Quotes from George MacDonald

It is not where one is, but in what direction he is going.

Possessed by the power of the gorgeous night, she seemed at one and the same moment annihilated and glorified.

I need a God; and if there be none how did I come to need one?

At length she gently pushed me away, and with the words, Go, my son, and do something worth doing, turned back, and, entering the cottage, closed the door behind her. I felt very desolate as I went. CHAPTER

There is no way of making three men right but by making right each one of the three; but a cure in one man who repents and turns, is a beginning of the cure of the whole human race.

We die daily. Happy those who daily come to life as well. [294] On Duty

Contempt is murder committed by the intellect, as hatred is murder committed by the heart.

The question is not at present, however, of removing mountains, a thing that will one day be simple to us, but of waking and rising from the dead now.

he believed in God and he believed that when the human is still, the Divine speaks to it, because it is its own.

Jesus tells us we must leave the self altogether-yield it, deny it, refuse it, lose it. Thus only shall we save it.... The self is given us that we may sacrifice it. It is ours in order that we, like Christ, may have something to offer- not that we should torment it, but that we should deny it; not that we should cross it, but that we should abandon it utterly.

It was a profound pleasure to her not to know what was coming next, provided some one whom she loved did.

So there was but one way of setting matters right, as Mr Malison had generosity enough left in him to perceive; and that was, to make a friend of his adversary. Indeed there is that in the depths of every human breast which makes a reconciliation the only victory that can give true satisfaction.

Let us then arise and live—arise even in the darkest moments of spiritual stupidity, when hope itself sees nothing to hope for. Let us go at once to the Life. Let us comfort ourselves in the thought of the Father and the Son.

Never wait for fitter time or place to talk to Him. To wait till thou go to church or to thy closet is to make Him wait. He will listen as thou walkest.

Never was there a more injurous mistake than to say it was the business only of the clergy to care for souls.

To know that she could not be near God in peace and love without fulfilling certain mental conditions — that he would not have her just as she was now, filled her with an undefined but terribly real misery . . .

Work is not always required of a man. There is such a thing as a sacred idleness, the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected.

These love self, not life, and self is but the shadow of life. When it is taken for life itself, and set as the man's center, it becomes a live death in the man, a devil he worships as his God: the worm of the death eternal he clasps to his bosom as his one joy.

Annie said her prayers, read her Bible, and tried not to forget God. Ah! could she only have known that God never forgot her, whether she forgot him or not, giving her sleep in her dreary garret, gladness even in Murdoch Malison's school-room, and the light of life everywhere!

I knew now, that it is by loving, and not by being loved, that one can come nearest the soul of another; yea, that, where two love, it is the loving of each other, and not the being loved by each other, that originates and perfects and assures their blessedness.

O, lack and doubt and fear can only come Because of plenty, confidence, and love! They are the shadow-forms about their feet, Because they are not perfect crystal-clear To the all-searching sun in which they live. Dread of its loss is Beauty's certain seal!

O Lord, I have been talking to the people; Thought's wheels have round me whirled a fiery zone And the recoil of my word's airy ripple My heart unheedful has puffed up and blown. Therefore I cast myself before thee prone: Lay cool hands on my burning brain and press From my weak heart the swelling emptiness.

Theologians have done more to hide the Gospel of Christ than any of its adversaries.

And why should the good of anyone depend on the prayer of another? I can only answer with the return question, 'Why should my love be powerless to help another?