Elizabeth Goudge Quotes
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Don't waste hate on pink geranium.
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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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The perfect moment, once lost, is not easily found again.
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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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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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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?
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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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If it were possible to escape from lonely experiences for a moment and stand back from the tree one would see the myriad bright worlds sparkling upon it. But only the greatest could do that. For all but the greatest their own experience was a prison house until the ending of the days. But one could know how bright was the light that carried all souls back to the light when for a moment one entered the world of a child.
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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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...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.
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During these last twelve years, with his left hand scarcely aware of what his right was up to, he had saved many souls. And he never saw a weeping child in the street without administering lollipops, or an old woman carrying a heavy burden but he did not turn aside to carry it for her. His huge kindness grew with the years, and his wealth, by giving him the means of gratifying it, had enlarged rather than shut up his heart. Though he had continued through all these years to detest the pursuit of money, yet its possession had done much for him.
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There was of course that other thing, that power that had been given him of taking hold of an evil situation, wrestling with it, shaking it as a terrier shakes a rat until the evil fell out of it and fastened on himself. Then he carried the evil on his own shoulders to the place of prayer, carried it up a long hill in darkness, but willingly. Each time he felt himself alone, yet each time when the weight became too much for him it was shared, then lifted, as though he had never been alone. Even it there had been no hope of help he would still have been just as willing.
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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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Insufficient nourishment in the early morning leads to pessimism and doubts.
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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.
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After almost a lifetime spent in prayer and contemplation she had believed that at least she had her thoughts well disciplined, but as one got older, one’s hard-won control slipped a little and one felt sometimes as though spiritually one were back again in one’s youth, with all the battles to fight again.
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Now she watched Nat as a small child watches a teacher from whom it must at all costs learn. He took to himself each day as it came with childlike trustfulness, and so did she. He never complained, and neither did she. He took every misfortune with a grin, and so did she. He took upon himself all the hardest and most unpleasant duties as a matter of mere routine, and she tried to do the same.
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But no, he did not believe in capricious fortune, but in a carefully woven pattern where every tightly stretched warp thread of pain laid the foundation for a woof thread of joy.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I mean, you may cause others a spot of bother by your weaknesses, perhaps, but coping with you may possibly increase their strength and sympathy. But if you sin deliberately, even if it seems only against yourself--well--you won't be the only one to suffer. You may even be the one who suffers least.
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You're a sick woman. In a state of physical weakness it's so much easier to function in the groove you know. It seems to hold you together.
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His hunger for knowledge gave him no rest, it was both his bane and his joy.