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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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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
Nothing
Sacrifice
Play
Mystery
Nuns
Self
Seem
Sacrificing
Must
Doubt
Nun
Giving
Seems
Clergy
Really
Give
Plays
World
Live
Fairs
Everything
Fair

More quotes by Elizabeth Goudge

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Happy the man who lives long enough to acknowledge his ignorance
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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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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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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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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All human beings have their otherness and it is that which cries out to the heart.
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'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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All the best things are seen first of all at a far distance.
Elizabeth Goudge
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But a hare, now, that is a different thing altogether. A hare is not a pet but a person. Hares are clever and brave and loving, and they have fairy blood in them. It’s a grand thing to have a hare for a friend.
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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to know perfect happiness a woman may be a mother, but must be a grandmother.
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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I don't think there's anything more tiring ... than expecting people who don't turn up.
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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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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[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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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