Quotes from George MacDonald

There are as many kinds of anger as there are of the sunsets with which they ought to end.

The love of our neighbor is the only door out of the dungeon of self.

Beauty and sadness always go together.

We are not made for law, we are made for love.

You doubt because you love truth.

To love righteousness is to make it grow, not to avenge it. Throughout his life on earth, Jesus resisted every impulse to work more rapidly for a lower good.

In the hearts of witches, love and hate lie close together and often tumble over each other.

Trust to God to weave your thread into the great web, though the pattern shows it not yet.

It's right to trust in God; but, if you don't stand to your halliards your craft'll miss stays, and your faith'll be blown out of the bolt-ropes in the turn of a marlinspike.

To give truth to him who loves it not is but to give him more plentiful material for misinterpretation.

But we believe – nay, Lord we only hope, That one day we shall thank thee perfectly For pain and hope and all that led or drove Us back into the bosom of thy love.

In low theologies, hell is invariably the deepest truth, and the love of God is not so deep as hell.

The doing of things from duty is but a stage on the road to the kingdom of truth and love.

There is no strength in unbelief. Even the unbelief of what is false is no source of might. It is the truth shining from behind that gives the strength to disbelieve.

What I would say is this, that the light is not blinding because God would hide, but because the truth is too glorious for our vision.

Every truth must be accompanied by some corresponding act.

I would not favour a fiction to keep a whole world out of hell. The hell that a lie would keep any man out of is doubtless the very best place for him to go to. It is truth... that saves the world.

There is no cheating in nature and the simple unsought feelings of the soul. There must be a truth involved in it, though we may but in part lay hold of the meaning.

All love will, one day, meet with its return. All true love will, one day, behold its own image in the eyes of the beloved, and be humbly glad.

Why should my love be powerless to help another?

He (God) loves what I shall be.

It is only by loving a thing that you can make it yours.

I saw thee ne'er before; I see thee never more; But love, and help, and pain, beautiful one, Have made thee mine, till all my years are done.

For that great Love speaks in the most wretched and dirty hearts; only the tone of its voice depends on the echoes of the place in which it sounds.