Top 100 Elizabeth Goudge Quotes
#1. In moments of exaltation one expressed sentiments that outstripped one's spiritual capabilities by a vast span; and she knew well that unless God is sought for Himself alone, with a selflessness of which she was at present incapable, He is not to be found.
Elizabeth Goudge
#2. He sat for a long time and thought to himself that he wished he knew how to pray, yet he knew, untaught, how by abandonment of himself to let the quietness take hold of him.
Elizabeth Goudge
#3. If you think this life is all there is," he said, "then self-sacrifice must seem to you sheer insanity. If you do not think so then it is only common sense. It all depends on your point of view." (Hilary Eliot to David Eliot, Chapter 9)
Elizabeth Goudge
#4. Civilization ... is another word for respect for life. One can't have too much respect for a loveliness that's brittle as spun glass.
Elizabeth Goudge
#5. Humanity can be roughly divided into three sorts of people - those who find comfort in literature, those who find comfort in personal adornment, and those who find comfort in food;
Elizabeth Goudge
#6. She lived too close to despair to have any strength left for self-knowledge. She might have been able to acknowledge herself unloved but to know herself unloving was beyond her strength.
Elizabeth Goudge
#8. Since she had had to lead this shut-in invalid life she had found illness involved suffering almost as much from the tyranny of painful thoughts as from physical pain
Elizabeth Goudge
#9. They gazed at her with awe, feeling to the full that medieval reverence for someone obviously touched in the head.
Elizabeth Goudge
#10. All the best things are seen first of all at a far distance.
Elizabeth Goudge
#11. The sun is still there ... even if clouds drift over it. Once you have experienced the reality of sunshine you may weep, but you will never feel ice about your heart again.
Elizabeth Goudge
#13. I have known him nearly all my life, and I am going to marry him, so that there won't ever be a time when I shan't know him.
Elizabeth Goudge
#14. In a city the multiplicity of threads forced a whirling confusion on the loom but here the simple pattern and the slow weaving made purpose more discernible.
Elizabeth Goudge
#15. He had discovered that the choice between self-love or love of something other than self offers no escape from suffering either way, it is merely a choice between two woundings, of the pride or of the heart.
Elizabeth Goudge
#16. In times of storm and tempest, of indecision and desolation, a book already known and loved makes better reading than something new and untried ... nothing is so warming and companionable.
Elizabeth Goudge
#17. There are some people who don't realize what it is they are doing to others until they are paid back in their own coin. But those are not the worst. The worst are those whose unkindness is calculated.
Elizabeth Goudge
#18. I don't think fear that you share with the whole world warps you. It's personal fears that do that.
Elizabeth Goudge
#19. She could only wait. But she was not idle while she waited, because she was holding herself in readiness for whatever it was that she would have to do. She was trying not to be frightened in her mind, and she found that that sort of waiting and thinking really keep a person quite busy.
Elizabeth Goudge
#20. This modern craze for putting the young in positions of authority - headmasters in their thirties, bishops without a gray hair on their heads, generals who scarcely need to use a razor - ever since it took hold the world's gone steadily downhill.
Elizabeth Goudge
#21. Perhaps faith is hard to come by when your're alone, Harriet," he said. "Until now I've been alone."
"We're never alone," said Harriet. "That's the mistake so many make. There'd be less fear if folk knew how little alone they are.
Elizabeth Goudge
#22. In a world where thrushes sing and willow trees are golden in the spring, boredom should have been included among the seven deadly sins.
Elizabeth Goudge
#23. Never again, she vowed, would she live a noisy life that killed her dreams. They were her reason for living, the only thing that she had to give to the world, and she must live in the way that suited them best.
Elizabeth Goudge
#24. The very old and the very young have something in common that makes it right that they should be left alone together. Dawn and sunset see stars shining in a blue sky; but morning and midday and afternoon do not, poor things.
Elizabeth Goudge
#25. And then I say to myself that we should believe in that which we felt when we were strong and happy rather than in that which we feel when we are sick and sad. Do you not think, Judith, that one is more truly oneself in times of joy than in times of sorrow?
Elizabeth Goudge
#26. Give me the benefit of your assistance during those ablutions that neccessarily, though unfortunatly, invariably follow the excercise of the culinary art.
Elizabeth Goudge
#27. She had the courage that accepts instantly, without recoil, and the reverence in love that towards man is without possessiveness and towards God without rebellion
Elizabeth Goudge
#28. She knew that pleasure, to be pleasure, must come to an end.
Elizabeth Goudge
#29. Understanding is a creative act in a dimension we do not see.
Elizabeth Goudge
#30. It was not the size of things that mattered but their perfection, it was not what one had that was important, but what one made.
Elizabeth Goudge
#31. Most of us tend to belittle all suffering except our own," said Mary. "I think it's fear. We don't want to come too near in case we're sucked in and have to share it.
Elizabeth Goudge
#33. Must we go in?" asked Margary.
"Yes," said Mary. "We are only given times like these so that we can go back again. Come along." And she parted the trailing branches of the willow and led the way out.
