Knowledge and Purity

For us men and women of today, who are of the opinion that in order to know the truth one need only more or less strain one’s
brain, and who scarcely regard as sensible the concept of an ascesis of the intellect–for us, the deeply intrinsic connection that links the knowledge of truth to the condition of purity has vanished from our consciousness (Josef Pieper, A Brief Reader on the Virtues of the Human Heart, 42).