Best Quotes by Elizabeth Goudge (Top 6)

  1. 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...
  2. Most of the basic truths of life sound absurd at first hearing.
  3. Not quite birds, as they were not quite flowers, mysterious and fascinating as are all indeterminate creatures.
  4. 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.
  5. Peace ... was contingent upon a certain disposition of the soul, a disposition to receive the gift that only detachment from self made possible.
  6. 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.