Quotes from Elizabeth Goudge

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.

and looking up into Abednego's face she fought a battle inside herself with the thing that it was, a sort of grabbing thing, and then she held Gertrude out to him. "You have her," she said.

Just as it takes death to awaken us to the full stature of someone loved

Only at the very center of pain or joy was one wholly wretched, wholly joyful. There was only one hour of the night in which sunset or dawn was not present to the mind in memory or hope, only one hour of the day when the sun seemed neither rising nor declining, and the intensity of those hours dulled and blinded.

Is a man less of a man, because he's learned to hold his tongue?

There are some people who don't realize what it is they are doing to others until they are paid back in their own coin. But those are not the worst. The worst are those whose unkindness is calculated.

I don't think fear that you share with the whole world warps you. It's personal fears that do that.

She would not rest until existence was for her a sucked orange. When there was no drop of juice left, then she would fling away the rind and die content.

She lived too close to despair to have any strength left for self-knowledge. She might have been able to acknowledge herself unloved but to know herself unloving was beyond her strength.

She had no beauty to commend her apart from the sweetness of her smile and the kindliness of her round brown eyes, but she carried with her wherever she went that aura of almost heavenly motherliness which so often shines about a woman who has borne only one child, and in losing it has become mother to all the world, shining more wonderfully than about the mother of a dozen.

It was not the size of things that mattered but their perfection, it was not what one had that was important, but what one made.

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.

Fear is a lonely thing. Even those who love us best cannot get close to us when we are afraid.

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.

There were still children in the world, and while there were children, men and women would not abandon the struggle to make safe homes to put them in, and while they so struggled there was hope.

It seemed to them dreadfully dangerous to put it into words like that, for lately the things they didn't want to happen were the things that happened and the logic of this was that if you pretended not to want what you really wanted dreadfully you would be more likely to get it.

I don't fly to the classics for comfort, as Giles does. I'm too frivolous. Worthy people always read the classics when things are difficult.

She knew little about herself and consequently little about others.

Nothing mitigated failure except the knowledge that it did not matter.

You should have no fear," said Harriet. "There's no sense in fear." "I've been afraid all my life, Harriet," said Michael. "Nonsensical all your life, you mean," said Harriet. "But a person being nonsensical through the first half of his life is no reason to my way of thinking why he should be nonsensical through the second half too. It's nice to have a bit of change.

Hard labor and the passing of the years had contorted and hardened his limbs to queer, crooked shapes, but he gave no impression of deformity, as Nat did. So of the earth was he that he looked more like a tree than a man, one of those tough old pine trees that nothing in the way of weather except a thunderbolt will ever get the better of.

The scent of a flower is a very close and intimate thing, she thought. It can seem to be a part of your body and blood.

Everyone needed someone in the world who was like his other hand. You can't hold much or do much with one hand only. It is with both hands that a man lifts the garnered gold of the wheatsheaf and the brimming bowl of milk, with both hands that he builds his house, with both hand, clasped together, that he prays.

She had the courage that accepts instantly, without recoil, and the reverence in love that towards man is without possessiveness and towards God without rebellion