Top 100 George MacDonald Quotes
#1. When we understand the outside of things, we think we have them. Yet the Lord puts his things in subdefined, suggestive shapes, yielding no satisfactory meaning to the mere intellect, but unfolding themselves to the conscience and heart.
George MacDonald
#2. It is greed and laziness and selfishness, not hunger or weariness or cold, that take the dignity out of a man, and make him look mean.
George MacDonald
#3. punishment had not been spared--with best results in patience and purification
George MacDonald
#4. But indeed the business of the universe is to make such a fool of you that you will know yourself for one, and so begin to be wise!
George MacDonald
#5. But God lets men have their playthings, like the children they are, that they may learn to distinguish them from true possessions. If they are not learning that he takes them from them, and
tries the other way: for lack of them and its misery, they will perhaps seek the true!
George MacDonald
#6. The good man never wrote or read a sermon, but talked to his people as one who would meet what was in them with what was in him.
George MacDonald
#7. My prayers, my God, flow from what I am not;
I think thy answers make me what I am.
George MacDonald
#8. The best thing you can do for your fellow, next to rousing his conscience, is - not to give him things to think about, but to wake things up that are in him; or say, to make him think things for himself.
George MacDonald
#9. The birds, the poets of the animal creation - what though they never get beyond the lyrical! - awoke to utter their own joy, and awake like joy in others of God's children.
George MacDonald
#10. I am ready,' I replied.
'How do you know you can do it?'
'Because you require it,' I answered.
George MacDonald
#13. 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.
George MacDonald
#14. The question is not at present, however, of removing mountains, a thing that will one day be simple to us, but of waking and rising from the dead now.
George MacDonald
#15. A fairytale is not an allegory. There may be allegory in it, but it is not an allegory.
George MacDonald
#16. A shudder ran through her from head to foot when she found that the thread was actually taking her into the hole out of which the stream ran.
George MacDonald
#17. It would hardly be kindness if he didn't punish sin, not to use every means to put the evil thing far from us. Whatever may be meant by the place of misery Mr. Sutherland, it's only another form of his love. Love shining through the fogs of evil, and thus made to look very different.
George MacDonald
#18. Nobody knows what anything is; a man can only learn what a thing means!
George MacDonald
#19. Let us then arise and live - arise even in the darkest moments of spiritual stupidity, when hope itself sees nothing to hope for. Let us go at once to the Life. Let us comfort ourselves in the thought of the Father and the Son.
George MacDonald
#20. The region of the senses is the unbelieving part of the human soul.
George MacDonald
#21. But he remembered that even if she did box his ears, he musn't box hers again, for she was a girl, and all that boys must do, if girls are rude, is to go away and leave them.
George MacDonald
#23. Never be discouraged because good things get on so slowly here; and never fail daily to do that good which lies next to your hand.
George MacDonald
#24. It matters little where a man may be at this moment; the point is whether he is growing.
George MacDonald
#27. Ah, what is it we send up thither, where our thoughts are either a dissonance or a sweetness and a grace?
George MacDonald
#28. Better to have the poet's heart than brain,
Feeling than song.
George MacDonald
#29. Those who are content with what they are, have the less concern about what they seem.
George MacDonald
#30. The possession of wealth is, as it were, prepayment, and involves an obligation of honor to the doing of correspondent work.
George MacDonald
#31. You can't live on amusement. It is the froth on water - an inch deep and then the mud.
George MacDonald
#32. He who is faithful over a few things is a lord of cities. It does not matter whether you preach in Westminster Abbey or teach a ragged class, so you be faithful. The faithfulness is all.
George MacDonald
#33. she might have seen that she was not bound to measure God by the way her father talked to him - that the form of the prayer had to do with her father, not immediately with God - that God might be altogether adorable, notwithstanding the prayers of all heathens and of all saints.
George MacDonald
#34. Life eternal, this lady of thine hath a sore heart, and we cannot help her. Thou art help, O Mighty Love. Speak to her, and let her know thy will, and give her strength to do it, O Father of Jesus Christ, Amen.
