Quotes from George MacDonald

I am sometimes almost terrified at the scope of the demands made upon me, at the perfection of the self-abandonment required of me; yet outside of such absoluteness can be no salvation.

Why are all reflections lovelier than what we call reality? -- not so grand or so strong, it may be, but always lovelier? Fair as is the gliding sloop on the shining sea, the wavering, trembling, unresting sail below is fairer still...All mirrors are magic mirrors. The commonest room is a room in a poem when I turn to the glass...There must be a truth involved in it, though we may but in part lay hold of the meaning.

though I cannot promise to take you home, said North Wind, as she sank nearer and nearer to the tops of the houses, I can promise you it will be all right in the end. You will get home somehow.

But in the meantime, you must be content, I say, to be misunderstood for a while. 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.

Those are not the tears of repentance!... Self-loathing is not sorrow. Yet it is good, for it marks a step in the way home, and in the father's arms the prodigal forgets the self he abominates.

The part of the 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 is to the man who is trying to live, to the man who is obedient to the word of the Master, that the word of the Master unfolds itself.

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.

The only way to come to know where you are is to begin to make yourself at home.

It is the heart that is unsure of its God that is afraid to laugh.

God's finger can touch nothing but to mold it into loveliness.

We weep for gladness, weep for grief; The tears they are the same; We sigh for longing, and relief; The sighs have but one name, And mingled in the dying strife, Are moans that are not sad The pangs of death are throbs of life, Its sighs are sometimes glad.

The best preparation for the future, is the present well seen to, and the last duty done.

To cease to wonder is to fall plumb-down from the childlike to the commonplace—the most undivine of all moods intellectual. Our nature can never be at home among things that are not wonderful to us.

Could you not give me some sign, or tell me something about you that never changes, or some other way to know you, or thing to know you by? — No, Curdie: that would be to keep you from knowing me. You must know me in quite another way from that. It would not be the least use to you or me either if I were to make you know me in that way. It would be but to know the sign of me — not to know me myself.

What honest boy would pride himself on not picking pockets ? A thief who was trying to reform would. To be conceited of doing one's duty is then a sign of how little one does it, and how little one sees what a contemptible thing it is not to do it. Could any but a low creature be conceited of not being contemptible? Until our duty becomes to us common as breathing, we are poor creatures.

Remember, then, that whoever does not mean good is always in danger of harm. But I try to give everybody fair play, and those that are in the wrong are in far more need of it always than those who are in the right: they can afford to do without it.

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.

How many who love never come nearer than to behold each other as in a mirror; seem to know and yet never know the inward life; never enter the other soul; and part at last, with but the vaguest notion of the universe on the borders of which they have been hovering for years?

You have tasted of death now," said the old man. "Is it good?" "It is good," said Mossy. "It is better than life." "No," said the old man: "it is only more life.

I knew now, that it is by loving, and not by being loved, that one can come nearest the soul of another; yea, that, where two love, it is the loving of each other, and not the being loved by each other, that originates and perfects and assures their blessedness. I knew that love gives to him that loveth, power over any soul beloved...

We must do the thing we must Before the thing we may; We are unfit for any trust Till we can and do obey.

Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love's kind, must be destroyed.

The greatest forces lie in the region of the uncomprehended.