Like men, nations are purified and strengthened by trials. [ Samuel Smiles ]

Without mountains the air could not be purified, nor the flowing of the rivers sustained. [ Ruskin ]

Of all pure things, purity in the acquisition of riches is the best. He who preserves purity in becoming rich is really pure, not he who is purified by water. [ Manu ]

O, if the deeds of human creatures could be traced to their source, how beautiful would even death appear; for how much charity, mercy, and purified affection would be seen to have their growth in dusty graves! [ Dickens ]

The essence of humour is sensibility, warm, tender, fellow-feeling with all forms of existence; and unless seasoned and purified by humour, sensibility is apt to run wild, will readily corrupt into disease, falsehood, or, in one word, sentimentality. [ Carlyle ]

Poetical taste is the only magician whose wand is not broken. No hand, except its own, can dissolve the fabric of beauty in which it dwells. Genii, unknown to Arabian fable, wait at the portal. Whatever is most precious from the loom or the mine of fancy is poured at its feet. Love, purified by contemplation, visits and cheers it; unseen musicians are heard in the dark; it is Psyche in the palace of Cupid. [ Willmott ]