Elizabeth Goudge
#34. I don't think there's anything more tiring ... than expecting people who don't turn up ...
Elizabeth Goudge
#35. Those who break the law should be loved more and not less for their sin, for if we do not forgive then is sin added to sin and the end is death.
Elizabeth Goudge
#36. All human beings have their otherness and it is that which cries out to the heart.
Elizabeth Goudge
#38. There is always something particularly delightful about exceptions to a rule.
Elizabeth Goudge
#39. Cleanliness', chuckled Sir Benjamin, noting his great niece's delighted smile as her eyes rested upon him, 'comes next to godliness, eh, Maria?
Elizabeth Goudge
#40. His hostess was one of those women who even in an overcrowded room can create a sense of spaciousness.
Elizabeth Goudge
#41. A close union with the earth seemed to involve one in unison with a good deal more than the earth.
Elizabeth Goudge
#42. It is when children start to question their happiness that they lose it and grow up.
Elizabeth Goudge
#43. Butterflies ... not quite birds, as they were not quite flowers, mysterious and fascinating as are all indeterminate creatures
Elizabeth Goudge
#44. Fairyland ... Paradise ... In this place and at this time, Marguerite could know that the one was a parable of the other and both were synonyms for something that had no name.
Elizabeth Goudge
#45. His hunger for knowledge gave him no rest, it was both his bane and his joy.
Elizabeth Goudge
#46. Genius creates from the heart and when the artifact is broken so is the heart.
Elizabeth Goudge
#47. The fires of youth are not dead in old age ... only banked down.
Elizabeth Goudge
#48. These black times go as they come and we do not know how they come or why they go. But we know that God controls them, as he controls the whole vast cobweb of the mystery of things.
Elizabeth Goudge
#49. Most of the basic truths of life sound absurd at first hearing.
Elizabeth Goudge
#50. Autumn days have a holiness that spring lacks ... They are like old serene saints for whom death has lost its terror.
Elizabeth Goudge
#51. It seemed to them dreadfully dangerous to put it into words like that, for lately the things they didn't want to happen were the things that happened and the logic of this was that if you pretended not to want what you really wanted dreadfully you would be more likely to get it.
Elizabeth Goudge
#52. When the demon was muscling for action she was like the princess in the fairy tale from whose mouth toads fell. The small part of her which remained outside the dominion of her temper stood aghast but inefficient as one after the other the reptiles showered forth.
Elizabeth Goudge
#53. Love, and nothing else, was eternal. Love is the Lord by whom we escape death.
Elizabeth Goudge
#54. One is seldom unchanged by the death of those one loves. It gives me a deeper knowledge of them, and so of oneself in regard to them.
Elizabeth Goudge
#55. I've never been one for religion, but yet I've never been what ye could call an unbeliever. What I say is, nothin' don't seem impossible once you've clapped eyes on a whale.
Elizabeth Goudge
#56. Bringing up children, she thought, was like pouring ginger beer into a tumbler. All went well up to a certain point, and then it all frothed over the top.
Elizabeth Goudge
#57. What we are made to do we seldom do well, what we do of our own choice we make a success of for very pride.
Elizabeth Goudge
#58. Nothing mitigated failure except the knowledge that it did not matter.
Elizabeth Goudge
#59. When he had first come to Mr. Peabody he had not wanted to look back. He had felt like someone just awake after a nightmare, and afraid to think about it lest it catch him again, but now the evil had receded so far that he liked to set it as a backcloth to the procession of his shining days.
Elizabeth Goudge
#60. Given belief in God, a good digestion and a mind in working order life's still a thing to be grateful for.
Elizabeth Goudge
#61. There were still children in the world, and while there were children, men and women would not abandon the struggle to make safe homes to put them in, and while they struggled there was hope.
Elizabeth Goudge
#62. Now her compassion had been pierced and set flowing; it felt as though her life's blood were running away.
Elizabeth Goudge
#63. We're all too apt to think that things are as we feel them to be, forgetting that they have an objective value apart from what we feel about them. An embittered mind colors the world black for its owner yet that does not alter the fact that the world is a treasure house of beauty and love.
Elizabeth Goudge
#64. Those who have deeply suffered in some particular way are welded together in an understanding incomprehensible to those who have not so suffered.
Elizabeth Goudge
#65. It's not your business to decide if a woman you love should, or should not, marry you. It's her business. Tell her all about yourself and leave the decision to her. God knows it's trouble enough having to make one's own decisions in life without having to make other people's too.
Elizabeth Goudge
#66. To know perfect happiness a woman may be a mother, but must be a grandmother.
Elizabeth Goudge
#68. Proud folk separate themselves from others, judging them ... To criticize others we must hold them from us, at arm's length so to speak. And then before you know where you are you've pushed them away and you're the poorer.
Elizabeth Goudge
#69. The function of the educator is to discover in each individual child the gifts implanted in her by Almighty God and to develop and dedicate them to His service.
Elizabeth Goudge
#70. We all of us need to be toppled off the throne of self, my dear," he said. "Perched up there the tears of others are never upon our own cheek.
