Elizabeth Goudge, The Little White Horse

"Don't waste hate on pink geranium."

"Are you quite sure that you want to hear it" he asked. "Sometimes, Maria, a story that one hears starts one off doing things that one would not have had to do if one had not heard it."

"In my opinion, too much attention to weather makes for instability of character."

"... The simple little words came easily, fitting themselves to the tune that had come out of the harpsichord. It didn't seem to her that she made them up at all. It seemed to her that they flew in from the rose-garden, through the open window, like a lot of butterflies, poised themselves on the point of her pen, and fell off it on to the paper."