Elizabeth Goudge Quotes

These black times go as they come and we do not know how they come or why they go. But we know that God controls them, as he controls the whole vast cobweb of the mystery of things.

~ Elizabeth Goudge

What is the scent of water?Renewal. The goodness of God coming down like dew.

~ Elizabeth Goudge

Jean was visited by one of her rare moments of happiness, one of those moments when the goodness of God was so real to her that it was like taste and scent; the rough strong taste of honey in the comb and the scent of water. Her thoughts of God had a homeliness that at times seemed shocking, in spite of their power, which could rescue her from terror or evil with an ease that astonished her.

~ Elizabeth Goudge

The very old and the very young have something in common that makes it right that they should be left alone together. Dawn and sunset see stars shining in a blue sky; but morning and midday and afternoon do not, poor things.

~ 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

The years stretched before her, a long and dusty way, yet if she could walk humbly along it she might find that life, unfolding slowly, keeps its best secrets till the end.

~ Elizabeth Goudge

One is seldom unchanged by the death of those one loves. It gives me a deeper knowledge of them, and so of oneself in regard to them.

~ 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 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

Nothing living should ever be treated with contempt. Whatever it is that lives, a man, a tree, or a bird, should be touched gently, because the time is short. Civilization is another word for respect for life...

~ Elizabeth Goudge

...this blessing of loneliness was not really loneliness. Real loneliness was something unendurable. What one wanted when exhausted by the noise and impact of physical bodies was not no people but disembodied people; all those denizens of beloved books who could be taken to one's heart and put away again, in silence, and with no hurt feelings.

~ 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

Be at peace now and let the tide carry you into calm water. That is all you have to do for the moment. God bless you.

~ Elizabeth Goudge

He supposed he was one of those unfortunates born with a great capacity for suffering.... He opened his eyes a moment and they were dark with fear, for only one race was run as yet and there might be many others.... Then his newborn courage came back to him and he accepted his suffering as the price he must pay for the gift of creation that was his. And suffering, he had discovered, could be the gateway to renewal, than which no more glorious experience can be man's on earth.

~ Elizabeth Goudge

In what he suffered, as in all true suffering and in true joy, there was the quality of eternity. He could not believe it would ever end.

~ Elizabeth Goudge

Joy being of God was a living thing, a fountain not a cistern, one of those divine things that are possessed only as they overflow and flow away, and not easily come by because it must break into human life through the hard crust of sin and contingency. Joy came now here, now there, was held and escaped.

~ Elizabeth Goudge

For a few minutes the anxiety that tormented him had vanished, leaving his mind as serene as the beauty he looked at. Very lovely, he thought, are the sudden moments of relief that come in the midst of strain, those moments of forgetfulness when we are teased out of thought by a bird or a flower or the sight of old roofs in the sun; lovely though so transient, the reversal of those brief moments of misery that visit us even in the midst of joy.

~ Elizabeth Goudge

...whatever happens I'll not be afraid again; for, when you've once pushed through the place of torment to the peace beyond, you know that you can do it again. You know there's a strength somewhere that you can call upon. You've confidence.

~ Elizabeth Goudge

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.

~ Elizabeth Goudge

Genius creates from the heart and when the artifact is broken so is the heart.

~ Elizabeth Goudge

Understanding is a creative act in a dimension we do not see.

~ Elizabeth Goudge

Water, wind and birdsong were the echoes in this quiet place of a great chiming symphony that was surging around the world. Knee-deep in grasses and moon daisies, Stella stood and listened, swaying a little as the flowers and trees were swaying, her spirit voice singing loudly, though her lips were still, and every pulse in her body beating its hammer strokes in time to the song.

~ Elizabeth Goudge

Lovely phrases had lit candles in her mind, one after the other, till she felt intoxicated with the brightness.

~ Elizabeth Goudge

He sat for a long time and thought to himself that he wished he knew how to pray, yet he knew, untaught, how by abandonment of himself to let the quietness take hold of him.

