Elizabeth Goudge

Elizabeth de Beauchamp Goudge (24 April 1900 – 1 April 1984) was a British author of novels, short stories and children's books.

Quotes

• We all of us try to make God in our image. It is one of the worst of our temptations.
  • The Bird in the Tree (1940), Chapter 6.3

• In this world death has a habit of intervening before we can pay our debts, and the only thing to be done is to pay them to another.
  • Gentian Hill (1950), Book 3, Chapter 3.1

• Human nature is intractable stuff, hard jagged stuff, the kind of stuff that dreams are wrecked on.
  • The White Witch (1958), Part 1, Chapter 12.2

• A sense of identity is the gift of love, and only love can give it.
  • The Dean's Watch (1960), Chapter 9.2

• There is no greater tyranny than that of social custom.
  • The Dean's Watch (1960), Chapter 10.1

• For unbelief was easier than belief, much less demanding and subtly flattering because the agnostic felt himself to be intellectually superior to the believer. And then unbelief haunted by faith, as she knew by experience, produced a rather pleasant nostalgia, while belief haunted by doubt involved real suffering.
  • The Scent of Water (1963), Chapter 13.2

• Life is a reaching out for something or someone. That is its definition.
  • The Scent of Water (1963), Chapter 13.2

• There was something disruptive about Christmas and not only in the merely material way. The original Christmas had proved exceedingly disrupting to the entire world and the tremors of the original event vibrated through every life year by year.
  • The Scent of Water (1963), Chapter 14.2

• The human desire to be understood is never quite sincere. It is on our own terms that we desire to be understood, not on the terms of truth.
  • The Child from the Sea (1970), Book 2, Chapter 1.5