Genius creates from the heart and when the artifact is broken so is the heart.

— Elizabeth Goudge

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 wounding, of the pride or of the heart.

— Elizabeth Goudge

He sat for a long time and thought to himself that he wished he knew how to pray, yet he knew, untaught, how by abandonment of himself to let the quietness take hold of him.

— Elizabeth Goudge

He supposed he was one of those unfortunates born with a great capacity for suffering.... He opened his eyes a moment, and they were dark with fear, for only one race was run as yet and there might be many others.... Then his newborn courage came back to him, and he accepted his suffering as the price he must pay for the gift of creation that was his. And suffering, he had discovered, could be the gateway to renewal, than which no more glorious experience can be man's on earth.

— Elizabeth Goudge

I had not known before that love is obedience. You want to love, and you can’t, and you hate yourself because you can’t, and all the time love is not some marvelous thing that you feel but some hard thing that you do. And this in a way is easier because with God’s help you can command your will when you can’t command your feelings. With us, feelings seem to be important, but He doesn’t appear to agree with us.

— Elizabeth Goudge

I loathe, detest, hate and abominate the block, the gibbet, the rack, the pillory and the faggots with equal passion," said the old man vehemently. "Not only are they devilishly cruel, but they are not even common sense. They do not lesson the evil in the world, they increase it, by making those who handle these cruelties as wicked as those who suffer them. No, I'm wrong, more wicked, for there is always some expiation made in the endurance of suffering and none at all in the infliction of it.

— Elizabeth Goudge

Imagine God and Man set down together to play that game of chess that we call life. The one player is a master, the other a bungling amateur, so the outcome of the game cannot be in question. The amateur has free will, he does what he pleases, for it was he who chose to set up his will against that of the master in the first place; he throws the whole board into confusion time and again and by his foolishness delays the orderly ending of it all for countless generations, but every stupid move of his is dealt with by a masterly counterstroke, and slowly but inexorably the game sweeps on to the master's victory. But, mind you, the game could not move on at all without the full complement of pieces; Kings, Queens, Bishops, Knights, Pawns; the master does not lose sight of a single one of them.

— Elizabeth Goudge

I mean, you may cause others a spot of bother by your weaknesses, perhaps, but coping with you may increase their strength and sympathy. But if you sin deliberately, even if it seems only against yourself--well--you won't be the only one to suffer. You may even be the one who suffers least.

— Elizabeth Goudge

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

In my opinion, too much attention to weather makes for instability of character.

— Elizabeth Goudge