Elizabeth Goudge Quotes

73 Sourced Quotes

[Salvation] is a curious process of divine burglary. The first thing to be wrested from one by a God who said 'Thou shalt not steal' is one's good opinion of one's self.

Elizabeth Goudge
To know perfect happiness a woman may be a mother, but must be a grandmother.

Elizabeth Goudge
His was the triumphant mien of the military commander who has taken no active part in the dust and heat of the battle, yet marches very actively indeed at the head of his troops when they return victoriously home.

Elizabeth Goudge
Her birthdays were always important to her; for being a born lover of life, she would always keep the day of her entrance into it as a very great festival indeed.

Elizabeth Goudge
Presently there was taking place in his mind that undirected, haphazard activity which he was accustomed to describe to himself inaccurately as 'thought.'

Elizabeth Goudge
If you lose your reason, you lose it into the hands of God....It's the only place where anything is safe. And when you're dead it's only what's there you'll have. Nothing else.

Elizabeth Goudge
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.

Elizabeth Goudge
You felt that your life was not an isolated thing, but existed in all other lives, as all other lives existed within yours. There wasn't anything anywhere to which you could say, 'We don't need each other.'

Elizabeth Goudge
The simple little words came easily, fitting themselves to the tune that had come out of the harpsichord. It didn't seem to her that she made them up at all. It seemed to her that they flew in from the rose-garden, through the open window, like a lot of butterflies, poised themselves on the point of her pen, and fell off it on to the paper.

Elizabeth Goudge
If one's intellectual equipment was not great, one's spiritual experience not deep, the result of doing one's very best could only seem very lightweight in comparison with the effort involved. But perhaps that was not important. The mysterious power that commanded men appeared to him to ask of them only obedience and the maximum of effort and to remain curiously indifferent as to the results.

Elizabeth Goudge
There's much that goes to the makin' of a man or woman into somethin' better than a brute beast, but there's three things in chief, an' they're the places where life sets us down, an' the folks life knocks us up against, an' — not the things ye get, but the things ye don't get.

Elizabeth Goudge
Could you understand the meaning of light if there were no darkness to point the contrast? Day and night, life and death, love and hatred; since none of these things can have any being at all apart from the existence of the other; only the indolence of human nature finds it so hard to pierce through to the other side.

Elizabeth Goudge
Acting a part is not always synonymous with lying; it is far more often the best way of serving the truth. It is more truthful to act what we should feel if the community is to be well served rather than behave as we actually do feel in our selfish private feelings.

Elizabeth Goudge
I have known him nearly all my life, and I am going to marry him, so that there won't ever be a time when I shan't know him.

Elizabeth Goudge
His hatred of his wife horrified him. It was the first hatred of his life, it was growing in bitterness and intensity day by day, and he had no idea what to do about it.

Elizabeth Goudge
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.

Elizabeth Goudge
The lovers of life, they are children at heart always in their wonder and delight, but they do not grab.

Elizabeth Goudge
All human beings have their otherness and it is that which cries out to the heart.

Elizabeth Goudge
It would save a lot of trouble, he thought, if every man and woman could realize at the outset which leaf of the triune clover claimed his allegiance, accept the limitation with humility, and not try to behave as though he — or she — had it in him to be the whole damn plant.

Elizabeth Goudge
Maria was one of your true aristocrats; the perfection of the hidden things was even more important to her than the outward show.

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.

Elizabeth Goudge
We all of us need to be toppled off the throne of self, my dear.... Perched up there the tears of others are never upon our own cheek.

Elizabeth Goudge
He grinned at her, and she grinned at him, and it seemed to Maria that suddenly the sun came out.

Elizabeth Goudge
There is always something particularly delightful about exceptions to a rule.

Elizabeth Goudge
Writers and painters have a medium that can foster self-effacements. Actors haven't. An actor can't hide himself behind paper or canvas. If you're not there your art's not there. That's why we actors are often such self-centered objects.

Elizabeth Goudge
Sensible fathers and mothers, when their children marry, go back to the old days and renew their youth.

Elizabeth Goudge
She realized with deep respect that this woman had always done what she had to do and faced what she had to face. If many of her fears and burdens would have seemed unreal to another woman, there was nothing unreal about her courage.

Elizabeth Goudge
The whole universe was stilled as if listening for a voice. For the space of one heartbeat there was peace on earth. For one fraction of a moment there was no deed of violence wrought on earth, no hatred, no fire, no whirlwind, no pain, no fear. Existence rested against the heart of God, then sighed and journeyed again.

Elizabeth Goudge
The sun is still there... even if clouds drift over it. Once you have experienced the reality of sunshine you may weep, but you will never feel ice about your heart again.

Elizabeth Goudge
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.

Elizabeth Goudge