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

More quotes by 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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[I]f you believe in God omnipresent, then you must believe everything that comes into your life, person or event, must have something of God in it to be experienced and loved not hated.
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 scent of water? Renewal. The goodness of God coming down like dew.
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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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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...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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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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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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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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I don't think there's anything more tiring ... than expecting people who don't turn up.
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 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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Happy the man who lives long enough to acknowledge his ignorance
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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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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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