If my little acts of virtue can be mistaken for imperfections, imperfections can just as easily be mistaken for virtue. - Thérèse of Lisieux

For Thérèse, poetry was not “art for amusement,” because she did not write for her own satisfaction but out of duty, or at least with a concern to serve, to help, and to encourage.6

yet I think Our Lord made use of it to show me that a soul in the state of grace has nothing to fear from the devil, who is a coward, and will even fly from the gaze of a little child.

The large room filled with snow-white dresses in which each child was to be clothed in her turn! Above all, the procession into the chapel and the singing of the morning hymn: “O altar of God, where the angels are hovering!” I don’t want to enter into detail here. There are certain things that lose [5]their perfume as soon as they are exposed to the air; there are deep spiritual thoughts which cannot be expressed in human language without losing their intimate and heavenly meaning; they