Quotes from George MacDonald

There is endless room for rebellion against ourselves.

Knowlegde no doubt made bad people worse, but it must make good people better!

The kingdom of heaven is not come, even when God's will is our law: it is come when God's will is our will.

I would I were in the kingdom of heaven if it be as you and Mr. Graham take it for! said Clementina. You must be in it, my lady, or you couldn't wish it to be such as it is. Can one be in it and yet seem to himself to be out of it. Malcolm? So many are out of it that seem to be in it, my lady, that one might well imagine it the other way around with some.

No gift unrecognized as coming from God is at its own best: therefore many things that God would gladly give us, things even that we need because we are, must wait until we ask for them, that we may know whence they come: when in all gifts we find Him, then in Him we shall find all things.

What a hell of horror, I thought, to wander alone, a bare existence never going out of itself, never widening its life in another life, but, bound with the cords of its poor peculiarities, lying an eternal prisoner in the dungeon of its own being! I

At length, one lovely morning, when the green corn lay soaking in the yellow sunlight, and the sky rose above the earth deep and pure and tender like the thought of God about it, Alec became suddenly aware that life was good, and the world beautiful . . . One of God's lyric prophets, the larks, was within earshot, pouring down a vocal summer of jubilant melody. The lark thought nobody was listening but his wife; but God heard in heaven, and the young prodigal heard on the earth.

A candle is not lighted for itself; neither is a man. The light that serves self only, is no true light; its one virtue is that it will soon go out.

He managed to get the loan of a copy of Burns—better meat for a strong spirit than the poetry of Byron or even Scott.

There had been a time in Godfrey's life when, had she stood before him in all her splendor, he would have turned from her, because of her history, with a sad disgust. Was he less pure now? He was more pure, for he was humbler.

Do you ask, "What is faith in Him?" I answer, The leaving of your way, your objects, your self, and the taking of His and Him; the leaving of your trust in men, in money, in opinion, in character, in atonement itself, and doing as He tells you. I can find no words strong enough to serve for the weight of this obedience.

as no one can be just without love, so no one can truly report without understanding.

I may love him, I may love him, for he is a man, and I am only a beech-tree.

For our Selves will always do pretty well if we don't pay them too much attention. Our Selves are like some little children who will be happy enough so long as they are left to their own games, but when we begin to interfere with them, and make them presents of too nice playthings, or too many sweet things, they begin at once to fret and spoil.

It Was a lovely spring morning, and the sun was shining gloriously. I knew that the rain of the last night must be glittering on the grass and the young leaves; and I heard the birds singing as if they knew far more than mere human beings, and believed a great deal more than they knew. Nobody will persuade me that the birds don't mean it; that they sing from any thing else than gladness of heart.

But the praises of father or mother do our Selves good, and comfort them and make them beautiful.

That which is within a man, not that which lies beyond his vision, is the main factor in what is about to befall him:

Spiritual Murder It may be an infinitely less evil to murder a man than to refuse to forgive him. The former may be the act of a moment of passion: the latter is the heart's choice. It is spiritual murder, the worst, to hate, to brood over the feeling that excludes, that, in our microcosm, kills the image, the idea of the hated.

Sad-hearted, be at peace: the snowdrop lies     Buried in sepulchre of ghastly snow;

It is not at all a fit place for you , said Clementina. Gently, my lady. It is a greater than thou that sets the bounds of my habitation. Perhaps He may give me a palace one day. But the Father has decreed for His children that they shall know the thing that is neither their ideal nor His. All in His time, my lady. He has much to teach us.

Impossibilities "I thank thee, Lord, for forgiving me, but I prefer staying in the darkness: forgive me that too."—"No; that cannot be. The one thing that cannot be forgiven is the sin of choosing to be evil, of refusing deliverance. It is impossible to forgive that. It would be to take part in it.

For the master believed in solitude and silence. Say rather, he believed in God. What the youth might think, feel, or judge, he could not tell; but he believed that when the Human is still, the Divine speaks to it, because it is its own.

Where is the good of planning upon an if? To trust is to get ready, uncle says. Trust is better than foresight.

To say a man might disobey and be none the worse would be to say that no might be yes and light sometimes darkness.