Corbett sat there, looking up at me. His tears had dried and his quiet smile said everything words could not. Words? We had come for his gift of words. There was so much we wanted to hear, so much he could tell us. But words were something irrelevant now. A deeper communication was taking place. He had given us the blessing of his presence, and no greater gift can be imagined.
How terribly the rice suffers under the pestle! But it emerges polished, as white as cotton. The same process tempers the human spirit: Hard trials shape us into polished diamonds.
~ from A PRISON DIARY by Ho Chi Minh in AFTER SORROW by Lady Borton
