Quotes from George MacDonald

We should never wish our children or friends to do what we would not do ourselves if we were in their positions. We must accept righteous sacrifices as well as make them.

Now, you would hardly credit it, but my wife believes every fairy-tale that ever was written. I cannot account for it. She is a most sensible woman in everything else." "But should not that make you treat her belief with something of respect, though you cannot share in it yourself?

I found cheerfulness to be like life itself—not to be created by any argument. Afterwards I learned, that the best way to manage some kinds of pain filled thoughts, is to dare them to do their worst; to let them lie and gnaw at your heart till they are tired; and you find you still have a residue of life they cannot kill.

Death alone from death can save. Love is death, and so is brave-- Love can fill the deepest grave. Love loves on beneath the wave.

The birds, the poets of the animal creation — what though they never get beyond the lyrical! — awoke to utter their own joy, and awake like joy in others of God's children.

Humility is essential greatness, the inside of grandeur.

The part of philanthropist is indeed a dangerous one; and the man who would do his neighbor good must first study how not do do him evil, and must begin by pulling the beam out of his own eye.

every honest cry, even if sent into the deaf ear of an idol, passes on to the ears of the unknown God, the heart of the unknown Father.

35]              Caelum non animum mutant The man who is not content where he is, would never have been content somewhere else, though he might have complained less. Donal Grant, ch. 31

No one, however strong he may feel his obligations, will ever be man enough to fulfill them except that he be a Christian-that is,one who, like Christ, cares first for the will of the Father.

Home is ever so far away in the palm of your hand, and how to get there it is of no use to tell you. But you will get there; you must get there; you have to get there. Everybody who is not at home, has to go home. You thought you were at home where I found you: if that had been your home, you could not have left it. Nobody can leave home.

The poetry of life, the inner side of nature, rises near the surface to meet the eyes of the man who makes. The advantage gained by the carpenter of Nazareth at his bench is the inheritance of every workman as he imitates his maker in the divine - that is, honest - work.

Everything, dreaming and all, has got a soul in it, or else it's worth nothing, and we don't care a bit about it. Some of our thoughts are worth nothing, because they've got no soul in them.

Let a man do right, not trouble himself about worthless opinion; the less he heeds tongues, the less difficult will he find it to love men.

Is it not time I lost a few things when I care for them so unreasonably? This losing of things is of the mercy of God: It comes to teach us to let them go.

It is not the high summer alone that is God's. The winter also is His. And into His winter He came to visit us. And all man's winters are His – the winter of our poverty, the winter of our sorrow, the winter of our unhappiness – even "the winter of our discontent." Adela Cathcart, vol. 1, ch. 2

She had left his church and gone to the missionars, and there found more spiritual nourishment than Mr Cowie's sermons could supply, but she could not forget his kisses, or his gentle words, or his shilling, for by their means, although she did not know it, Mr Cowie's self had given her a more confiding notion of God, a better feeling of his tenderness, than she could have had from all Mr Turnbull's sermons together. What equal gift could a man give? Was it not worth bookfuls of sound doctrine?

The true man trusts in a strength which is not his, and which he does not feel, does not even always desire.

In that ugly building, amidst that weary praying and inharmonious singing, with that blatant tone, and, worse than all, that merciless doctrine, there was yet preaching — that rare speech of a man to his fellow-men whereby in their inmost hearts they know that he in his inmost heart believes. There was hardly an indifferent countenance in all that wide space beneath, in all those far-sloping galleries above. Every conscience hung out the red or pale flag.

A devil - A power that lives against its life

Why don't you go on, Mother dear?' he asked. 'It's such nonsense!' said his mother. 'I believe it would go on for ever.' 'That's just what it did,' said Diamond.' 'What did?' she asked.' 'Why, the river. That's almost the very tune it used to sing.

she might be treacherous too, but if I turned from every show of love lest it should be feigned, how was I ever to find the real love which must be somewhere in every world?

If the Lord were to appear this day in England as once in Palestine, He would not come in the halo of the painters or with that wintry shine of effeminate beauty, of sweet weakness, in which it is their helpless custom to represent Him.

It is possible to grow and not to grow, to grow less and to grow bigger, both at once—yes, even to grow by means of not growing!