George MacDonald
#35. One who not merely beholds the outward shows of things, but catches a glimpse of the soul that looks out of them, whose garment and revelation they are-if he be such, I say, he will stand, for more than a moment, speechless with something akin to that which made the morning stars sing together.
George MacDonald
#36. But there is no veil like light
no adamantine armor against hurt like the truth.
George MacDonald
#37. The library, although duly considered in many alterations of the house and additions to it, had nevertheless, like an encroaching state, absorbed one room after another until it occupied the greater part of the ground floor.
George MacDonald
#38. The ideal is the only absolute real; and it must become the real in the individual life as well, however impossible they may count it who never tried it.
George MacDonald
#39. It is because the young cannot recognize the youth of the aged, and the old will not acknowledge the experience of the young, that they repel each other.
George MacDonald
#40. heaven is high and deep, and its lower air is music; in the upper regions the music may pass, who knows, merging unlost, into something endlessly better!
George MacDonald
#41. I thank thee, Lord, for forgiving me, but I prefer staying in the darkness: forgive me that too." - "No; that cannot be. The one thing that cannot be forgiven is the sin of choosing to be evil, of refusing deliverance. It is impossible to forgive that. It would be to take part in it.
George MacDonald
#42. We can walk without fear, full of hope and courage and strength to do His will, waiting for the endless good which He is always giving as fast as He can get us able to take it in.
George MacDonald
#43. 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.
George MacDonald
#44. Either there is a God, and that God the perfect heart of truth and loveliness, or all poetry and art is but an unsown, unplanted, rootless flower, crowning a somewhat symmetrical heap of stones.
George MacDonald
#45. Faith is that which, knowing the Lord's will, goes and does it; or, not knowing it, stands and waits, content in ignorance as in knowledge, because God wills - neither pressing into the hidden future, nor careless of the knowledge which opens the path of action
George MacDonald
#46. If you will not determine to be pure, you will grow more and more impure.
George MacDonald
#47. I suspect there is nothing a man can be so grateful for as that to which he has the most right. There
George MacDonald
#48. He had come to think that so long as a man wants to do right he may go where he can: when he can go no further, then it is not the way.
George MacDonald
#49. Similarly, there are multitudes who lose their lives pondering what they ought to believe, while something lies at their door waiting to be done, and rendering it impossible for him who makes it wait, ever to know what to believe.
George MacDonald
#50. Only a pure heart can understand, and a pure heart is one that sends out ready hands.
George MacDonald
#52. But the praises of father or mother do our Selves good, and comfort them and make them beautiful.
George MacDonald
#53. Only because uplifted in song, was I able to endure the blaze of the dawn.
George MacDonald
#54. There is no law that sermons shall be the preacher's own, but there is an eternal law against all manner of humbug. Pardon the word.
George MacDonald
#55. As to the pure all things are pure, so the common mind sees far more vulgarity in others than the mind developed in genuine refinement.
George MacDonald
#56. Oh, father!" he said, "how the fear and oppression of ages are gone like a cloud swallowed up of space. Oh, father! are not all human ills doomed thus to vanish at last in the eternal fire of the love-burning God? - An
George MacDonald
#57. does my Anerew's hert guid to hae a crack wi' ane 'at kens something o' what the Maister wad be at. Mony ane 'll ca' him Lord, but feow 'ill tak the trible to ken what he wad hae o' them.
George MacDonald
#58. It is a great privilege to be poor, Peter. You must not mistake, however, and imagine it a virtue; it is but a privilege, and one also that may be terribly misused.
George MacDonald
#59. But more impressive than the facts and figures as to height, width, age, etc., are the entrancing beauty and tranquility that pervade the forest, the feelings of peace, awe and reverence that it inspires.
George MacDonald
#60. For others, as for ourselves, we must trust him. If we could thoroughly understand anything, that would be enough to prove it undivine; and that which is but one step beyond our understanding must be in some of its relations as mysterious as if it were a hundred.
