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

More quotes by 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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I don't think there's anything more tiring ... than expecting people who don't turn up.
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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Sensible fathers and mothers, when their children marry, go back to the old days and renew their youth.
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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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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Most of the basic truths of life sound absurd at first hearing.
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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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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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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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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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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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]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 perfect moment, once lost, is not easily found again.
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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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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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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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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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