Elizabeth Goudge: All human beings have their otherness and it is that...

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

respect nature life

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

real spring beautiful

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

easter spring long

The sun is still there... even if clouds drift over it. Once you have experienced the reality of sunshine you may weep, but you will never feel ice about your heart again.

Elizabeth Goudge

sunshine heart inspirational

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

detachment soul self

There always comes, I think, a sort of peak in suffering at which either you win over your pain or your pain wins over you, according as to whether you can, or cannot, call up that extra ounce of endurance that helps you to break through the circle of yourself and do the hitherto impossible. That extra ounce carries you through 'le dernier quart d' heure.' Psychologist have a name for it, I believe. Christians call it the Grace of God.

Elizabeth Goudge

pain christian believe

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

flower mistake spring

Could you understand the meaning of light if there were no darkness to point the contrast? Day and night, life and death, love and hatred, since none of these things can have any being at all apart from the existence of the other, you can no more separate them than you can separate the two sides of a coin.

Elizabeth Goudge

life-and-death light night

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

special home country

Because of course she had known she must go. She always did the thing because in obedience lay the integrity that God asked of her. If anyone had asked her what she meant by integrity she would not have been able to tell them but she had seen it once like a picture in her mind, a root going down into the earth and drinking deeply there. No one was really alive without that root.

Elizabeth Goudge

roots drinking integrity

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

boredom should-have spring

The child in us is always there, you know, and it's the best part of us, the winged part that travels farthest.

Elizabeth Goudge

childhood knows children

For she had discovered that as well as the evil web there was another. This too bound spirits together, but not in a tangle, it was a patterned web and one could see the silver pattern when the sun shone upon it. It seemed much frailer than the dark tangle, that had a hideous strength, but it might not be so always, not in the final reckoning. (The Child from the Sea)

Elizabeth Goudge

sea dark children

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

Elizabeth Goudge

hearing truth sound

If one's intellectual equipment was not great, one's spiritual experience not deep, the result of doing one's very best could only seem very lightweight in comparison with the effort involved. But perhaps that was not important. The mysterious power that commanded men appeared to him to ask of them only obedience and the maximum of effort and to remain curiously indifferent as to the results.

Elizabeth Goudge

effort spiritual men

...there began to come to her a first dim realization of God's humility. Rejected by the proud in His own right by what humble means He chose to succor them; through the spirit of a child, a poor gypsy or an old man, by a song perhaps, or even it might be by the fall of a leaf or the scent of a flower. For His infinite and humble patience nothing was too small to advance His purpose of salvation and eternity was not too long for its accomplishment.

Elizabeth Goudge

flower song children

In times of storm and tempest, of indecision and desolation, a book already known and loved makes better reading than something new and untried ... nothing is so warming and companionable.

Elizabeth Goudge

storm reading book

Happy the man who lives long enough to acknowledge his ignorance

Elizabeth Goudge

ignorance men long

Not quite birds, as they were not quite flowers, mysterious and fascinating as are all indeterminate creatures.

Elizabeth Goudge

butterfly flower bird

What is the scent of water?" "Renewal. The goodness of God coming down like dew.

Elizabeth Goudge

dew scent water

All human beings have their otherness and it is that which cries out to the heart.