Elizabeth Goudge Quotes
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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.
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Better to struggle through life with a broken wing than have no wings at all.
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I loathe, detest, hate and abominate the block, the gibbet, the rack, the pillory and the faggots with equal passion," said the old man vehemently. "Not only are they devilishly cruel but they are not even common sense. They do not lesson the evil in the world, they increase it, by making those who handle these cruelties as wicked as those who suffer them. No, I'm wrong, more wicked, for there is always some expiation made in the endurance of suffering and none at all in the infliction of it.
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He felt him transfixed, captured, nailed by his vow to the hard wood of the impossible thing he had to do.
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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.
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And as for herself, if she could manage to welcome sorrow as readily as joy, it would shape her as deftly as joy could have to whatever beauty of being it was within her power to reach...
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In one life only had the fighting, the healing, the teaching, the praying, and the suffering held equal and perfect place, and that life could never on earth be lived again. For some dying men, he thought, there would have been comfort in the old belief that a soul comes back to earth again and again, the fighter returning to pray and the teacher to heal. Once he had half believed that himself, but now he could not. Once only had the perfect life been focused in a human body. He had not returned. Why should we? The Word now taught and healed, fought and suffered, through the yielded wills of other men.
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If you lose your reason, you lose it into the hands of God....It's the only place where anything is safe. And when you're dead it's only what's there you'll have. Nothing else.
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Progress in evil was quick and easy; Apollyon was not a chap who hid himself and he gave every assistance in his power. The growth in goodness was so slow, at times so flat, so dull, and like the White Queen one had to run so fast to stay where one was, let alone progress; and there were few men who dared to say they had found God. It was easy to be a clever sinner, for the race to an earthly visible goal was short to run, so impossibly hard to be a wise saint, with the goal set at so vast a distance from this world and clouded with such uncertainty.
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Understanding is a creative act in a dimension we do not see.
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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.
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Most of the basic truths of life sound absurd at first hearing.
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Is a man less of a man, because he's learned to hold his tongue?
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The fires of youth are not dead in old age... only banked down.
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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.
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The real comfort was to have one's sins and weaknesses not explained away but understood and shared. John's identification of himself with Michael in so much was what he needed. He found strength in it... It struck him that it can be as much by our weakness as by our virtue that we can serve each other.
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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.
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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.
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I had not known before that love is obedience. You want to love, and 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 the first time in her life that she had put her faith in God’s protection to the test, and it had not failed her.
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But a hare, now, that is a different thing altogether. A hare is not a pet but a person. Hares are clever and brave and loving, and they have fairy blood in them. It’s a grand thing to have a hare for a friend.
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Believe instead in love. It is my faith that love shaped the universe as you shape your clocks, delighting in creation. I believe that just as you wish to give me your clock in love, refusing payment, so God loves me and gave Himself for me. That is my faith. I cannot presume to force it upon you, I can only ask you in friendship to consider it.
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The scent of a flower is a very close and intimate thing, she thought. It can seem to be a part of your body and blood.
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The man opposite, divided between anger and relief at the stripping away of his defenses, his nerves jangling, was taken utterly aback by the extraordinary beauty of Hilary's eyes without their glasses, by their keen, straight glance, by the enveloping warmth of his utterly happy yet rather deprecating smile. The immense power of his goodwill, together with his personal humility, made a sudden unexpected appeal that got right under Malony's guard before he knew where he was. He wasn't out to do you good, this chap - he didn't think enough of himself for that - he was simply out to jog along beside you for a little, and pass the time of day, knowing you were down on your luck, and thinking a bit of companionship might not come amiss.