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One was born a certain sort of person, and though by ceasless struggle one might become as nice as that sort of person ever is, one could never become as nice as a nicer sort of person.

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
Born
Become
Certain
Persons
Nicer
Person
Struggle
Ever
Sort
Might
Nice
Never
Though

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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All the best things are seen first of all at a far distance.
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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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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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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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
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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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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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What is the distinguishing mark of an aristocrat?' she asked him suddenly.'Reverence,' he replied.
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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Happy the man who lives long enough to acknowledge his ignorance
Elizabeth Goudge
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Marriage is a very long process.
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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Most of the basic truths of life sound absurd at first hearing.
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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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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The elements were seeking each other in rage and confusion, and in the fury of the conflict boastful man was utterly humiliated, sucked down, drowned.
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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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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The lovers of life, they are children at heart always in their wonder and delight, but they do not grab.
Elizabeth Goudge