Quotes from Elizabeth Goudge

Grandmother turned a little difficult and said no living gift could be received in future unless it was a vegetarian, and no mechanical gift unless it could refrain from calling attention to the passing of time by shrill noises in the night. Life fed on life, one knew, and time passed, but Grandmother did not wish her attention called to either distressing fact.

David could never come back to Damerosehay, Ben knew, without that shadow of a fear that something might have been changed and the old rapture of homecoming not be quite the same. Been understood. That was the worst of going away, like David had to. If you stayed at home, as he did, you knew that everything you loved was safe; day by day you watched over it, and if something had to change a little it changed so gradually that it did not hurt.

In times of storm and tempest, of indecision and desolation, a book already known and loved makes better reading than something new and untried. The meeting with remembered and well-loved passages is like the continual greeting of old friends; nothing is so warming and companionable.

Nothing he could do or say would bridge the gulf because there was nothing here to appeal to. There was nothing here but anger and fear, things in themselves entirely sterile. Divorced from the love of righteousness, the fear of God, they were nothing. There was nothing here. He had not realized before the ghastly evil of negation. He had seldom felt such evil. Nothingness was a bottomless pit...

A close union with the earth seemed to involve one in unison with a good deal more than the earth.

Life's very like a husband you know, my dear; it makes you bring forth fruit.

Sarcasm doesn't grow on the same stalk as humility.

He knew what it was like to have lost belief in one's own excellence. One could not move through life without a measure of outward assurance any more than one could go about without a suit of clothes, but it needed a lot of practice before one could hold the thing steady outwardly while remaining inwardly aware that there was nothing to be assured about.

Acceptance of homage, she had found, gave no permanent satisfaction; it was better to give it; what is given to you you are always afraid will one day cease to be given but what you give you can give for ever. Life had taught her that at long last.

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.

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.

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.

She had Scottish blood in her and was of a saving turn of mind.

Such a blow breaks a weak woman, twists a strong one.

The measure of her bitterness was the measure of her failure.

Knyghtwood, though the gales had stripped away most of its leaves, had not lost its fascination for Ben and the twins. Indeed, its spell seemed deeper than before. The trees all had faces now, the twins said, and fingers and toes. They dug their toes in hard when the wind blew, and stretched up their arms to the sky, and pulled down the clouds with their long, grey fingers, and made purple cloaks out of them that they wrapped about their bare limbs when the night fell coldly.

Her needles clicked and flashed triumphantly as her eyes came back from their journeying and fixed themselves upon her work for that one knitting event for which their regard was necessary- the turning of the heel.

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.

now her compassion had been pierced and set flowing; it felt as though her life's blood were running away.

Pride takes a lot of breaking.

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.

He did not consciously tell himself that it was his eternity but he had a confused idea that the dark would not entirely get him while the pulse beat on in this clock.

Had her mother endured this same torture for her, and had she rewarded her with so little love? But it was too late to love Sophie now. She was dead. Did all women go through this agony whenever a child was born? Then women were greater than she had thought. Hine-Moa had had six children and was still beautiful and serene. And Charlotte had many children. She must not scream. She was sure that neither Charlotte nor Hine-Moa had ever screamed.

Like all creators, he knew well that strange feeling of movement within the spirit, comparable only to the first movement of the child within the womb, which causes the victim to say perhaps with excitement, perhaps with exasperation or exhaustion, "There is a new poem, a new picture, a new symphony coming, heaven help me." The movement had been unusually strong when he first knew about this clock.