"Transfigure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all the Sanitary Inspectors in Ireland could do in twenty; and they could hardly doubt that Our Lady would be delighted. Perhaps they do nowadays; for Ireland is certainly a transfigured country since my youth as far as clean faces and pinafores can transfigure it. In England, where so many of the inhabitants are too gross to believe in poetic faiths, too respectable to tolerate the notion that the stable at Bethany was a common peasant farmer's stable instead of a first-rate racing one, and too savage to believe that anything can really cast out ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... of flesh, seared with a thousand scars, Shriek and struggle and beat its breast on its prison bars Thro' the night's long dark of despair till the dawning of ultimate day, Till the glow of that ultimate dawn transfigure the tortured face And the sacred fire within crumble the coarse clay clod. Till the Soul, breathed on by an unseen, unknown Grace, Stripped of its bonds of flesh, stand face to face with ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... of serene hope; victory over self and purity of soul plainly dramatized there! Then, too, how glorious the face of youth glowing with life's enthusiasm, whose dream of the yet unclouded future is the Fata Morgana which he pursues. A noble ambition seems to linger in his soul and transfigure his countenance until we see the light of joy and nobleness shining there. What a contrast the dejected look of those who travel the paths ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... particle of his time was lost. He was a living, palpitating, breathing, vocal, acting temple of the Holy Ghost, and this Divine indwelling was, in a manner, visible to all. At the altar, during the holy sacrifice which he daily offered, it seemed to transfigure his countenance so as to impress his heavenly citizenship upon all beholders. In administering the sacrament, in instructing the people, in his incessant endeavors to keep or win them from sin, and to provide for all their spiritual wants, the same irradiation of holiness imparted ...
— Memoir • Fr. Vincent de Paul
... everywhere around us, invisible, yet audible through the clamour of voices near us. And so On the Eve, the work of a poet, has certain deep notes, which break through the harmonious tenor of the whole, and strangely and swiftly transfigure the quiet story, troubling us with a dawning consciousness of the march of mighty events. Suddenly a strange sense steals upon the reader that he is living in a perilous atmosphere, filling his heart with foreboding, and enveloping at length the characters ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... grows everywhere if we do but wait!" exclaims Carlyle. "Not a difficulty but can transfigure itself into a triumph; not even a deformity, but if our own soul have imprinted worth on it, will ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... explain it to itself and by degrees to transform its tendencies and with grace and guidance to give it a steady impulse towards the better things. Confirmation and First Communion sometimes sensibly and even suddenly transfigure a character; but even apart from such choice instances the gradual work of the Sacraments brings Catholic children under a discipline in which the habit of self-examination, the constant necessity for effort, the truthful avowal of being in the wrong, the ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... alliances transfigure the unlovely streets, and light in the cavernous blank houses many a glowing and familiar hearth. As he goes on, careless of distance or direction, he is now inwardly busy with fresh and delightful dreams. He plights his troth and earth ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... is lost" at every passing persecution. As if never before had there been weeping for a night! As if there had not always been abounding joy the morning after! Then let us, like God Himself, try to see the end in the beginning, let us spread out the Scroll, so that the glory of the finish may transfigure and illumine the gloom and sadness of the intermediate course, and thus "the miracle" of God's providential love will be "made visible" to all who ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... quietness of joy, when my father came up to see his patient. Mr. Axtell was with him. They went in; indifferent words were spoken,—until, was it Abraham Axtell that I saw as I kept up my walking in the hall? What mysterious change had come to transfigure his face so that I scarcely believed the evidence of my own eyes? He came to the door and said, "Will you come in, Miss Percival?" I obeyed his request. He closed the door, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... discovery had sufficed to transfigure, as it were, the rest of the day, and awaken a throng of new ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... self-aggrandizing effort. Imagine that possibility and how it would change the face of the earth and the entire basic constitution of human life and society. So do the profound tides of the hormones, centering around the new creature being made in the womb, transfigure the face and constitution of ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... injury to his foot, none of the brothers ever thought of bringing him water. In winter he was allowed no fire, and he had often to wait till the frozen water in his cell was melted by the sun before he could wash or drink. The vision of the light of the Transfiguration did not transfigure the character ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... of memory, and such command of the English tongue as is given by a common school education. So much I do claim. But here I have related, at length, a string of trivialities. You must have the imagination of a poet to transfigure them. These little colored patches are stains upon the windows of a human soul; stand on the outside, they are but dull and meaningless spots of color; seen from within, they are glorified shapes with ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... to believe a woman does. Yet it is a vital factor upon some occasions, in many natures. There had been times in Thompson's life when the passion Sophie Carr kindled in him seemed a conflagration that must either transfigure or destroy him. It was like a volcano that ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... des etres; Un seul instant d'amour rouvre l'eden ferme; Un pourceau secouru pese un monde opprime; Viens! le ciel s'offre, avec ses etoiles sans nombre, En fremissant de joie, a l'evade de l'ombre! Viens! tu fus bon un jour, sois a jamais heureux. Entre, transfigure; tes crimes tenebreux, O roi, derriere toi s'effacent dans les gloires; Tourne la tete, et ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... houses in Sorrento, on the edge of a rocky cliff, from which there was fair, unhindered view over the whole panorama of sea and land. The sun was descending the western sky, and the flood of Italian light seemed to transfigure the world. Between the verandah and the absolute edge of the rocks, the space was filled with beds of flowers and shrubbery; and a little a one side, so as not to interrupt the view, were fig-trees and pomegranate-trees and olives. Dolly ran down ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... intellectual faculty—the faculty of shaping and conceiving things under their true relations. The holy herald of Christ, and Christ himself the finisher of prophecy, made proclamation alike of the same mysterious summons, as a baptism or rite of initiation; namely, Metanoei. Henceforth transfigure your theory of moral truth; the old theory is laid aside as infinitely insufficient; a new and spiritual revelation is established. Metanoeite—contemplate moral truth as radiating from a new centre; apprehend it ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... says (Contra Maxim. ii, 20): "When Christ says 'Not what I will, but what Thou wilt' He shows Himself to have willed something else than did His Father; and this could only have been by His human heart, since He did not transfigure our weakness into His Divine ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... Joy is too often ignoble, and yet, although it is by no means the highest conception of what Christ's Gospel can do for us, it is blessed to think that it can take that emotion, so often shameful, so often frivolous, so often lowering rather than elevating, and can lift it into loftiness, and transfigure it, and glorify it and make it a power, a power for good and for righteousness, and for 'whatsoever things are lovely and of good report' in our lives. And that is what trusting towards Christ ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... as the skilled musician made the words Of momentary meaning still simply His own eternal hope and heart's desire, Without belief, perchance, in Drake's own quest— To Drake's own greater mind the eternal glory Seemed to transfigure his immediate hope. But Doughty only heard a sweet concourse Of sounds. They ceased. And Drake resumed his tale Of that strange flight in boyhood to the sea. Next, the red-curtained inn and kindly hands Of Protestant Plymouth held his memory long; Often in strange ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... there any doubt why it was that it came to be written, "Jacob I have loved, but Esau have I hated." The one was just the child of the world around him, yielding to its temptations, living by its standards. The soul in him never awoke, so as to transfigure his thoughts and purposes. The other is a man of Divine visions, inspired with the sense of a Divine presence and a ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival |
