QUOTATION: Chastity

Anyone, then, who desires to live chastely in Christ Jesus, must flee not only the mouse of lust, but even from its very scent.

--St. Anthony of Padua

QUOTATION: Chastity

The more a person lives in the presence of God, the more he develops a reflex against the wrong use of sex, as automatic as the way an eye blinks when the dust blows.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Peace of Soul, 1949

QUOTATION: Chastity

A chaste man is someone who has driven out bodily love by means of divine love, who has used heavenly fire to quench the fires of the flesh.

--St. John Climacus

QUOTATION: Chastity

In the Christian view, chastity by no means signifies rejection of human sexuality or lack of esteem for it: Rather it signifies spiritual energy capable of defending love from the perils of selfishness and aggressiveness, and able to advance it toward its full realization.

--Pope St. John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio 

QUOTATION: Becoming Chaste

Do not imagine that you will overwhelm the demon of fornication by entering into an argument with him. Nature is on his side and he has the best of the argument. So the man who decides to struggle against his flesh and to overcome it by his own efforts is fighting in vain. The truth is that unless the Lord overturns the house of the flesh and builds the house of the soul, the man wishing to overcome it has watched and fasted for nothing. Offer up to the Lord the weakness of your nature. Admit your incapacity and, without your knowing it, you will win for yourself the gift of chastity.

--St. John Climacus

QUOTATION: How to Protect Chastity

Humility is the safeguard of chastity. In the matter of purity, there is no greater danger than not fearing danger.

--St. Philip Neri

QUOTATION: Chastity

Christ so loved chastity that he wished to be born of a virgin.

--St. Thomas Aquinas

QUOTATION: Sexual Freedom

Authentic sexual freedom is not freedom to indulge your compulsions but rather freedom from the compulsion to indulge.

--Christopher West

QUOTATION: Chastity

In a fight between vice and a man of vice, vice wins and pins the man down. This is why continence and chastity are praised so highly: because they enable a man to abstain from the pleasures and delights that nature and passion offer him.

--St. Anthony Mary Claret, Autobiography

QUOTATION: Humilty and Chastity

As a tower defends a camp, so does humility of heart guard the chastity of the body.

--St Anthony of Padua

QUOTATION: Intoxication

There is nothing more injurious to chastity than the excessive use of wine, in which, as the Apostle says, there is luxury. (Cf. Eph. 5:18), It is at all times the capital enemy of this angelic virtue; but it is particularly in youth that such indulgence is most fatal. . Hence St. Jerome says that wine and youth are two incentives to impurity. (Ad Eustoch, de Cust. Virg.). Wine is to youth what fuel is to fire. As oil poured upon the flames only increases their intensity, so wine, like a violent conflagration, heats the blood, enkindling and exciting the passions to the highest pitch of folly and madness. Witness the excesses into which man is led by hatred, love, revenge, and other passions, when stimulated by intoxicating liquors. The natural effect of this fatal indulgence is to counteract all the results of the moral virtues. These subdue and control the baser passions, but wine excites and urges them to the wildest licentiousness. Judge, therefore, with what vigilance you should guard against the attacks of such an enemy.

--Louis de Granada, The Sinner's Guide

QUOTATION: The Threats to Chastity

These are the weapons by which a chaste soul is overcome: looks, speeches, touches, embraces.

--St. Francis of Assisi

QUOTATION: Chastity

Don't say you have a chaste mind if you have unchaste eyes, because an unchaste eye is the messenger of an unchaste heart.

--St. Augustine

QUOTATION: Chastity

Chastity will be lost where the distinction between the sexes is not observed.

--St. Ambrose

QUOTATION: Filthy Talk

Filthy talk makes us feel comfortable with filthy action. But the one who knows how to control the tongue is prepared to resist the attacks of lust.

--St. Clement of Alexandria

QUOTATION: Chastity

When you decide firmly to lead a clean life, chastity will not be a burden on you: it will be a crown of triumph.

--St. Josemaria Escriva

QUOTATION: Temptation Against Purity

As soon as you become aware of temptation, busy yourself with something. Idleness and modesty can’t go together. In overcoming idleness, you will overcome temptations against purity.

--St. John Bosco

QUOTATION: Chastity

Clear thinking is the reward of chastity.

--G.K. Chesterton

QUOTATION: Self-Mastery

Say to your body: I should rather keep you in slavery than be myself a slave of yours.

-- St. Josemaria Escriva, The Way

QUOTATION: Prayer-- Safeguard of Purity

Vigilance and prayer are the safeguards of chastity. You should pray often and fervently to be preserved from temptations against purity, and for the grace to overcome them.

--St. John Baptist de la Salle