Elizabeth Goudge
#71. In my opinion, too much attention to weather makes for instability of character.
Elizabeth Goudge
#72. Faith given back to us after a night of doubt is a stronger thing, and far more valuable to us than faith that has never been tested.
Elizabeth Goudge
#73. Loneliness made or ruined a man. It frightened him so that he must either sing and build in the face of the dark, like a bird or a beaver, or hide from it like a beast in his den. There were perhaps always only the two ways to go, God or the jungle.
Elizabeth Goudge
#74. Is a man less of a man, because he's learned to hold his tongue?
Elizabeth Goudge
#75. Lovely phrases had lit candles in her mind, one after the other, till she felt intoxicated with the brightness.
Elizabeth Goudge
#76. Love. The only indestructible thing. The only wealth and the only reality. The only survival. At the end of it all there was nothing else.
Elizabeth Goudge
#77. Is independence so bad for one?" asked Daphne.
"Nothing worse," said Harriet. "It gives you a wonderful conceit of yourself.
Elizabeth Goudge
#78. [I]f you believe in God omnipresent, then you must believe everything that comes into your life, person or event, must have something of God in it to be experienced and loved; not hated.
Elizabeth Goudge
#80. Peace ... was contingent upon a certain disposition of the soul, a disposition to receive the gift that only detachment from self made possible.
Elizabeth Goudge
#81. Rachell believed passionately in the value of beauty. If she was pressed for time she considered the filling of her bowl with flowers more important for her family's welfare than the making of a cake for tea. On this point her family entirely disagreed with her.
Elizabeth Goudge
#82. There's much that goes to the makin' of a man or woman into somethin' better than a brute beast, but there's three things in chief, an' they're the places where life sets us down, an' the folks life knocks us up against, an'
not the things ye get, but the things ye don't get.
Elizabeth Goudge
#83. Your God is a trinity. There are three necessary prayers and they have three words each. They are these, 'Lord, have mercy. Thee I adore. Into Thy hands.' Not difficult to remember. If in times of distress you hold to these, you will do well.
Elizabeth Goudge
#84. ...To search for colours, fumble for words,
Strive to catch in earthly song
The echo of greater music,
To fail with heartbreak and give
The heartbreaks to each other with our love,
Can this be why we live?
Elizabeth Goudge
#85. Accustomed like the white blackbird to the loneliness of eccentricity yet never quite reconciled to it, they found in each other's oddness a most comforting compatibility.
Elizabeth Goudge
#86. Imagination comes from yourself and can deceive you, but vision is a gift from outside yourself - like light striking on your closed eyelids and lifting them to see what's really there.
Elizabeth Goudge
#87. Writers and painters have a medium that can foster self-effacements. Actors haven't. An actor can't hide himself behind paper or canvas. If you're not there your art's not there. That's why we actors are often such self-centered objects.
Elizabeth Goudge
#88. What is the scent of water?"
"Renewal. The goodness of God coming down like dew.
Elizabeth Goudge
#89. Our home, our special country, is for all of us the place where we find liberation; a very difficult word ... that tries to describe something that can't be described but is the only thing worth having.
Elizabeth Goudge
#90. In what he suffered, as in all true suffering and in true joy, there was the quality of eternity. He could not believe it would ever end.
Elizabeth Goudge
#91. Whatever happens I'll not be afraid again; for, when you've once pushed through the place of torment to the peace beyond, you know that you can do it again. You know there's a strength somewhere that you can call upon. You've confidence.
Elizabeth Goudge
#92. Winter, spring and summer did not accommodate themselves to one's mood as autumn did. They lacked its gentleness.
Elizabeth Goudge
#93. Are you quite sure that you want to hear it?" he asked. "Sometimes, Maria, a story that one hears starts one off doing things that one would not have had to do if one had not heard it.
Elizabeth Goudge
#94. In the old days he had clutched life with such violence that the juice of it ran out between his fingers and was lost, but now he would touch it delicately, thankful for the good and accepting the ills with patience.
Elizabeth Goudge
#95. Nd looking up into Abednego's face she fought a battle inside herself with the thing that it was, a sort of grabbing thing, and then she held Gertrude out to him. "You have her," she said.
Elizabeth Goudge
#96. To be sorry and glad together is to be perceptive to the richness of life.
Elizabeth Goudge
#97. The God who had thrust him through in the darkness with probings of dread and shame was the same God who now held out the sword and shield.
Elizabeth Goudge
#98. Peace ... Henrietta was not quite sure what it was but she knew it was very important. If one wanted it, Grandfather had told her once, one must not hit back when fate hit hard but must allow the hammer-strokes to batter out a hollow place inside one into which peace, like cool water, could flow.
Elizabeth Goudge
#99. All we are asked to bear we can bear. That is a law of the spiritual life. The only hindrance to the working of this law, as of all benign laws, is fear.
Elizabeth Goudge
#100. Someone once said to me,said Marguerite, that our home, our special country, is where we find liberation. I suppose she meant that it is where our souls find it easiest to escape from self, and it seem to me that it is that way with us when what is about us echoes the best that we are.
Elizabeth Goudge
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