George Santayana, as quoted in Quotations for Our Time (1977) edited by Laurence J. Peter
Other works
“Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism.”
The Works of George Santayana p. 65
Scepticism and Animal Faith (1923)
“That chastity of honour which felt a stain like a wound.”
Volume iii, p. 332
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 4
“Of all the sexual aberrations, chastity is the strangest.”
De toutes les aberrations sexuelles, la plus singulière est peut-être encore la chasteté.
Remy de Gourmont, La Physique de l'Amour: Essai sur l'Instinct Sexuel (1903), ch. 18: La question des aberrations http://books.google.com/books?id=32ZJAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA233&dq=%22De+toutes+les+aberrations+sexuelles%22&lr=&ei=6TXvR9yOM4zGyATqjfX4Bw.
Remy de Gourmont, The Natural Philosophy of Love (1922), the Ezra Pound translation of La Physique de l'Amour: Essai sur l'Instinct Sexuel
Misattributed
Variant: Of all sexual aberrations, perhaps the most curious is chastity.
“An untempted woman cannot boast of her chastity.”
Attributed
“Give me chastity and continence, but not right now.”
At ego adulescens miser ualde, miser in exordio ipsius adulescentiae, etiam petieram a te castitatem et dixeram, 'Da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo.
VIII, 7
Confessions (c. 397)
Context: As a youth I prayed, "Give me chastity and continence, but not right now."
In an interview for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: "Joseph Heller - Closing Time" (1998) by Ramona Koval http://web.archive.org/web/20000306044602/http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/bwriting/heller.htm <!-- accessdate=2007-08-30 -->
Context: The only wisdom I think I've attained is the wisdom to be skeptical of other people's ideology and other people's arguments. I tend to be a skeptic, I don't like dogmatic approaches by anybody. I don't like intolerance and a dogmatic person is intolerant of other people. It's one of the reasons I keep a distance from all religious beliefs. I think in this country and in Australia too there's a late intolerance in most religions, an intolerance, a part that could easily become persecutions.
We have some ultra-orthodox Jewish sects here in New York and I fear them as much as I would fear a Nazi organisation.
