A Quote by Sigrid Undset
The morality code that remains after the religion that produced it is rejected is like the perfume that lingers in an empty bottle.
Related Quotes
Perfume follows you; it chases you and lingers behind you. It's a reference mark. Perfume makes silence talk.
Long after one has forgotten what a woman wore, the memory of her perfume lingers.
I'm always concerned about marketing or commercial philosophies. I can't feel good about having my name on a bottle of perfume that comes from a factory making perfume with all the same ingredients as every other perfume. I can't feel good about a factory overseas polluting the air for something with my name on it. I'm okay with music - because it's digital or a CD. My music is my emotion in a bottle. But how is a perfume supposed to reflect me? How is a sweatshirt supposed to represent me?
One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion. So now people assume that religion and morality have a necessary connection. But the basis of morality is really very simple and doesn't require religion at all.
I like to put perfume on my pulse points, but I also love the way you can sense it - there is an atmosphere that comes from releasing a scent in to the world - it's a primal thing. I spray around me, not just on me, and it lingers in the room after I leave.
Everywhere the tendency has been to separate religion from morality, to set them in opposition even. But a religion without morality is a superstition and a curse; and anything like an adequate and complete morality without religion is impossible. The only salvation for man is in the union of the two as Christianity unites them.
The appeal of perfume is that it is at once ephemeral and empowering. It creates a shimmering invisible armor that lingers in a room long after its wearer has gone and infuses our imagination with a subtle power, hinting at a hidden identity.
Today courts wrongly interpret separation of church and state to mean that religion has no place in the public arena, or that morality derived from religion should not be permitted to shape our laws. Somehow freedom for religious expression has become freedom from religious expression. Secularists want to empty the public square of religion and religious-based morality so they can monopolize the shared space of society with their own views. In the process they have made religious believers into second-class citizens.
Behaving morally because of a hope of reward or a fear of punishment is not morality. Morality is not bribery or threats. Religion is bribery and threats. Humans have morality. We don't need religion.
The whole world's a bottle, And life's but a dram, When the bottle gets empty, It sure ain't worth a damn.
Morality must always precede and accompany religion, and yet religion is much more than morality.
It is almost impossible to describe happiness, because at the time it feels entirely natural, as if all the rest of your life has been the aberration; only in retrospect does it swim into focus as the rare and precious thing it is. When it is present, it seems to be eternal, abiding forever, and there is no need to examine it or clutch it. Later, when it has evaporated, you stare in dismay at your empty palm, where only a little of the perfume lingers to prove that once it was there, and now is flown.
See, then, how powerful religion is; it commands the heart, it commands the vitals. Morality,--that comes with a pruning-knife, and cuts off all sproutings, all wild luxuriances; but religion lays the axe to the root of the tree. Morality looks that the skin of the apple be fair; but religion searcheth to the very core.
A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.
Religion gets its morality from us. We don't get our morality from religion.
Passion is something you really don't miss, after it has cooled. It is like looking at an empty bottle on the side of the road and thinking, "Boy, I wish I had a Coke." The loves you miss are the ones that go away when they are still warm, even hot, to the touch.
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