Quotes from Rumer Godden

None of us should marry, unless we love a man so much we would go through hell for him, which we shall probably have to do.

Now you gird yourself and take yourself where you want to go … but one day another will gird you and take you where you do not want to go.

When you have become God's in the measure He wants, He, Himself, will know how to bestow you on others.

And you needn't worry about being useful,' said Dame Ursula. 'When you have become God's in the measure He wants, He, Himself, will know how to bestow you on others.' She was quoting St Basil. Then her face grew wistful, '"Unless He prefer, for thy greater advantage, to keep thee all to himself." That does happen to a few people. Yet, paradoxically, they have the greatest influence.

I have come to believe that nothing is ever wasted; out of mistakes or through mistakes, something quite worthwhile can come, in my case the see of another novel.

You are making a mountain out of a molehill,' said Angela. Olivia was suddenly inspired to answer, 'A molehill can be a mountain to a sparrow.

On occasions, very occasionally, things happen as you feel they will, as you feel in your bones they will.

With the feeling of elation there came to Harriet a feeling of responsibility. She had avowed herself. She had signed herself away. It was public now. She was different. With all the glory, she wished she could have kept herself a secret.

He rolled the trolley away and fetched the wine, which Mrs. Combie had kept in the hot kitchen to warm a little more after it had been shown in its cradle to Charles and carefully uncorked. "Let it breathe a few moments," Vincent had said, and Lovejoy had looked at it, not daring to touch it; she had not known wine was alive.

It was splendid,' said Dame Perpetua in the Abbess's room. 'You made it splendid.' 'It wasn't I,' said Abbess Catherine. 'It is splendid. That is the blessing of the liturgy, it wipes out self.

She did not know that males do not care to be circumvented, however wonderfully, by their females.

She could not take the words back—words never will come back—and she looked round for something she could do.

Wanting is the beginning of getting.' Vincent said that often. "Then why don't people get things?" Asked Lovejoy. "Because they don't want hard enough." Certainly no one could have accused Vincent or Lovejoy of that.

Perhaps it was the pulling up of her stakes, or claims, to her private loves, renouncing them, that had made room for these people in a kind of universal love, without any claims.

I'm afraid startling things are not impossible, Miss Chesney.

Then you won't come?" Said Father Lambert. "I'm sorry, I can't." She went to the door and held it open, but the Father was looking at Olivia—"As if I were an identity," said Olivia afterwards, but that was not the right word. "You mean entity," said Angela. "Isn't everyone that?" But Olivia shook her head. Up to that moment, or the moment that Lovejoy had taken her hand, she, Olivia, had been a shadow.

It's. Not old-fashioned to say God is good. Remember, not one sparrow can fall to the ground—" "But they fall all the time," said Olivia. "We knock them down. We knock them, crush them—carelessly or carefully, it doesn't matter which, and they fall. That's what humans do to humans, so don't talk to me about God.

In me you exist,' says the house.

Every person needs to be needed, but being needed takes away from thoughts of yourself. This may sound selfish to your ears, but I do not think it is so. I know I am unable to be needed like others are. I know that my inner world would be jealous.

We have chosen a stillness more powerful than all activity. A detachment more fulfilling than all possession, A wisdom exceeding all knowledge And a love beyond all.

I was merely an onlooker; added to which, from the time I first read Pride and Prejudice I have loved Mr Darcy so much that no actual man has measured up to him.

Ayah,' said Sister Clodagh, 'you're not to say a word of this to the other servants.' 'Oh, no,' said Ayah, 'I'll keep it absolutely secret, and anyhow they all know.

Her work in the garden was almost at a standstill now; the January and February days were all alike, they went like a procession of the nuns themselves, unrelieved by any colour, there seemed to be no life or movement in the earth but the wind tearing at the trees and bamboos.

In those first days they were happy.