from Shadowfeet, by Brooke Frasier

There's distraction buzzing in my head

saying in the shadows it's easier to stay

but I've heard rumours of true reality

whispers of a well-lit way

from Scent of Water, by Elizabeth Goudge

(my second-favorite passage from a book that's in my top 5 fiction best-reads)

The question came out so sharply and suddenly that I answered with the truth. I told him everything. It was the queerest thing that ever happened to me because I take such infinite trouble always to cover it all up. I hide it like a crime. And yet here I was laying it all out in front of him. I was like a criminal emptying his pockets. I took out everything. He was silent for a long time, rubbing his chin, and then he said, "You're afraid of it?"
   It seemed such a silly question and I spoke sharply I think when I said, "Of course I am, I'm terrified."
   "Why?" he asked. "If you lose your reason you lose it into the hands of God."

                                                                                                                           (c) 1963 by Elizabeth Goudge

from Diary of an Old Soul, by George MacDonald

When I can no more stir my soul to move,
And life is but the ashes of a fire;
When I can but remember that my heart
Once used to live and love, long and aspire --
Oh be thou then the first, the one thou are;
Be thou the calling, before all answering love,
And in me wake hope, fear, boundless desire.

Diary of an Old Soul