...wordless conditioning is crude and wholesale; cannot bring home the finer distinctions, cannot inculcate the more complex courses of behavior. For that there must be words, but words without reason... Not so much like drops of water, though water, it is true, can wear holes in the hardest granite; rather, drops of liquid sealing-wax, drops that adhere, encrust, incorporate themselves with what they fall on, till finally the rock is all one scarlet blob.

I am dirty, Milena, endlessly dirty, that is why I make such a fuss about cleanliness. None sing as purely as those in deepest hell; it is their singing we take for the singing of angels.

Dirt is dirt, and we've all got it no matter where we come from. I'm not sure Christ sees one kind of dirt as dirtier than another. One thing is for sure: His blood is able to bleach any stain left by any kind of dirt.

The clod rejects as too difficult whatever isn't cloddish.

The sun by the action of heat makes wax moist and mud dry, hardening the one while it softens the other, by the same operation producing exactly opposite results; thus, from the long-suffering of God, some derive benefit, and others harm; some are softened, while others are hardened.

The greater the wealth the thicker will be the dirt.

This means that gravestones are fragile and granite is softer than wax. Absurd, absurd, absurd! From such absurdity I shall soon turn gray or change into another person. Why do you beckon me with your hand? For one moment of peace I would give the peace of the tomb.

The sea is softer than your delicate hands, and yet it can alter the shape of hard stones.

Tearing out the old, icky stuff is hard, it's messy—ouch!" He dropped the hammer from his right hand and shook his left. "Ouch!" He danced around for a minute before regaining his composure, picking up the hammer and nail again, then looked at her straight-faced. "And at times it's downright painful. But you've got to be willing to go through the process if you really want to see a true change. Anything less is just a cover-up.

I've always equated clay with the humanity that's within us, fragile like our bodies. It can tip over. You have it on its toes, but if you push just slightly on the wrong pivot, it will break your heart.

I answer, and proudly maintain, "That this increase of weight comes from the air, thickened and made heavy, and in some measure rendered adhesive in the vessel by the violent and long—continued heat of the furnace—which air mixes with the calx (its union being assisted by the continual stirring), and attaches itself to its smallest particles—no otherwise than as water, when sand is thrown into it, makes it heavier by moistening it, and adhering to its smallest grains."

What fire does not destroy, it hardens

What is harder than rock, or softer than water? Yet soft water hollows out hard rock. Persevere.

Water is fluid, soft & yielding but water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield ... what is soft is strong.