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1 " Water, wind and birdsong were the echoes in this quiet place of a great chiming symphony that was surging around the world. Knee-deep in grasses and moon daisies, Stella stood and listened, swaying a little as the flowers and trees were swaying, her spirit voice singing loudly, though her lips were still, and every pulse in her body beating its hammer strokes in time to the song. "
― Elizabeth Goudge , Gentian Hill
2 " Those who have deeply suffered in some particular way are welded together in an understanding incomprehensible to those who have not so suffered. "
3 " There was a leap of joy in him, like a flame lighting up in a dark lantern. At this moment he believed it was worth it. This moment of supreme beauty was worth all the wretchedness of the journey. It was always worth it. "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." It was the central truth of existence, and all men knew it, though they might not know that they knew it. Each man followed his own star through so much pain because he knew it, and at journey's end all the innumerable lights would glow into one. "
4 " I think God creates what one might call spiritual families, people who may or may not be physically related to each other, but who will travel together the whole of the way. And it's a long way. "
5 " She felt for the first time in her life, a sense of likeness with another human creature, and a sense of safety, not so much physical safety as the safety of understanding that comes between those who are two of a sort. "
6 " ...how to deal with fear. To begin with, don't fight it, accept it without shame, just as you would accept any other limitation you happen to be born with, like a cast in the eye or a lame foot. Willing acceptance is half the battle... Be willing to be afraid, don't be afraid of your fear... every man has within him a store of strength, both physical and spiritual, of which he is utterly unaware until the moment of crisis. You will not tap it until the moment of crisis, but you can be quite certain that when that moment comes it will not fail you. "
7 " ...you don't have to know just what people are doing and feeling to be of assistance to them. Your own life seems to you like a very small lighted room, with great darkness all around it, and you can't see out into the darkness and know what is happening there. But light and warmth from your room can go out into the darkness if you don't have the windows selfishly curtained, keep a brave fire burning, and light all the happy candles you can. "
8 " She had no beauty to commend her apart from the sweetness of her smile and the kindliness of her round brown eyes, but she carried with her wherever she went that aura of almost heavenly motherliness which so often shines about a woman who has borne only one child, and in losing it has become mother to all the world, shining more wonderfully than about the mother of a dozen. "
9 " They were accustomed to think of the Abbé as one of those men who pass rapidly from point to point, from task to task, so intent on redeeming the time because the days are evil that they have no leisure to pause and enquire if perhaps the bad days have a few good points about them after all. "
10 " Fear is a lonely thing. Even those who love us best cannot get close to us when we are afraid. "
11 " ...a subtle form of temptation, very likely to attack one during a wakeful hour of the night when vitality is at its lowest. Because it suddenly seems impossible to go on, values are abruptly turned upside down. To endure--which perhaps a mere half hour before was the right and obvious thing to do--is now presented to the mind as simply ridiculous; escape, which would have seemed despicable a little while ago, now seems to be the only sane course of action. The experienced man knows that it is not impossible to go on because one thinks it is, that you can always go on in some manner while the power of choice remains. This sudden reversal of the values is a temptation to preordain the moment when a man can no longer make his choice, and his responsibility for what happens next must be laid down. Faced with it, the experienced man once more chooses to come to grips with the impossible and finds it possible. "
12 " While they poured their troubles into the comforting depth of his comprehending silence, he watched their faces in the soft light that shone through the spotless muslin curtains in the window, and learned more from the shadows around the eyes and the play of expression about the mouth than he did from the flow of confused words. Yet he listened attentively while he watched, quick to detect alike the hesitant truth and the glib evasion, and though he was impatient by nature, he never interrupted until the last word had been uttered. He knew how a flow of words, like a flow of blood, can wash away poison. "
13 " He felt him transfixed, captured, nailed by his vow to the hard wood of the impossible thing he had to do. "
14 " Everyone needed someone in the world who was like his other hand. You can't hold much or do much with one hand only. It is with both hands that a man lifts the garnered gold of the wheatsheaf and the brimming bowl of milk, with both hands that he builds his house, with both hand, clasped together, that he prays. "
15 " She had the courage that accepts instantly, without recoil, and the reverence in love that towards man is without possessiveness and towards God without rebellion "
16 " But no, he did not believe in capricious fortune, but in a carefully woven pattern where every tightly stretched warp thread of pain laid the foundation for a woof thread of joy. "
17 " His hunger for knowledge gave him no rest, it was both his bane and his joy. "
18 " The fires of youth are not dead in old age... only banked down. "
19 " Evening fell, there were lights here and there upon the ships, scattered lights on the shore, faint lights in the sky, and still the silence was unbroken and the peace profound. Those on shore saw phantom ships upon the sea now, and those on board saw phantom white villages gleaming along the shore, and after the habit of human kind each man yearned to be where the other was, and saw in the place where he was not his heart’s desire. "
20 " and one knew her to be sound and sweet right through, like a ripe nut. "
