Quotes from George MacDonald

A man is enslaved to anything he cannot part with which is less than himself.

Surely this youth will not serve our ends,' said I, 'for he weeps.' The old woman smiled. 'Past tears are present strength,' said she. 'Oh!' said my brother, 'I saw you weep once over an eagle you shot.' 'That was because it was so like you, brother,' I replied; 'but indeed, this youth may have better cause for tears than that—I was wrong.' 'Wait

If any one judge it hard that men should be made with ambitions to whose objects they can never attain, I answer, ambition is but the evil shadow of aspiration; and no man ever followed the truth, which is the one path of aspiration, and in the end complained that he had been made this way or that.

This is in the very nature of things: obedience alone places a man in the position in which he can see so as to judge that which is above him.

the road is difficult. - But come; loss now will be gain then! To wait is harder than to run, and its meed is the fuller.

There were people in the country who, when it came into their hands, degraded it by locking it up in a chest, and then it grew diseased and was called mammon, and bred all sorts of quarrels; but when first it left the king's hands it never made any but friends, and the air of the world kept it clean.

Difficulties It often seems to those in earnest about the right as if all things conspired to prevent their progress. This, of course, is but an appearance, arising in part from this, that the pilgrim must be headed back from the side-paths into which he is constantly wandering.

Light unshared is darkness. To be light indeed, it must shine out. It is of the very essence of light, that it is for others.

The righteousness that makes a man visit the sins of a father upon his children, is the righteousness of a devil, not the righteousness of God. When God visits the sins of a father on his children, it is to deliver the child from his own sins through yielding to inherited temptation.

Of all useless things a knowledge of the future seems to me the most useless, for what are you to do with a thing before it exists? Such a knowledge could only bewilder you as to the right way to take—would make you see double instead of single.

Although I had as yet no right to the honours of a knight, I ventured to conclude that the chamber was indeed intended for me; and, opening

When you have got quite alone, sit down and be lonely…fold your hands in your lap, and be still. Do not try to think anything… by and by, it may be, you will begin to know something of nature. Nature will soon speak to you, or not until, as Henri Vaughn says, some veil be broken in you

Look at him! He has begun a story without a beginning, and it will never have any end.

The sin he dwells in, the sin he will not come out of, is the sole ruin of a man. His present, his live sins, those pervading his thoughts and ruling his conduct; the sins he keeps doing, and will not give up; the sins he is called to abandon, and clings to; the same sins which are the cause of his misery, though he may not know it, these are they for which he is even now condemned.

she was one of the lights of the world—one of the wells of truth, whose springs are fed by the rains on the eternal hills.

But what mattered WHERE while EVERYWHERE was the same as NOWHERE! I had not yet, by doing something in it, made ANYWHERE into a place! I was not yet alive; I was only dreaming I lived! I was but a consciousness with an outlook! Truly I had been nothing else in the world I had left

My spirits rose as I went deeper; into the forest; but I could not regain my former elasticity of mind. I found cheerfulness to be like life itself--not to be created by any argument. Pg. 108

Foreseeing is not understanding, else surely the prophecy latent in man would come oftener to the surface!

That is why hardships, troubles, disappointments, and all kinds of pain and suffering, are sent to so many of us. We are so full of ourselves, and feel so grand, that we should never come to know what poor creatures we are, never begin to do better, but for the knock-down blows that the loving God gives us. We do not like them, but he does not spare us for that. A Rough Shaking, ch.

Only a pure heart can understand, and a pure heart is one that sends out ready hands.

How can beauty and ugliness dwell so near? Even with her altered complexion and her face of dislike; disenchanted of the belief that clung around her; known for a living, walking sepulchre, faithless, deluding, traitorous; I felt notwithstanding all this, that she was beautiful.

What did you mean by speaking so about the Ash? She rose and looked out of the little window

I rose and looked over her shoulder. I had just time to see, across the open space, on the edge of the denser forest, a single large ash-tree, whose

Eternal Death Not fulfilling these relations, the man is undoing the right of his own existence, destroying his raison d'être, making of himself a monster, a live reason why he should not live.