Quotes from George MacDonald

the blessing is the truth itself-the God-known truth, that the Lord has the heart of a child.

Never seeking true or high things, caring only for appearances, and, therefore, for inventions, he had left his imagination all undeveloped, and when it represented his own inner condition to him, had repressed it until it was nearly destroyed, and what remained of it was set on fire of hell.

I begin to suspect, said the curate, after a pause, that the common transactions of life are the most sacred channels for the spread of the heavenly leaven.

If you do not obey Him, you will not know Him. You will tell me, some of you, that I am always beating that anvil–that obedience to Christ is Christianity. Let me die insisting upon it. For my Lord insists upon it.

He that sees the essential in this child, the pure childhood, sees that which is the essence of me," grace and truth-in a word, childlikeness. It follows not that the former is perfect as the latter, but it is the same in kind, and therefore, manifest in the child, reveals that which is in Jesus.

If the man is of the Lord's company, he is safer with him than with those who would secure their safety by hanging on the outskirts and daring nothing.

the fact that the church draws so few of those that are despised, of those whom Jesus drew and to whom most expressly he came, gives ground for question as to how far the church is like her Lord.

Set any one to talk about himself, instead of about other people, and you will have a seam of the precious mental metal opened up to you at once; only ore, most likely, that needs much smelting and refining; or it may be, not gold at all, but a metal which your mental alchemy may turn into gold.

don't blame you for not being able to believe it, but I do blame you for fancying such a child would try to deceive you. Why should she? Depend upon it, she told you all she knew. Until you had found a better way of accounting for it all, you might at least have been more sparing of your judgment.

Hence there dwelt in her eyes an appeal which few hearts could resist. When they met another's they seemed to say: 'I am nobody; but you need not kill me ; I am not pretending to be anybody. I will try to do what you want, but I am not clever. Only I am sorry for it. Be gentle with me.

God grant our new may inwrap our old!

It was not that the youth had turned again from the hope of rest in the Son of Man; but that, as everyone knows who knows anything of the human spirit, there must be in its history days and seasons, mornings and nights, yea deepest midnights. It has its alternating summer and winter, its storm and shine, its soft dews and its tempests of lashing hail, its cold moons and prophetic stars, its pale twilights of saddest memory, and its golden gleams of brightest hope.

It is not betrayal of feeling, but avoidance of duty, that constitutes weakness.

Winna ye be gaein' awa', to write buiks, an' gar fowk fin' oot what's the maitter wi' them?

That man is perfect in faith who can come to God in the utter dearth of his feelings and his desires, without a glow or an aspiration, with the weight of low thoughts, failures, neglects, and wandering forgetfulness, and say to him, 'Thou art my refuge, because thou art my home.

and will therefore send the man forth from its loftiest representations to do the commonest duty of the most wearisome calling in a hearty and hopeful spirit. This is the work of the right imagination; and towards this work every imagination, in proportion to the rightness that is in it, will tend.

Here lies David Elginbrod Have mercy on my soul, dear God, As I would ye if I were God And ye were David Elginbrod.

for childhood is the deepest heart of humanity-its divine heart;

Nobody does anything bad all at once. Wickedness needs an apprenticeship as well as more difficult trades.

The wrath will consume what they call themselves; so that the selves God made shall appear ... They will know that now first are they fully themselves. That which they thought themselves shall have vanished: that which they felt themselves, though they misjudged their own feelings, shall remain--remain glorified in repentant hope. For that which cannot be shaken will remain. That which is immortal in God shall remain in man. The death that is in them shall be consumed.

when the children had made sparrows of clay, Thou mad'st them birds, with wings to flutter and fold: Take, Lord, my prayer in thy hand, and make it pray.

but where is the use of saying what might have been, when all things are ever moving towards the highest and best for the individual as well as for the universe! —not the less that hell may be the only path to it for some—the hell of an absolute self-loathing.

We have received a kingdom that cannot be moved—whose nature is immovable: let us have grace to serve the Consuming Fire, our God, with divine fear; not with the fear that cringes and craves, but with the bowing down of all thoughts, all delights, all loves before him who is the life of them all, and will have them all pure.

Our crimes are friends that will hunt us either to the bosom of God, or the pit of hell.