The Bird In The Tree - Elizabeth Goudge

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever, but it must be a costly and strong beauty, purchased at a high price of service or sacrifice, not skin-deep but bone-deep, if it is to be as desirable at the shabby end as it was at the sumptuous beginning."

"Lucilla had never been able to understand Nadine, and blamed her lack of understanding upon Nadine's Russian grandmother. There was no understanding the Russians, a tiresome people, all quite mad."

"If people could not look nice when they thought, said Lucilla, then let them cease from thought, for evidently they were thinking more than was good for them."

"With women, you never knew what would scare them and what wouldn't."

"'We all of us try to make God in our image,' she said. 'It is one of the worst of our temptations.'"

"Ben and Tommy were exuding from every pore that icy disapproval which a man, disappointed in his female relatives, can express so well in utter silence."

"He disliked being prayed for. He didn't think it was fair. For all you knew, under the compulsion of it, you might find yourself doing something heroic that you didn't in the least want or intend to do."