Ellesse

“What we give cannot be taken from us.”
― Anne Michaels, Held

“There was a man in Florence, a friar, Fra Savonarola, he induced all the people to think beauty was a sin. Some people think he was a magician and they fell under his spell for a season, they made fires in the streets and they threw in everything they liked, everything they had made or worked to buy, bolts of silk, and linen their mothers had embroidered for their marriage beds, books of poems written in the poet's hand, bonds and wills, rent-rolls, title deeds, dogs and cats, the shirts from their backs, the rings from their fingers, women their veils, and do you know what was worst, Johane – they threw in their mirrors. So then they couldn't see their faces and know how they were different from the beasts in the field and the creatures screaming on the pyre. And when they had melted their mirrors they went home to their empty houses, and lay on the floor because they had burned their beds, and when they got up next day they were aching from the hard floor and there was no table for their breakfast because they'd used the table to feed the bonfire, and no stool to sit on because they'd chopped it into splinters, and there was no bread to eat because the bakers had thrown into the flames the basins and the yeast and the flour and the scales. And you know the worst of it? They were sober. Last night they took their wine-skins …’ He turns his arm, in a mime of a man lobbing something into a fire. ‘So they were sober and their heads were clear, but they looked around and they had nothing to eat, nothing to drink and nothing to sit on.’ ‘But that wasn't the worst. You said the mirrors were the worst. Not to be able to look at yourself.’ ‘Yes. Well, so I think. I hope I can always look myself in the face. And you, Johane, you should always have a fine glass to see yourself. As you're a woman worth looking at.’ You”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“Forgiveness is moot if not heartfelt. The only thing we must do is protect our God-given souls! We must find it in our own hearts to forgive the men of Molotschna ... and even if the men don't ask for it themselves and even if they claim their innocence all the way to their graves!"

"So you believe that maintaining the condition of your own soul is more important than obeying God?" Mirika says, less calm now.
"They are the same thing really," Ona says, steadily. "I believe that my soul, my essence, my intangible energy is the presence of God within me and that by bringing peace to my soul I am honouring God. If I can understand how these crimes may have occurred, I am able to forgive these men and I am almost able, certainly from a distance, to pity them... to love them. Love is good and better than retaliation.”
― Miriam Toews

“Between 1970 and 2019 alone, nearly a third of all birds had disappeared from North America. Once, the forest would have been deafening.”
― Daniel Mason, North Woods