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The measure of her bitterness was the measure of her failure.
Elizabeth Goudge -
To some people fighting in itself is enjoyable, and she supposed that the fighters of this world can always get some sort of a kick out of things.
Elizabeth Goudge
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The child in us is always there, you know, and it's the best part of us, the winged part that travels farthest.
Elizabeth Goudge -
...The simple little words came easily, fitting themselves to the tune that had come out of the harpsichord. It didn't seem to her that she made them up at all. It seemed to her that they flew in from the rose-garden, through the open window, like a lot of butterflies, poised themselves on the point of her pen, and fell off it on to the paper.
Elizabeth Goudge -
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.
Elizabeth Goudge -
A man may build as he chooses upon his foundations but he cannot change them or forget them, and if at the last the superstructure of his own building falls about his ears he tends to rediscover them at the end as the only rock he has to cling to.
Elizabeth Goudge -
He was a convinced but hardworked rationalist, always hard at it re-convincing himself of his convictions.
Elizabeth Goudge -
For a few minutes the anxiety that tormented him had vanished, leaving his mind as serene as the beauty he looked at. Very lovely, he thought, are the sudden moments of relief that come in the midst of strain, those moments of forgetfulness when we are "teased out of thought" by a bird or a flower or the sight of old roofs in the sun; lovely though so transient, the reversal of those brief moments of misery that visit us even in the midst of joy.
Elizabeth Goudge
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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 -
Autumn days have a holiness that spring lacks ... They are like old serene saints for whom death has lost its terror.
Elizabeth Goudge -
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 -
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.
Elizabeth Goudge -
The years stretched before her, a long and dusty way, yet if she could walk humbly along it she might find that life, unfolding slowly, keeps its best secrets till the end.
Elizabeth Goudge -
The storm had passed and the whole fen lay bathed in spent sunlight. Every stream and stretch of water among the rushes, which had been whipped and tormented by the storm, lay quiet now, reflecting the piled masses of white and silver clouds that floated like swans on the far deep pools of the sky. Every twig was strung with sparkling crystal drops, and every drop had a rainbow caught in its heart.
Elizabeth Goudge
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To know perfect happiness a woman may be a mother, but must be a grandmother.
Elizabeth Goudge -
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 -
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 -
...there began to come to her a first dim realization of God's humility. Rejected by the proud in His own right by what humble means He chose to succor them; through the spirit of a child, a poor gypsy or an old man, by a song perhaps, or even it might be by the fall of a leaf or the scent of a flower. For His infinite and humble patience nothing was too small to advance His purpose of salvation and eternity was not too long for its accomplishment.
Elizabeth Goudge -
Don't waste hate on pink geranium.
Elizabeth Goudge -
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
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...now her compassion had been pierced and set flowing; it felt as though her life's blood were running away.
Elizabeth Goudge -
We cannot change the sort of person that we are.
Elizabeth Goudge -
A man is not a different person just because he becomes aware. Oh I know it must seem like metamorphosis when the eyes of a blind man are opened, but he's the same man. We grow, mercifully, and growth is just awareness of more and more.
Elizabeth Goudge -
Could you understand the meaning of light if there were no darkness to point the contrast? Day and night, life and death, love and hatred, since none of these things can have any being at all apart from the existence of the other, you can no more separate them than you can separate the two sides of a coin.
Elizabeth Goudge