Linnets and Valerians

by Elizabeth Goudge

when an idea has hardened into consequences it is too late to change it for another. That is why ideas should never be put into practice the moment you have them. They should be chewed like cud for twenty-four hours.

It was a glorious house. It had not been spring-cleaned for years.

And all he described they saw with their inside eyes, so that the pictures in the books were scarcely necessary, and the words that he used fell chiming, so that they remembered the sequence of them as one remembers the sequence of the notes in a tune.

‘Star of evening, bringing all things that bright dawn has scattered, you bring the sheep, you bring the goat, you bring the child back to its mother.’

distance lends enchantment to the view.

in the month of June daylight lingers long enough to make love to the moonlight.

‘I ain’t never wanted to learn to read. Book learnin’ destroys the memory.’

‘These ascents are not only physical, Nan. The world of the spirit too has many mansions. We live upon a staircase.’