"Purgatorial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... practice of opening doors and boxes when a person dies is founded on the idea that the minister of purgatorial pains took the soul as it escaped from the body, and flattening it against some closed door, (which alone would serve the purpose,) crammed it into the hinges and hinge openings; thus the soul in torment was likely to be miserably pinched and squeezed ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... drinking the water, he abstains for a day and night from food, and partakes of certain mysteries inaccessible to the vulgar; from which it is to be collected that there are two methods by which man may be prepared for the reception of the divine influence: one by the drinking of purgatorial water, endowed by the Deity with a clarifying virtue; the other, by sobriety, solitude, the separation of the mind from the body, and the intent contemplation of ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... penances did not wholly reward his zeal of prayer, since he could never know how much temporal punishment he had remitted by way of suffrage for the agonizing souls; and fearful lest in the midst of the purgatorial fire, which differed from the infernal only in that it was not everlasting, his penance might avail no more than a drop of moisture, he drove his soul daily through an increasing circle ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... as I know, the only idea in this passage which belongs to the current English superstition of Shakspere's day, apart from the natural notion of death as a mere rotting of the body, is that of the purgatorial fire; unless we assume that the common superstition as to the souls of unbaptised children being blown about until the day of judgment was extended in the popular imagination to the case of executed criminals. He may have heard of ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... to avert those pangs from one, Who, though of our most faultless holy Church, Yet died without its last and dearest offices, Which smooth the soul through purgatorial pains, I have to offer humbly this donation In masses for his spirit. [SIEGENDORF offers the gold which he ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron |
