But at the same time she belongs to the first function as a religious sovereign: she is pure, she is the means of purifications and helps the conceiving and realisation of pious thoughts.

The head of our church has never had a pious thought in his life.

The images thereon-at the very summit of the Sanctuary-are to inspire the devout to pious thoughts.

A pious thought - but not Scotch.

On his return from the Vatican, Franz carefully avoided the Corso; he brought away with him a treasure of pious thoughts, to which the mad gayety of the maskers would have been profanation.

At the time of its publication, much Catholic literature was a mere "rehash... of pious thoughts," marked by a "sentimental emphasis," and a tendency towards a sterile "refinement of interior analysis."

I blessed my beloved Marguerite for the pious thought which had prompted her to dress me in my best clothes--those which I had worn at our wedding.

He wrote: "I am not indifferent, and pious thoughts often console me in my suffering."

Lost in pious thought, Ms. Nichols glided smoothly.

The 1st century BCE Letter of Aristeas argues that the laws "have been given ... to awake pious thoughts and to form the character".