The Great Furnace for a Great Soul
“Happy the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
“A white bird, she told him once, looking at him gravely. A bird which he must carry in his bosom across a crowded public place—his own soul was like that!
“Would it reach the hands of his good genius on the opposite side, unruffled and unsoiled?”
—Walter Pater.
“To radiate the heat of the affections into a clod, which absorbs all that is poured into it, but never warms beneath the sunshine of smiles or the pressure of hand or lip—this is the great martyrdom of sensitive beings—most of all in that perpetual auto-da-fé where young womanhood is the sacrifice.”
—O. W. Holmes.