Chastity

Chastity

Chastity refers to the sexual behavior of a man or woman acceptable to the moral standards and guidelines of a culture, civilization or religion. In the Western world, the term has become closely associated (and is often used interchangeably) with sexual abstinence, especially before marriage. However, the term remains applicable to persons in all states, single or married, clerical or lay, and has implications beyond sexual temperance.

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Famous quotes containing the word chastity:

    A woman’s chastity consists, like an onion, of a series of coats.
    Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864)

    The generative energy, which, when we are loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent invigorates and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Respectability is joining chastity in the museum of dead issues.
    Mason Cooley (b. 1927)