Elizabeth Goudge Quotes
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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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It's a poor sort of virtue that has no roots in love. It's why you do or don't do a thing that matters most to my mind. If love of God comes first with you then you deny yourself to keep His commandments, you give away your whole life to Him and glory in what the world calls loss.
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Butterflies... not quite birds, as they were not quite flowers, mysterious and fascinating as are all indeterminate creatures.
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In the old days he had clutched life with such violence that the juice of it ran out between his fingers and was lost, but now he would touch it delicately, thankful for the good and accepting the ills with patience.
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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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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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Being ill makes you feel what well people call sentimental, but what you feel is nonetheless genuine whatever they call it.
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Without faith your mind gets fouled. Look at Cervantes. He was a man of faith and nothing fouled Cervantes, not even war and slavery. He wrote the first part of Don Quixote in prison.
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There was a leap of joy in him, like a flame lighting up in a dark lantern. At this moment he believed it was worth it. This moment of supreme beauty was worth all the wretchedness of the journey. It was always worth it. "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." It was the central truth of existence, and all men knew it, though they might not know that they knew it. Each man followed his own star through so much pain because he knew it, and at journey's end all the innumerable lights would glow into one.
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Those who have deeply suffered in some particular way are welded together in an understanding incomprehensible to those who have not so suffered.
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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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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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Given belief in God, a good digestion and a mind in working order life's still a thing to be grateful for.
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Shame could wrench just as fear did. Thinking how other men would have behaved in his place was the most searching form of humiliation that he knew; and he knew a good many.
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Just as it takes death to awaken us to the full stature of someone loved.
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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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Someone once said to me,said Marguerite, that our home, our special country, is where we find liberation. I suppose she meant that it is where our souls find it easiest to escape from self, and it seem to me that it is that way with us when what is about us echoes the best that we are.
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The elements were "seeking" each other in rage and confusion, and in the fury of the conflict boastful man was utterly humiliated, sucked down, drowned.
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I don't think there's anything more tiring ... than expecting people who don't turn up.
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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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And the written words were footsteps, feet running hard to another person.
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What we are made to do we seldom do well, what we do of our own choice we make a success of for very pride.
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So this blessing of loneliness was not really loneliness. Real loneliness was something unendurable. What one wanted when exhausted by the noise and impact of physical bodies was not no people but disembodied people; all those denizens of beloved books who could be taken to one's heart and put away again, in silence, and with no hurt feelings.
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...those who break the law should be loved more and not less for their sin, for if we do not forgive then is sin added to sin and the end is death.