Quotes from Hannah Hurnard

Humble yourself, and you will find that Love is spreading a carpet of flowers beneath your feet.

When you wear the weed of impatience in your heart instead of the flower Acceptance-with-Joy, you will always find your enemies get an advantage over you.

O Shepherd. You said you would make my feet like hinds' feet and set me upon High Places". "Well", he answered "the only way to develop hinds' feet is to go by the paths which the hinds use.

She had the feeling that somehow, in the very far-off places, perhaps even in far-off ages, there would be a meaning found to all sorrow and an answer too fair and wonderful to be as yet understood.

In all the world I have no one but you. Help me to follow you, even though it seems impossible. Help me to trust you as much as I long to love you.

I must tell you a great truth, Much-Afraid, which only the few understand. All the fairest beauties in the human soul, its greatest victories, and its most splendid achievements are always those which no one else knows anything about, or can only dimly guess at. Every inner response of the human heart to Love and every conquest over self-love is a new flower on the tree of Love.

There are no obstacles which our Savior's love cannot overcome. The High Places of victory and union with Christ can be reached by learning to accept, day by day, the actual conditions and tests permitted by God, by laying down of our own will and accepting His. The lessons of accepting and triumphing over evil, of becoming acquainted with grief, and pain, and of finding them transformed into something incomparably precious; these are the lessons of the allegory in this book.

Whenever you are willing to obey me, Much-Afraid, and to follow the path of my choice, you will always be able to hear and recognize my voice, and when you hear it you must always obey. Remember also that it is always safe to obey my voice, even if it seems to call you to paths which look impossible or even crazy.

Up from behind a sand dune close beside her rose the form of her enemy Bitterness. He did not come any nearer, having learned a little more prudence, and was not going to make her call for the Shepherd if he could avoid it, but simply stood and looked at her and laughed and laughed again, the bitterest sound that Much-Afraid had heard in all her life.

The awful glimpse down into the abyss of an existence without him had so staggered and appalled her heart that she felt she could never be quite the same again. However, it had opened her eyes to the fact that right down in the depths of her own heart she really had but one passionate desire, not for the things which the Shepherd had promised, but for himself. All she wanted was to be allowed to follow him forever.

Then as she looked up in his face, he smiled most sweetly and said something he had never said before, "You have one real beauty, Much-Afraid, you have such trustful eyes. Trust is one of the much beautiful things in the world. When I look at the trust in your eyes I find you more beautiful to look upon than many a lovely queen.

I am not fair save to the King, Though fair my royal dress, His kingly grace is lavished on my need and worthlessness. My blemishes he will not see but loves the beauty that shall be.