Elizabeth Goudge Quotes
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One thing however, Nat did for him. He taught him carpentry. He learned to distinguish between the different kinds of wood, to love them and understand their ways. Realizing that the boy had great skill with his hands Nat gave him a few tools for his own and taught him wood carving.... First the books and then the wood. Each was a milestone for him on the way through.
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She long ago accepted the fact that happiness is like, swallows in spring. It may come and nest under your eaves or it may not. You cannot command it.
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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.
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There should be no thought of burdens in the mysterious interweaving of one life with another. It must be that the weakness in oneself which one thought pressed most heavily upon others to their harm was in reality a blessing to them, while on the occasions when one thought oneself doing great good, one was as likely as not doing great harm; if self-congratulations were present, sure to be doing harm.
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...you don't have to know just what people are doing and feeling to be of assistance to them. Your own life seems to you like a very small lighted room, with great darkness all around it, and you can't see out into the darkness and know what is happening there. But light and warmth from your room can go out into the darkness if you don't have the windows selfishly curtained, keep a brave fire burning, and light all the happy candles you can.
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It's only the immortal thing that a man can be judged on, that bit of himself that he makes as he does the best he can with what fate handed out to him.
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This gathering of one’s back hair inside a large net, the new style of hairdressing that William and Tai Haruru had failed to notice on the last peaceful evening at the settlement, was excellently adapted for civil war in the primeval forest, she thought, though possibly the Parisian hairdresser who had devised the fashion had been unaware of the fact.
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He was a convinced but hardworked rationalist, always hard at it re-convincing himself of his convictions.
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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.
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These black times go as they come and we do not know how they come or why they go. But we know that God controls them, as he controls the whole vast cobweb of the mystery of things.
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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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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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These warm lovers of life, born under dancing stars, how without them was life tolerable for those, such as himself, whose bias was towards sadness, their stars cloud-hidden when their spirits woke to life....In this world, surely, there should always be a mating between the lovers of life and the endurers of it, in couples they should find a causeway for their feet and walk it together, the star-shine of the one comforting the darkness of the other.
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Our home, our special country, is for all of us the place where we find liberation; a very difficult word ... that tries to describe something that can't be described but is the only thing worth having.
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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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Fear is a lonely thing. Even those who love us best cannot get close to us when we are afraid.
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If in this life only we have hope....." By God, that was true, too. This quickening divine power that he had experienced could not be confined to this world, for cruel, sordid, ugly, devilish can be this world, and by the nature of things that power could have neither source nor ending in it; only flow through it, around it, over it, under it, gathering up the gold into its eternal shining and burning the dross in its fire.
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Sensible fathers and mothers, when their children marry, go back to the old days and renew their youth.
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Folks don't fall from laughter to fear in that way when they're nervously strong, and nerves take their toll of the body in the end.
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And the written words were footsteps, feet running hard to another person.
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What is the distinguishing mark of an aristocrat?' she asked him suddenly.'Reverence,' he replied.
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Peace ... was contingent upon a certain disposition of the soul, a disposition to receive the gift that only detachment from self made possible.
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I doubt if we nuns are really as self-sacrificing as we must seem to be to you who live in the world. We don't give everything for nothing, you know. The mystery plays fair.
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Genius creates from the heart and when men put love into their work there is power in it, there is a soul in the body.