There is an alchemy in sorrow. It can be transmuted into wisdom, which, if it does not bring joy, can yet bring happiness.
The alchemist of the West has turned stone into glass But my alchemy has transmuted glass into flint Pharaohs of today have stalked me in vain
For patience, sov'reign o'er transmuted ill.
There is probably nothing more sublime than discontent transmuted into a work of art, a scientific discovery, and so on.
One cannot conquer the evil in himself by resisting it. . . but by transmuting its energies into other forms. The energy that expresses itself in the form of evil is the same energy which expresses itself in the form of good; and thus the one may be transmuted into the other.
[About the great synthesis of atomic physics in the 1920s:] It was a heroic time. It was not the doing of any one man; it involved the collaboration of scores of scientists from many different lands. But from the first to last the deeply creative, subtle and critical spirit of Niels Bohr guided, restrained, deepened and finally transmuted the enterprise.
As base a thing as money often is, yet it can be transmuted into everlasting treasure. It can be converted into food for the hungry and clothing for the poor. It can keep a missionary actively winning lost men to the light of the gospel and thus transmute itself into heavenly values. Any temporal possession can be turned into everlasting wealth. Whatever is given to Christ is immediately touched with immortality.
Many a prophecy, by the mere force of its being believed, is transmuted to fact.
War is pillage versus resistance and if illusions of magnitude could be transmuted into ideals of magnanimity, peace might be realized.
The real jewel of my disease-ridden woodlot is the prothonotary warbler. . . . The flash of his gold-and-blue plumage amid the dank decay of the June woods is in itself proof that dead trees are transmuted into living animals, and vice versa.
Base metals can be transmuted into gold by stars, and by intelligent beings who understand the processes that power stars, but by nothing else in the universe.
Writing is not an end in itself but life transmuted into radiance.
Books help to form us. If you cut me open, you will find volume after volume, page after page, the contents of every one I have ever read, somehow transmuted and transformed into me just as my genes and the soul within me make me uniquely me, so I am the unique sum of the books I have read. I am my literary DNA.
The rockets set the bony meadows afire, turned rock to lava, turned wood to charcoal, transmuted water to steam, made sand and silica into green glass which lay like shattered mirrors reflecting the invasion, all about. The rockets came like drums, beating in the night. The rockets came like locusts, swarming and settling in blooms of rosy smoke.
There was a Russian cult of eunuchs known as the Skoptsy who were renowned for their proficiency as mathematicians, bankers, and moneylenders. Outsiders called them rapacious but this was simply their jealousy speaking - when one is freed from sexual desire, or sexual desire is transmuted into work, suddenly the world becomes engorged with possibilities.
