Watching Part 2

The doctor had given him a few books to bring away with him, and lying in his hammock at night, he would try and shut out the den and stench of the lower cockpit and read. He did not take in very much, but every now and then some lovely phrase would shine up at him from the page, as though it were a pin prick in a dark curtain, letting in the light. When vile things happened outside himself, he now always managed to find something to pay attention to besides the vileness–the flash of fine anger in one man's eyes when another was flogged at the gangway, the sudden gleam of moonlight through a rent torn in the clouds by the frenzy of a storm...

-Elizabeth Goudge, Gentian Hill,206.

Watching Part 1

For a moment or two they enjoyed the delicate innuendo and elegant reparatee of the art of conversation in which they had been trained, meanwhile watching, without appearing to do so, the gradual unfolding of this hour placed like a flower in their hands. For such was unconsciously the attitude of both of them towards the new phase of each day – it was not unimportant, it had some new discovery hidden within it for the finding. It was the attitude of the trained mind collecting the evidence, in their case for the Christian thesis that all things, somehow, work together for good.

-Elizabeth Goudge, Gentian Hill, 196

A Poem Can Be Like

A poem can be like two hands that lift you up and put you down in a new place. You look back with astonishment and find that because you have read a few lines on a printed page, or listened for a couple of minutes to a voice speaking, you have arrived at somewhere quite different.

-Elizabeth Goudge, Towers in the Mist, 212.

Peevish

The Dean was sorry for his disappointment but the peevishness added to his joy, for a man is only peevish to his friends.

-Elizabeth Goudge, The Dean's Watch, 177.

House Love

How can we help loving houses when they stand to us for so much...Warmth and protection and a means of expressing ourselves. You love a new house because it stands there waiting to be good to human beings and an old one because it has been.

-Elizabeth Goudge, A City of Bells, 68.

Who?

And suddenly she was struck by a thought as blinding as a flash of lightning. Who had bought the clothes? Who had bought the furniture, some of it new and some of it so old? Who had arranged all the lovely things in her bedroom? Who had arranged all the things in the other rooms, thinking it all out so carefully so that all her wishes were granted at every point? Who had built the house? Who had planted the garden? Who had made the earth upon which the house stood and in which the flowers bloomed? Who had set the woods about her house, with the wild birds singing in the trees? Who had arched the sky over it, with the sun to give her light by day and the moon and stars by night? Who had--?

-Elizabeth Goudge, Henrietta's House, 149.

Fairytales

'Behave yourself!' said Grandfather sternly, for though he loved all human souls he loved them better when they did not spit. 'And don't you dare to disparage fairy tales. A fairy tale, dear sir, in relating miraculous happenings as though they were normal events of every day, is a humble acknowledgement of the fact that this universe is a box packed full of mysteries of which we understand absolutely nothing at all. You can wonder till you're blue in the face as to how the giraffe got his neck, or the gooseberry puffed himself out, but you don't know. You can't know. Any theory you may evolve about a giraffe's neck, my dear sir, is a fairy tale.'

-Elizabeth Goudge, Henrietta's House, 114-115.

Three Sorts of People

Humanity can be roughly divided into three sorts of people--those who find comfort in literature, those who find comfort in personal adornment, and those who find comfort in food.

-Elizabeth Goudge, The Little White Horse, 7.