Elizabeth Goudge Quotes
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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.
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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.
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He remembered suddenly, at this moment, as he looked at the squares of moonlight lying on the floor, the time when he had first realized that pain is a thing that we must face and come to terms with if life is to be lived with dignity an not merely muddled through like an evil dream... In some vague way he had understood that dark things are necessary; without them the silver moonlight would just stream away into nothingness, but with them it can be held and arranged into beautiful squares.
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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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Could mere loving be a life's work? Could it be a career like marriage or nursing the sick or going on the stage? Could it be adventure?
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It was only in his rare moments of silence, when his face fell into repose and the laughter died out of his eyes and his full lips drooped one upon the other, that one observer in a thousand might have known him for a man who dared not think. In those moments he looked like a mangy, sad old lion looking out upon the splendor of the grand old days from behind the bars of his prison cell.
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She did not suppose for a moment that anything worth having, and she now knew faith to be supremely worth having, was ever easy to have.
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The other two with their happy, objective minds would always be absorbed in the moment but she would look backward and remember, and look forward and be afraid, and the present would always confuse her because she would never entirely live in it.
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Perhaps she had not understood the heights to which prayer must rise before it becomes pure praise, the fortitude that is demanded before it can share in the redemption of man's soul. The man of prayer beside her had said it was action, the greatest activity there is. She began to believe him.
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Give me the benefit of your assistance during those ablutions that neccessarily, though unfortunatly, invariably follow the excercise of the culinary art.
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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.
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Jean was visited by one of her rare moments of happiness, one of those moments when the goodness of God was so real to her that it was like taste and scent; the rough strong taste of honey in the comb and the scent of water. Her thoughts of God had a homeliness that at times seemed shocking, in spite of their power, which could rescue her from terror or evil with an ease that astonished her.
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Life's very like a husband you know, my dear; it makes you bring forth fruit.
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Because of course she had known she must go. She always did the thing because in obedience lay the integrity that God asked of her. If anyone had asked her what she meant by integrity she would not have been able to tell them but she had seen it once like a picture in her mind, a root going down into the earth and drinking deeply there. No one was really alive without that root.
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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.
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Suffering had had an effect with which she was familiar. The refusal of self-pity and despair had turned it from lead to fire, burning up the subterfuges and dishonesties below the surface of the inherited veneer of manners and thought that most men and women think are their true selves, and the veneer with them.
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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.
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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.
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The perfect moment, once lost, is not easily found again.
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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.
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I think God creates what one might call spiritual families, people who may or may not be physically related to each other, but who will travel together the whole of the way. And it's a long way.
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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.
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Autumn days have a holiness that spring lacks ... They are like old serene saints for whom death has lost its terror.
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Don't waste hate on pink geranium.