To customs and beliefs, the very ones we hold sacred, sociology ruthlesslyattaches the adjective 'arbitrary'.

-Aron, Raymond Claude Ferdinand
Politics and History.

If all men are born free, how is it that all women are born slaves? as they must be if the being subjected to the inconsistent, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of men, be the perfect condition of slavery? and if the essence of freedom consists, as our masters say it does, in having a standing rule to live by? And why is slavery so much condemnedandstroveagainst inonecase, andsohighly applauded, and held so necessary and so sacred in another?

-Astell, Mary
  Some Reflections upon MarriageOccasion'd by the Duke and Duchess of Mazarine's Case which is also consider'd, preface (1706 edn).

Her funeral sermon (which was long And followed bya sacred song) Mentioned her virtues, it is true, But dwelt upon her vices too.

-Belloc, (Joseph) Hilaire Pierre
  Cautionary  Tales,'Rebecca'.

   In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.

-Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
  'Kubla Khan', opening lines.

All thoughts, all passions, all delights Whatever stirs this mortal frame, All are but ministers of Love, And feed his sacred flame.

-Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
  'Love'.

All known religious beliefs, whether simple or complex, present one common characteristic: they presuppose a classification of all things, real and ideal, of which men think, into two classes or opposed groups, generally designated†profane and sacred.

-Durkheim, EŁ  mile
  The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (translated by Joseph Ward Swain,1965).

I did not say anything. I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious and sacrifice and the expression in vain.We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them, on proclamations that were slapped up by billposters over other proclamations, now fora long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and thethings that were glorious had no gloryand the sacrifices were like the stock-yards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it.

-Hemingway, Ernest Millar
  Frederic Henry.  A Farewell to  Arms, ch.27.

The self isnow the sacred cow of American culture, self- esteem is sacrosanct, and so we labour to turn arts education into a system in which no one can fail. In the same spirit, tennis could be shorn of its elitist overtones: you just get rid of the net.

-Hughes, Robert Studley Forrest
  Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of  America.

Some men look at Constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them like the Ark of the Covenant ötoo sacred to be touched.

-Jefferson,Thomas
  Letter to Samuel Kercheval,12  Jul.

Sacred Heart o' Jesus, take away our hearts o' stone, and give us hearts o'flesh! Take away this murdherin' hate, an'give usThine own eternal love!

-OŁ    Bruadair, Da¤ i bh|¤  dh
  JUNO:1924  Juno and the Paycock, act 3.

Religion blushing veils her sacred fires, And unawares Morality expires.

-Pope, Alexander
  The Dunciad, bk.4, l.649^50.

You have heard the sound of the white soldier's axe on the Little Piney. His presence here is†an insult to the spirits of our ancestors. Are we to give up their sacred graves to be ploughed for corn? Dakotas, I am for war.

-Red Cloud original name Mahpiua Luta
  Speech before war council at Fort Laramie,Wyoming.

Thenewspaper is of necessitysomethingof a monopoly, and its first duty is to shun the temptations of a monopoly. Its primary office is the gathering of News. At the peril of its soul it must see that the supply is not tainted. Neither in what it gives, nor in what it does not give, nor in the mode of presentation, must the unclouded face of Truth suffer wrong.Comment is free, but facts are sacred.

-Scott, C(harles) P(restwich)
  Of the newspaper industry. In the Manchester Guardian, special centenary issue, 6 May.

Most sacred fire, that burnest mightily In living breasts, ykindled first above, Amongst th'eternal spheres and lamping sky, And thence poured into men, which men call Love.

-Spenser, Edmund
  The Faerie Queen, bk.3, canto 3, stanza1.

   O sacred hunger of ambitious minds.

-Spenser, Edmund
  The Faerie Queen, bk.5, canto12, stanza1.

If anything is sacred the human body is sacred.

-Whitman,Walt(er)
  Leaves of Grass,'Children of Adam','I Sing the Body Electric', section 8.