Quotes from George MacDonald

Said the Wind to the Moon, "I will blow you out!"

The principle part of faith is patience.

To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved.

But for money and the need of it, there would not be half the friendship in the world. It is powerful for good if divinely used. Give it plenty of air and it is sweet as the hawthorn; shut it up and it cankers and breeds worms.

Division has done more to hide Christ from the view of all men than all the infidelity that has ever been spoken.

Friends, if we be honest with ourselves, we shall be honest with each other.

The principal part of faith is patience.

You can't live on amusement. It is the froth on water -- an inch deep and then the mud.

To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved.

I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God's thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest and most precious thing in all thinking.

Few delights can equal the mere presence of one whom we trust utterly.

Her heart - like every heart, if only its fallen sides were cleared away - was an inexhaustible fountain of love: she loved everything she saw.

To try to be brave is to be brave.

We are all very anxious to be understood, and it is very hard not to be. But there is one thing much more necessary.' What is that, grandmother?' To understand other people.' Yes, grandmother. I must be fair - for if I'm not fair to other people, I'm not worth being understood myself. I see.

Doing the will of God leaves me no time for disputing about His plans.

Come, then, affliction, if my Father wills, and be my frowning friend. A friend that frowns is better than a smiling enemy.

No story ever really ends, and I think I know why.

People must believe what they can, and those who believe more must not be hard upon those who believe less. I doubt if you would have believed it all yourself if you hadn't seen some of it.

Philosophy is really homesickness.

Here I should like to remark, for the sake of princes and princesses in general, that it is a low and contemptible thing to refuse to confess a fault, or even an error. If a true princess has done wrong, she is always uneasy until she has had an opportunity of throwing the wrongness away from her by saying: 'I did it; and I wish I had not; and I am sorry for having done it.

All that is not God is death.

You must learn to be strong in the dark as well as in the day, else you will always be only half brave.

There is this difference between the growth of some human beings and that of others: in the one case it is a continuous dying, in the other a continuous resurrection.

When I can no more stir my soul to move, and life is but the ashes of a fire; when I can but remember that my heart once used to live and love, long and aspire- O, be thou then the first, the one thou art; be thou the calling, before all answering love, and in me wake hope, fear, boundless desire.