Elizabeth Goudge Quotes
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The end was present in the beginning and the beginning in the end, so that there was neither beginning nor end but only the perfection of the whole. Life had come round full circle, and the aging man that he was admitted it not with weariness but with a welling up within him of refreshment that was like the welling up of youth.
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The tragic capacity of the human race for going off course was a little balanced by the integrity of the animals who were always obedient to the law of their being. We were meant to love like that, thought Mary, simply because that's our law and we were told to obey it.
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Whatever had made the Dean take such a fancy to him, a cowardly, selfish, obstinate, ugly old fellow like him? He would never understand it. He took the piece of paper out of his pocket and looked at that too. Faith in God. God. A word he had always refused. But the Dean had said, put the word love in its place.
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Winter, spring and summer did not accommodate themselves to one's mood as autumn did. They lacked its gentleness.
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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.
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It takes a happy marriage to make light of small things.
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Isaac's humility did not discriminate between man and man and scarcely between man and watch. In his thought men were much like their watches. The passage of time was marked as clearly upon a man's face as upon that of his watch and the marvelous mechanism of his body could be as cruelly disturbed by evil hazards. The outer case varied, gunmetal or gold, carter's corduroy or bishop's broadcloth, but the tick of the pulse was the same, the beating of life that gave such a heartbreaking illusion of eternity.
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He supposed he was one of those unfortunates born with a great capacity for suffering.... He opened his eyes a moment and they were dark with fear, for only one race was run as yet and there might be many others.... Then his newborn courage came back to him and he accepted his suffering as the price he must pay for the gift of creation that was his. And suffering, he had discovered, could be the gateway to renewal, than which no more glorious experience can be man's on earth.
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She would not rest until existence was for her a sucked orange. When there was no drop of juice left, then she would fling away the rind and die content.
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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.
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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.
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Nothing mitigated failure except the knowledge that it did not matter.
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What is the scent of water?" "Renewal. The goodness of God coming down like dew.
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I had not known before that love is obedience. You want to love, and you can’t, and you hate yourself because you can’t, and all the time love is not some marvelous thing that you feel but some hard thing that you do. And this in a way is easier because with God’s help you can command your will when you can’t command your feelings. With us, feelings seem to be important, but He doesn’t appear to agree with us.
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It was one of the great fen sunsets, flaming across the sky from horizon to horizon, burning up the earth beneath it to nothingness. But it could not subdue the Cathedral. Isaac was looking straight up at the three great towers and the flaming clouds were streaming out from them like banners. Yet there was no wind, and no movement in the sky except just above the Rollo tower where two small white clouds were in gentle flight. They soared and sank again, infinitely graceful and lovely, the golden light touching their wings and breasts. Then they soared once more and were lost in the light. They were two white swans.
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There always comes, I think, a sort of peak in suffering at which either you win over your pain or your pain wins over you, according as to whether you can, or cannot, call up that extra ounce of endurance that helps you to break through the circle of yourself and do the hitherto impossible. That extra ounce carries you through 'le dernier quart d' heure.' Psychologist have a name for it, I believe. Christians call it the Grace of God.
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Nothing is ever finished and done with in this world. You may think a seed was finished and done with when it falls like a dead thing into the earth; but when it puts forth leaves and flowers next spring you see your mistake.
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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.
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Acceptance of homage, she had found, gave no permanent satisfaction; it was better to give it; what is given to you you are always afraid will one day cease to be given but what you give you can give for ever. Life had taught her that at long last.
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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.
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In old age, she thought, how it all falls away. Your good opinion of yourself, all the virtues you had thought you had, your beauty, your wealth.
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The way God squandered Himself had always hurt her; and annoyed her too. The sky full of wings and only the shepherds awake. That golden voice speaking and only a few fishermen there to hear; and perhaps some of the words He spoke carried away on the wind or lost in the sound of the waves lapping against the side of the boat. A thousand blossoms shimmering over the orchard, each a world of wonder all to itself, and then the whole thing blown away on a southwest gale as though the delicate little worlds were of no value at all. Well, of all the spendthrifts, she would think and then pull herself up. It was not for her to criticize the ways of Almighty God; if He liked to go to all that trouble over the snowflakes, millions and millions of them, their intricate patterns too small to be seen by human eyes, and melting as soon as made, that was His affair and not hers. All she could do about it was to catch in her window, and save from entire waste, as much of the squandered beauty as she could.
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Nothing living should ever be treated with contempt. Whatever it is that lives, a man, a tree, or a bird, should be touched gently, because the time is short. Civilization is another word for respect for life.
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When the spirit of praise had been poured into a man he forgot what he was; he was like a cheap ugly glass made beautiful by the golden wine which filled it. Empty, he knew his ugliness. In prayer, for those as undisciplined and inexperienced as himself, there were times when one scarcely seemed the same person for five minutes together. He took grip on himself and knelt upright, clinging to his belief that one was not the same being; one was the self that one was now in all the disturbance and agitation of weakness, and the self that one would be when the compass needle had once and for all steadied to the north. His hands gripping the sides of the stall, he pronounced in words his belief that even for such as he, if he could endure to the end, eventual perfections was not only possible but certain through the grace of God, his conviction that despair was sin. The prayer of words was all he had now. The discipline of words must hold him up until the desert was crossed and the Seraph could sing again.