Quote

She long ago accepted the fact that happiness is like, swallows in spring. It may come and nest under your eaves or it may not. You cannot command it.

Elizabeth Goudge

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Elizabeth Goudge
Age: 83 †
Born: 1900
Born: April 24
Died: 1984
Died: April 1
Author
Novelist
Writer
Wells
Somerset
Elizabeth de Beauchamp Goudge
Elisabeth Goudge
Fact
Swallows
Facts
Nest
Cannot
Nests
May
Easter
Soul
Command
Come
Accepted
Long
Spring
Eaves
Like
Happiness
Midwinter

More quotes by Elizabeth Goudge

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Sensible fathers and mothers, when their children marry, go back to the old days and renew their youth.
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What is the scent of water? Renewal. The goodness of God coming down like dew.
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Cleanliness', chuckled Sir Benjamin, noting his great niece's delighted smile as her eyes rested upon him, 'comes next to godliness, eh, Maria?
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Imagination comes from yourself and can deceive you, but vision is a gift from outside yourself - like light striking on your closed eyelids and lifting them to see what's really there.
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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
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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
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All human beings have their otherness and it is that which cries out to the heart.
Elizabeth Goudge
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What is the distinguishing mark of an aristocrat?' she asked him suddenly.'Reverence,' he replied.
Elizabeth Goudge
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I don't think there's anything more tiring ... than expecting people who don't turn up.
Elizabeth Goudge
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In my opinion, too much attention to weather makes for instability of character.
Elizabeth Goudge
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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
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Not quite birds, as they were not quite flowers, mysterious and fascinating as are all indeterminate creatures.
Elizabeth Goudge
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The lovers of life, they are children at heart always in their wonder and delight, but they do not grab.
Elizabeth Goudge
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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
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The perfect moment, once lost, is not easily found again.
Elizabeth Goudge
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We all of us need to be toppled off the throne of self, my dear, he said. Perched up there the tears of others are never upon our own cheek.
Elizabeth Goudge
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Peace ... was contingent upon a certain disposition of the soul, a disposition to receive the gift that only detachment from self made possible.
Elizabeth Goudge
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Nothing is ever finished and done with in this world. You may think a seed was finished and done with when it falls like a dead thing into the earth but when it puts forth leaves and flowers next spring you see your mistake.
Elizabeth Goudge
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As this world becomes increasingly ugly, callous and materialistic it needs to be reminded that the old fairy stories are rooted in truth, that imagination is of value, that happy endings do, in fact, occur, and that the blue spring mist that make an ugly street look beautiful is just as real a thing as the street itself.
Elizabeth Goudge
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...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