“One night, in his cups, he drank a jar of wildfire, after telling his friends it would transform him into a dragon, but the gods were kind and it transformed him into a corpse.”

“Stretching one arm behind him, the man passed his hand over the horse's coat, his own skin transformed, or skin which had transformed into him. ("The Centaur")”

“Were I to go down into the market-place, armed with the powers of witchcraft, and take a peasant by the shoulders and whisper to him, 'In your lifetime, have you known peace?' wait for his answer, shake his shoulders and transform him into his father, and ask him the same question, and transform him in his turn to his father, I would never hear the word 'Yes,' if I carried my questioning of the dead back for a thousand years. I would always hear, 'No, there was fear, there were our enemies without, our rulers within, there was prison, there was torture, there was violent death.”

“Man, as a form, bears within him the eternal principle of being, and by economic movement along his endless path his form is also transformed, just as everything that lives in nature was transformed in him.”

“Quoting from Thomas MertonDialogues With SilenceThe true contemplative is not one who prepares his mind for a particular message that he wants or expects to hear, but is one who remains empty because he knows that he can never expect to anticipate the words that will transform his darkness into light. He does not even anticipate a special kind of transformation. He does not demand light instead of darkness. He waits on the Word of God in silence, and, when he is answered it is not so much by a word that bursts into his silence. It is by his silence itself, suddenly, inexplicably revealing itself to him as a word of great power, full of the voice of God. (17)”

“it seemed as if hell were put into His cup; He seized it, and at one tremendous draught of love, He drank damnation dry.”