Life & Wisdom Quote by Augustus Hare

Aphorisms like this one work because they flatter the reader into choosing a side: are you “pure,” seeing the world cleanly, or “impure,” smearing everything you touch? Augustus Hare, a Victorian writer steeped in the moral weather of his age, borrows the cadence of Scripture (it echoes Titus 1:15) to give the line borrowed authority. The rhythm is simple, almost childlike, but the logic is ruthless: perception becomes a moral test.

The intent isn’t merely to praise innocence. It’s to argue that our judgments reveal more about us than about what we’re judging. The “pure” person reads events with generosity, assuming coherence and good faith; the “impure” person treats the same facts as evidence of rot. Hare is packaging a psychological insight - that suspicion is self-reproducing - as a spiritual principle. That’s why the line sticks: it turns a vague feeling (“everything seems tainted lately”) into an indictment of the feeler.

The subtext is also quietly disciplinary. In a culture anxious about propriety, “impure” can mean sexually scandalous, socially resentful, or simply cynical. The quote nudges you toward self-surveillance: if you keep seeing dirt, maybe you’re the dirt. Conveniently, it also discredits critique. Calling out hypocrisy can be reframed as proof of your own impurity, a neat way to defend respectable institutions from uncomfortable scrutiny.

Hare’s Victorian inheritance is a world where morality is legible in manners and interpretation. This line makes interpretation itself the battlefield.