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
Like
Happiness
Midwinter
Fact
Swallows
Facts
Nest
Cannot
Nests
May
Easter
Soul
Command
Come
Accepted
Long
Spring
Eaves

More quotes by Elizabeth Goudge

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The perfect moment, once lost, is not easily found again.
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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.
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The lovers of life, they are children at heart always in their wonder and delight, but they do not grab.
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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.
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I don't think there's anything more tiring ... than expecting people who don't turn up.
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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.
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What is the scent of water? Renewal. The goodness of God coming down like dew.
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All the best things are seen first of all at a far distance.
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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.
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This modern craze for putting the young in positions of authority - headmasters in their thirties, bishops without a gray hair on their heads, generals who scarcely need to use a razor - ever since it took hold the world's gone steadily downhill.
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Happy the man who lives long enough to acknowledge his ignorance
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There is always something particularly delightful about exceptions to a rule.
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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.
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Most of the basic truths of life sound absurd at first hearing.
Elizabeth Goudge
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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
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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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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.
Elizabeth Goudge
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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?
Elizabeth Goudge
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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
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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