Quotes from George MacDonald

Whether the lightning bewildered me and made me take a false turn, I cannot tell; for the hardest thing to understand, in intellectual as well as moral mistakes, is—how we came to go wrong.

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

It seems the way to find some things is to lose yourself.

We have neither humility enough to be faithful, nor faith enough to be humble.

she had no stay, no root in herself yet. Well do I know not one human being ought, even were it possible, to be enough for himself; each of us needs God and every human soul he has made, before he has enough; but we ought each to be able , in the hope of what is one day to come, to endure for a time, not having enough.

Gone then will be all anxiety as to what his neighbour may think about him. It is enough that God thinks about him. To be something to God—is not that praise enough? To be a thing that God cares for and would have complete for himself, because it is worth caring for—is not that life enough?

In God alone can man meet man.

She had not yet learned that we must each bear his own burden, and so become able to bear each the burden of the other. Poor friends we are, if we are capable only of leaning, and able never to support.

I saw now that a man alone is but a being that may become a man--that he is but a need, and therefore a possibility.

no man really denies a thing which he knows only by the words that stand for it. When John Tuke denied the God in his notion, he denied only a God that could have no existence.

Only by the reflex of other lives can he ripen his specialty, develop the idea of himself, the individuality that distinguishes him from every other.

For all clergymen whom I had yet met, regarded mankind and their interests solely from the clerical point of view, seeming far more desirous that a man should be a good church man, as they called it, than that he should love God.

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

Thou wouldst not have thy man crushed back to clay; It must be, God, thou hast strength to give To him that fain would do what thou dost say; Else how shall any soul repentant live, Old griefs and new fears hurrying on dismay? Let pain be what thou wilt, kind and degree, Only in pain calm thou my heart with thee.

The demon has a name that is known among men, though it frightens few and draws many, alas! His name is Self, and he is the shadow of your own self. First he made you love him, which was evil, and now he has made you hate him, which is evil also. But if he be cast out and never more enter into your heart, but remain as a servant in your hall, then you will recover from this sickness, and be whole and sound, and will find the varlet serviceable.

Often, no doubt, it will appear otherwise, for the childlike child is easier to save than the other, and may come first. But the rejoicing in heaven is greatest over the sheep that has wandered the farthest—perhaps was born on the wild hill-side, and not in the fold at all. For such a prodigal, the elder brother in heaven prays thus— Lord, think about my poor brother more than about me, for I know thee, and am at rest in thee. I am with thee always.

Come; come! He who cannot act must make haste to sleep!

you will be dead, so long as you refuse to die.

Most of them would have nothing to do with a caterpillar, except watch it through its changes; but when at length it came from its retirement with wings, all would immediately address it as Sister Butterfly, congratulating it on its metamorphosis--for which they used a word that meant something like REPENTANCE--and evidently regarding it as something sacred.

To do as God does, is to receive God; to do a service to one of his children is to receive the Father.

More of what he said, I cannot tell; somehow this much has reached my ears. He remained there upon the straw while hour after hour passed, pleading with the great Father for his son; his soul now lost in dull fatigue, now uttering itself in groans for lack of words, until at length the dawn looked in on the night-weary earth, and into the two sorrow-laden hearts, bringing with it a comfort they did not seek to understand.

I am content to be to myself what I would be. What I choose to seem to myself makes me what I am. My own thought makes me me; my own thought of myself is me. Another shall not make me! But another has made you, and can compel you to see what you have made yourself. You will not be able much longer to look to yourself anything but what he sees you! You will not much longer have satisfaction in the thought of yourself. At this moment you are aware of the coming change!

A man is in bondage to what ever he cannot part with that is less than himself.

She hardly knew for which to be more grateful—her son, given helpless into her hands, unable to repel the love she lavished upon him; or the girl whom God had taken from the very throat of the swallowing grave.