas, the spoils of war?—
They sought a faith’s pure shrine!
Ay, call it holy ground,
The soil where first they trod;
They have left unstained what there they found,—
Freedom to worship God.”
—Felicia Dorothea Hemans (1783–1835)
“During the first formative centuries of its existence, Christianity was separated from and indeed antagonistic to the state, with which it only later became involved. From the lifetime of its founder, Islam was the state, and the identity of religion and government is indelibly stamped on the memories and awareness of the faithful from their own sacred writings, history, and experience.”
—Bernard Lewis, U.S. Middle Eastern specialist. Islam and the West, ch. 8, Oxford University Press (1993)