Green Dolphin Street QUOTES

41 " Had her mother endured this same torture for her, and had she rewarded her with so little love? But it was too late to love Sophie now. She was dead. Did all women go through this agony whenever a child was born? Then women were greater than she had thought. Hine-Moa had had six children and was still beautiful and serene. And Charlotte had many children. She must not scream. She was sure that neither Charlotte nor Hine-Moa had ever screamed. "

― Elizabeth Goudge , Green Dolphin Street

42 " It was the first time in her life that she had put her faith in God’s protection to the test, and it had not failed her. "

― Elizabeth Goudge , Green Dolphin Street

43 " She assured herself that the practice of the presence of God, that she had learned with self-discipline of thought and will, was not a selfish thing but something absolutely essential if one’s soul was to be of the slightest use. "

― Elizabeth Goudge , Green Dolphin Street

44 " The shabby frock coat that Dr. Ozanne wore for work in the surgery was none too clean either, and there was a slight tremor about his hands, as he tried to bring a little order into the litter on his desk, that Marianne had not noticed before. . . . She had been right. His practice was not going to improve. He would never be a successful doctor. Yet the moment he turned his attention to the boy, she had to admit that there are two ways of being a successful doctor. "

― Elizabeth Goudge , Green Dolphin Street

45 " She looked up and a seagull was flying slowly backward and forward, seeming to gather all the light of the place with his shining wings and to trail it in long threads of silver after him, as though weaving a pattern in the air over her head, like one of those canopies powdered with stars that one sees in old pictures over the heads of queens. She looked up at him, loving him. He was a symbol of prayer, of the prayer that went on day and night in the great convent that was towering up above her, the convent that was home. "

― Elizabeth Goudge , Green Dolphin Street

46 " One is at rest with people who want one; they are like a warm house with the door wide open. And one trusts an open door, for trust begets trust, and if the people inside didn’t trust you they wouldn’t leave it open. "

― Elizabeth Goudge , Green Dolphin Street

47 " She was standing some paces away from them looking out to sea, and so deep was her wound that she was afraid, and her fear was discernible in her voice. For just a moment she lost hold of her childhood’s certainty that to give love is to receive it again in equal measure, and she wondered what it would be like to go through the whole of life giving more than one was given. . . . The hunger . . . the dissatisfaction. "

― Elizabeth Goudge , Green Dolphin Street

48 " What an idiot she had been to try and make Le Paradis wholly her own. It was of the essence of home that it should hold out its arms to diverse personalities and gather them together into a harmonious whole. A house stamped with one personality only was surely more like the cell of a prisoner condemned to solitary confinement than a home. "

― Elizabeth Goudge , Green Dolphin Street

49 " If I only could be a doctor!” she cried. “I believe it would be even better than being a sailor. Couldn’t I be a doctor?” “Certainly not!” said Dr. Ozanne with twinkling eyes. “You’re a woman, my dear, and women are not doctors, and never will be, thank God. A woman’s place is in the home, doing needlework and enjoying delicate health. "

― Elizabeth Goudge , Green Dolphin Street

50 " . . .a peal of laughter sounded from within the room where the firelight was. . . .it was a boy’s laughter, and the joy of it called to the unhappy Marianne as nothing in her life had ever called to her before.

He was standing on the hearthrug as a lord of creation should, his legs straddling arrogantly, his arms above his head as he stretched himself, his laughter caught up upon a prodigious yawn. He was broad-shouldered, strong, yet possessed of an elegance that was strangely mature, taller than she was but much younger. . .the brilliance of it was entangled in the wildly untidy shock of red-gold curly hair and there seemed sparks in his tawny eyes. His face was round and ruddy, with freckles on the nose, but finely featured. He had full red lips and a deep cleft in his chin, and he showed a great deal of pink tongue as he yawned. His coat and waistcoat of vivid emerald green cloth were stained with seawater and torn linings protruded from the pockets. His white cravat was soiled, the straps that should have fastened his long peg-top trousers beneath his instep had snapped, so that they coiled round his legs like delirious green snakes, and his shoes needed a polish. Never was a male so much in need of female attention or so blissfully unaware of his need. . . .she stood with her back against the door, stiff and ungainly, staring at him with great dark eyes that seemed to devour his face with the intensity of her gaze, and she could not move or speak because her heart was beating so madly that it made her feel sick and faint. Her figure might have delayed to plump itself out into the womanly roundness proper to her age, but her heart did not delay to claim this male creature for her own. She was in love, in love at sixteen, desperately in love, as Juliet was, and with a boy who for all his height and strength and maturity was only a child of thirteen years. It was absurd. But then Marianne was never at any time in the least like other girls. "

― Elizabeth Goudge , Green Dolphin Street

51 " 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 , Green Dolphin Street

52 " What in the world was she saying? Not what she ought to be saying. She was repeating the verse of some old Elizabethan poet whom she had read in the days when she had been a cultured young woman of the world who had prided herself upon her cosmopolitan reading. Yes, she had been young once, young and beautiful—and warm. And now "

― Elizabeth Goudge , Green Dolphin Street

53 " After almost a lifetime spent in prayer and contemplation she had believed that at least she had her thoughts well disciplined, but as one got older, one’s hard-won control slipped a little and one felt sometimes as though spiritually one were back again in one’s youth, with all the battles to fight again. "

― Elizabeth Goudge , Green Dolphin Street

54 " It was always a cheerful street, for the people who lived in it were the happiest sort of people: not too poor, the joy of life ground out of them by poverty, and not too rich, feeling burdened by possessions; and the dead had left some of their happiness behind them in the homes they had made, and the living were daily adding to it out of their own good cheer. "

― Elizabeth Goudge , Green Dolphin Street

55 " And now Marguerite was sitting up too, the little, monkey! Why could she never get her children in hand as other mothers did? Was she a weak mother, or were they unusually insubordinate children? "

― Elizabeth Goudge , Green Dolphin Street

56 " I’m still happy,” said Marianne. “One can be happy and miserable both at once, you know. "

― Elizabeth Goudge , Green Dolphin Street