Every life has its years in which one progresses as on a tedious and dusty street of poplars, without caring to know where he is.
Not far from our house, and opposite the old church with the golden cross, stood a large building, even larger than the church, and having many towers.
While the river of life glides along smoothly, it remains the same river; only the landscape on either bank seems to change.
Whoever knows it also knows that in love there is no More and no Less; but that he who loves can only love with the whole heart, and with the whole soul; with all his strength and with all his will.
Would not the child's heart break in despair when the first cold storm of the world sweeps over it, if the warm sunlight of love from the eyes of mother and father did not shine upon him like the soft reflection of divine light and love?
What is emitted from the divine, though it be only like the reflection from the fire, still has the divine reality in itself, and one might almost ask what were the fire without glow, the sun without light, or the Creator without the creature?