~ Elizabeth Goudge

...accustomed like the white blackbird to the loneliness of eccentricity yet never quite reconciled to it, they found in each other's oddness a most comforting compatibility.

~ Elizabeth Goudge

Loneliness made or ruined a man. It frightened him so that he must either sing and build in the face of the dark, like a bird or a beaver, or hide from it like a beast in his den. There were perhaps always only the two ways to go, God or the jungle.

~ Elizabeth Goudge

So this blessing of loneliness was not really loneliness. Real loneliness was something unendurable. What one wanted when exhausted by the noise and impact of physical bodies was not no people but disembodied people; all those denizens of beloved books who could be taken to one's heart and put away again, in silence, and with no hurt feelings.

~ Elizabeth Goudge

He had discovered that the choice between self-love or love of something other than self offers no escape from suffering either way, it is merely a choice between two woundings, of the pride or of the heart.

~ Elizabeth Goudge

Peace....Henrietta was not quite sure what it was but she knew it was very important. If one wanted it, Grandfather had told her once, one must not hit back when fate hit hard but must allow the hammer-strokes to batter out a hollow place inside one into which peace, like cool water, could flow.

~ Elizabeth Goudge

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.

~ Elizabeth Goudge

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

~ Elizabeth Goudge

What would normal people think if they knew what went on in a writer's mind below the surface? They'd think him even more around the bend than they had previously supposed if they could see the witches' cauldron of images and memories boiling up from the subconscious, impressions whirling in from without, ideas and insights bursting up like bubbles and gone again before they can be seized. And the hopelessness of the business, the whole infuriating, exhausting, fascinating business of grabbing something out of the turmoil and imposing upon it some faint shadow or rumor of the order, pattern and rhythm of the world.

~ Elizabeth Goudge

For she had discovered that as well as the evil web there was another. This too bound spirits together, but not in a tangle, it was a patterned web and one could see the silver pattern when the sun shone upon it. It seemed much frailer than the dark tangle, that had a hideous strength, but it might not be so always, not in the final reckoning.

~ Elizabeth Goudge

Progress in evil was quick and easy; Apollyon was not a chap who hid himself and he gave every assistance in his power. The growth in goodness was so slow, at times so flat, so dull, and like the White Queen one had to run so fast to stay where one was, let alone progress; and there were few men who dared to say they had found God. It was easy to be a clever sinner, for the race to an earthly visible goal was short to run, so impossibly hard to be a wise saint, with the goal set at so vast a distance from this world and clouded with such uncertainty.

~ Elizabeth Goudge

Imagine God and Man set down together to play that game of chess that we call life. The one player is a master, the other a bungling amateur, so the outcome of the game cannot be in question. The amateur has free will, he does what he pleases, for it was he who chose to set up his will against that of the master in the first place; he throws the whole board into confusion time and again and by his foolishness delays the orderly ending of it all for countless generations, but every stupid move of his is dealt with by a masterly counterstroke, and slowly but inexorably the game sweeps on to the master's victory. But, mind you, the game could not move on at all without the full complement of pieces; Kings, Queens, Bishops, Knights, Pawns; the master does not lose sight of a single one of them.

~ Elizabeth Goudge

In my opinion, too much attention to weather makes for instability of character.

~ Elizabeth Goudge

...there began to come to her a first dim realization of God's humility. Rejected by the proud in His own right by what humble means He chose to succor them; through the spirit of a child, a poor gypsy or an old man, by a song perhaps, or even it might be by the fall of a leaf or the scent of a flower. For His infinite and humble patience nothing was too small to advance His purpose of salvation and eternity was not too long for its accomplishment.

~ Elizabeth Goudge

In a world where thrushes sing and willow trees are golden in the spring, boredom should have been included among the seven deadly sins.

~ Elizabeth Goudge

Are you quite sure that you want to hear it? he asked. Sometimes, Maria, a story that one hears starts one off doing things that one would not have had to do if one had not heard it.

~ Elizabeth Goudge

The function of the educator is to discover in each individual child the gifts implanted in her by Almighty God and to develop and dedicate them to His service.

~ Elizabeth Goudge