Quotes from Elizabeth Goudge

I can only grow to what I will be from what I am, and where I am, so discontent is quite useless. Much more sensible to accept the one and love the other.

It was the first time in her life that she had put her faith in God's protection to the test, and it had not failed her.

Never again, she vowed, would she live a noisy life that killed her dreams. They were her reason for living, the only thing that she had to give to the world, and she must live in the way that suited them best.

She assured herself that the practice of the presence of God, that she had learned with self-discipline of thought and will, was not a selfish thing but something absolutely essential if one's soul was to be of the slightest use.

There was no resentment in her manner, for acceptance and not resentment was the essence of her...

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.

This was probably one of those many queer experiences that human beings could not speak of to each other, because though words could be formed into a casket to hold visions, and could be at the same time the power that liberated them, they seemed of little use when one tried to use them to explain to another person what it was they had set free. Words were queer things, Stella decided, to be at once so powerful and so weak.

Home! It showed you its face when you sat quiet within it at that moment when day was passing to night, but it could only reveal its spirit, its eternal meaning, when you stood at a little distance, just turning to leave it or just returning to it, seeing it at that transition moment when a larger world was claiming or releasing you.

Very well then' said the doctor, and he leaned back in his chair, stuck his feet on the fender, and opened to Zachary, as to so many before him in this room, the comforting depth of his comprehending silence.

The shabby frock coat that Dr. Ozanne wore for work in the surgery was none too clean either, and there was a slight tremor about his hands, as he tried to bring a little order into the litter on his desk, that Marianne had not noticed before. . . . She had been right. His practice was not going to improve. He would never be a successful doctor. Yet the moment he turned his attention to the boy, she had to admit that there are two ways of being a successful doctor.

The Abbé was no believer in too much intimacy. Human beings, precariously making their souls, could not press in too closely upon each other without damage, he thought. The instinct for fusion was one of those immortal longings whose complete satisfaction was not for this life.

These were the best moments of marriage, these times when the surface irritations fell away and each gave to the other what the other needed.

He saw now that [compassion] was the very first necessity, always and everywhere, and should flow between all men, always and everywhere. Men lived with their nearest and dearest and knew little of them, and strangers passing by in the street were as impersonal as trees walking, and all the while there was this deep affinity, for all men suffered.

Ferranti's thoughts had been his. As before he had understood his remorse so now he understood the mental chains that had imprisoned him. The poor wretch could not move. Misery had become apathy and apathy had brought the inevitable paralysis of the will.

One is at rest with people who want one; they are like a warm house with the door wide open. And one trusts an open door, for trust begets trust, and if the people inside didn't trust you they wouldn't leave it open.

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.

It was human imperfection that kept human beings so isolated. It was crying for the moon to ask for a perfect relationship with another while one remained what one was. And meanwhile, until one was something different, to say that one's marriage worked was to count oneself supremely blessed.

She was standing some paces away from them looking out to sea, and so deep was her wound that she was afraid, and her fear was discernible in her voice. For just a moment she lost hold of her childhood's certainty that to give love is to receive it again in equal measure, and she wondered what it would be like to go through the whole of life giving more than one was given. . . . The hunger . . . the dissatisfaction.

He [Zachary] knew now that every kind of life and situation holds somewhere within it for the finding its own kernel of quiet, each small possession of mortal peace a symbol of the eternal fortress and a door to it. He would be able to hold on now through the months of storm, remembering the days of peace at the heart of them to which the way was sure.

to know perfect happiness a woman may be a mother but must be a Grandmother

Must we go in?" asked Margary. "Yes," said Mary. "We are only given times like these so that we can go back again. Come along." And she parted the trailing branches of the willow and led the way out.

What an idiot she had been to try and make Le Paradis wholly her own. It was of the essence of home that it should hold out its arms to diverse personalities and gather them together into a harmonious whole. A house stamped with one personality only was surely more like the cell of a prisoner condemned to solitary confinement than a home.

If I only could be a doctor!" she cried. "I believe it would be even better than being a sailor. Couldn't I be a doctor?" "Certainly not!" said Dr. Ozanne with twinkling eyes. "You're a woman, my dear, and women are not doctors, and never will be, thank God. A woman's place is in the home, doing needlework and enjoying delicate health.

Every now and then he [Sol] made these cryptic remarks, gazing into the fire or at Stella with his bright amused eyes. She did not understand him, and he had no words to explain what he knew. It was only by the tranquillity with which he carried the burden of things as they are that he could reveal his innate knowledge that the hands that had put it upon him were the hands of love.