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Most of the basic truths of life sound absurd at first hearing.

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
Truth
Firsts
First
Corny
Life
Truths
Absurd
Basic
Hearing
Sound

More quotes by Elizabeth Goudge

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autumn days have a holiness that spring lacks ... They are like old serene saints for whom death has lost its terror.
Elizabeth Goudge
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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
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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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Our home, our special country, is for all of us the place where we find liberation a very difficult word ... that tries to describe something that can't be described but is the only thing worth having.
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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I've never been one for religion, but yet I've never been what ye could call an unbeliever. What I say is, nothin' don't seem impossible once you've clapped eyes on a whale.
Elizabeth Goudge
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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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To be sorry and glad together is to be perceptive to the richness of life.
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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Not quite birds, as they were not quite flowers, mysterious and fascinating as are all indeterminate creatures.
Elizabeth Goudge
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What is the scent of water? Renewal. The goodness of God coming down like dew.
Elizabeth Goudge
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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.
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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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.
Elizabeth Goudge
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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.
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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Sensible fathers and mothers, when their children marry, go back to the old days and renew their youth.
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
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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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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