George MacDonald
#61. It is amazing from what a mere fraction of a fact concerning him a man will dare judge the whole of another man
George MacDonald
#62. How strange this fear of death is! We are never frightened at a sunset.
George MacDonald
#63. Therefore I have been training him for a work that must soon be done. I was near losing him, and had to send my pigeon. Had he not shot it, that would have been better; but he repented, and that shall be as good in the end.
George MacDonald
#64. All things are possible with God, but all things are not easy.
George MacDonald
#66. Then the great old, young, beautiful princess turned to Curdie.
'Now, Curdie, are you ready?' she said.
'Yes ma'am,' answered Curdie.
'You do not know what for.'
'You do, ma'am. That is enough.
George MacDonald
#70. To judge religion we must have it
not stare at it from the bottom of a seemingly interminable ladder.
George MacDonald
#71. Our Lord speaks of many coming up to His door confident of admission, whom He yet sends away. Faith is obedience, not confidence.
George MacDonald
#72. He (God) can be revealed only to the child; perfectly, to the pure child only. All the discipline of the world is to make men children, that God may be revealed to them.
George MacDonald
#73. Foreseeing is not understanding, else surely the prophecy latent in man would come oftener to the surface!
George MacDonald
#74. When we are out of sympathy with the young, then I think our work in this world is over.
George MacDonald
#75. Good souls many will one day be horrified at the things they now believe of God.
George MacDonald
#76. She who is even once unjust can not complain if the like is expected of her again.
George MacDonald
#77. To try too hard to make people good is one way to make them worse. The only way to make them good is to be good, remembering well the beam and the mote.
George MacDonald
#79. Nobody does anything bad all at once. Wickedness needs an apprenticeship as well as more difficult trades.
George MacDonald
#80. Two people may be at the same spot in manners and behaviour, and yet one may be getting better, and the other worse, which is the greatest of differences that could possibly exist between them.
George MacDonald
#81. It is the heart that is unsure of its God that is afraid to laugh.
George MacDonald
#84. 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.
George MacDonald
#85. To the dim and bewildered vision of humanity, God's care is more evident in some instances than in others; and upon such instances men seize, and call them providences. It is well that they can; but it would be gloriously better if they could believe that the whole matter is one grand providence.
George MacDonald
#86. That God only whom Christ reveals to the humble seeker, can ever satisfy human soul.
George MacDonald
#87. It may be infinitely worse to refuse to forgive than to murder, because
George MacDonald
#88. Let death do what it can, there is just one thing it cannot destroy, and that is life. Never in itself, only in the unfaith of man, does life recognize any sway of death.
George MacDonald
#89. I only know when I don't know a thing ... wisdom lies in that.
George MacDonald
#90. Let us comfort ourselves in the thought of the Father and the Son. So long as there dwells harmony, so long as the Son loves the Father with all the love the Father can welcome, all is well with the little ones.
George MacDonald
#91. Whose work is it but your own to open your eyes? But indeed the business of the universe is to make such a fool out of you that you will know yourself for one, and begin to be wise.
George MacDonald
#92. A man is in bondage to whatever he cannot part with that is less than
himself.
George MacDonald
#93. Her face was fair and pretty, with eyes like two bits of night sky, each with a star dissolved in the blue.
George MacDonald
#94. However strange it may well seem, to do one's duty will make anyone conceited who only does it sometimes. Those who do it always would as soon think of being conceited of eating their dinner as of doing their duty. What honest boy would pride himself on not picking pockets?
George MacDonald
#95. When someone is grieving He had too much respect for sorrow to approach it with curiosity. He had learned to put off his shoes when he drew nigh the burning bush of human pain.
George MacDonald
#96. Had God forgotten him? That could not be! that which could forget
could not be God.
George MacDonald
#99. I had chosen the dead rather than the living, the thing thought rather than the thing thinking.
George MacDonald
#100. Few delights can equal the mere presence of one whom we trust utterly.
George MacDonald
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