What I like most about good books are the nuggets of philosophy found scattered throughout their pages – nuggets that cause me to think or re-consider my own attitudes.

Though expressed by fictional characters, such nuggets also offer insight into the personal philosophies of the writer. 

The simply named *The Bird in the Tree by Elizabeth Goudge is full of such nuggets, most often thought or said by Lucilla, the Eliot family matriarch.

Following are some of the pearls of wisdom I gathered while reading this first book of Goudge’s Eliot Family Chronicles. The trilogy also includes The Herb of Grace and The Heart of the Family.

On God

We all try to make God in our image. It is one of the worst of our temptations. (pg. 278)

On aging

One would know the first cold breath of old age when one found oneself in a world where there was no one left to whom one was a child. (pg. 117)

On a danger of beauty

Such a [beautiful] woman could not help but be blinded, now and again, by the smoke from the fires that she kindled. (pg. 281)

On receiving praise

The acceptance of homage gives no permanent satisfaction; it is better to give it. What is given to you, you are always afraid will one day cease to be given, but what you give you can give forever. (pg. 66)

On the value of retrospection

You cannot judge anything without its context, and you cannot judge the value of what happens to you until many years afterwards. Then you see how one thing led to another and how it was all, even the little trivial things as well as the big ones, somehow necessary. (pg. 253)

*First published by Gerald Duckworth and Co. Ltd., 1940

Talk to me. Do you have any literary pearls of wisdom to share?

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