George MacDonald quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by George MacDonald

George MacDonald Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from George MacDonald on Wise Famous Quotes.

Half of the misery in the world comes from trying to look, instead of trying to be, what one is not.

Never was there a more injurous mistake than to say it was the
business only of the clergy to care for souls.

Beauty and sadness always go together.

I am an emptiness for Thee to fill; my soul a cavern for Thy sea

Where is the good of planning upon an "if?" To trust is to get ready, uncle says. Trust is better than foresight.

From the neglect of a real duty, she became the slave of a false one.

Affliction is but the shadow of God's wing.

No one is likely to remember what is entirely uninteresting to him.

A fairytale is not an allegory. There may be allegory in it, but it is not an allegory.

And so all growth that is not towards God Is growing towards decay.

That which is within a man, not that which lies beyond his vision, is the main factor in what is about to befall him:

Doubt may be a poor encouragement to do anything, but it is a bad reason for doing nothing.

The time for speaking seldom arrives, the time for being never departs.

The more people trust in God, the less will they trust their own judgments, or interfere with the ordering of events.

The causing of the little ones to offend hangs a fearful woe about the neck of the causer.

It is the heart that is not sure of its God that is afraid to laugh in His presence.

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

This is in the very nature of things: obedience alone places a man in the position in which he can see so as to judge that which is above him.

They will pressure you into doing things that may be unsafe, use your good judgment, and remember, 'I would rather be laughed at, than cried for.'

You allowed me existence, which is the sum of what one can demand of his fellow-beings

I rose as from the death that wipes out the sadness of life, and then dies itself in the new morrow.

Anything big enough to occupy our minds is big enough to hang a prayer on.

Books are but dead bodies to you, and a library nothing but a catacomb!

Grave doubts as to whether I was in my place in the church, would keep rising and floating about, like rain-clouds within me.

Nobody does anything bad all at once. Wickedness needs an apprenticeship as well as more difficult trades.

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.

In moments of doubt I cry, 'Could God Himself create such lovely things as I dreamed?'

'Whence then came thy dream?' answers Hope.

She began to learn that nothing is dead, that there cannot be a physical abstraction, that nothing exists for the sake of the laws of its phenomena.

The honour is to be a servant of men, whom God thought worth making, worth allowing to sin, and worth helping out of it at such a cost.

... for nothing is ever so mischievous in its own place as it is out of it;

Forgiveness is the giving, and so the receiving, of life.

In short, a man must be set free from the sin he is , which makes him do the sin he does .

The direst foe of courage is the fear itself, not the object of it; and the man who can overcome his own terror is a hero and more.

All things are possible with God, but all things are not easy.

If both Church and fairy-tale belong to humanity, they may occasionally cross circles, without injury to either.

Contempt is murder committed by the intellect, as hatred is murder committed by the heart.

But when we are following the light, even its extinction is a guide.

Obedience is the key to every door.

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

It needs brains to be a real fool.

I dare not say with Paul that I am the slave of Christ, but my highest aspiration and desire is to be the slave of Christ.

A man's real belief is that which he lives by. What a man believes is the thing he does, not the thing he thinks.

All the days of my appointed time will I wait till my change come.

Thou art beautiful because God created thee, but thou art a slave to sin ... wickedness has made you ugly.

I had chosen the dead rather than the living, the thing thought rather than the thing thinking.

That's all nonsense," said Curdie. "I don't know what you mean."
"Then if you don't know what I mean, what right have you to call it nonsense?

For God alone is our salvation; to know him is salvation. He is in us all the time, else we could never move to seek him.

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

I believe that no hell will be lacking which would help the just mercy of God to redeem his children.

For the greatest fool and rascal in creation there is yet a worse condition; and that is, not to know it, but to think himself a respectable man.

True business can never be left in any shop. It is a care, white or black, that sits behind every horseman.

Joy's a subtil elf. I think man's happiest when he forgets himself.

I was a bookworm then, but when I came to know it, I woke among the butterflies.

All is loss that comes between us and Christ.

It is our best work that God wants, not the dregs of our exhaustion. I think he must prefer quality to quantity.

The purposes of God point to one simple end-that we should be as he is, think the same thoughts, mean the same things, possess the same blessedness.

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

Until a man has love, it is well he should have fear. So long as there are wild beasts about, it is better to be afraid than secure.

To hear one talk is better than to see one.

The back door of every tomb opens on a hilltop.

Were I asked, what is a fairytale? I should reply, Read Undine: that is a fairytale.

Many a thief is a better man than many a clergyman, and miles nearer to the gate of the kingdom.

Love makes all safe.

The Bible is to me the most precious thing in the world just because it tells me the story of Jesus.

What does God want me to do?", not "What will God do if I do so and so?

If we do not die to ourselves, we cannot live to God, andhe that does not live to God, is dead.

For this, deep waters whelm the fruitful lea, Wars ravage, famine wastes, plague withers, nor Shall cease till men have chosen the better part.

A man is as free as he chooses to make himself, never an atom freer.

One of the grandest things in having rights is, that though they are your rights you may give them up

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

It is as necessary for a poor man to give away, as for a rich man. Many poor men are more devoted worshipers of Mammon than some rich men.

One thing is clear to me, that no indulgence of passion destroys the spiritual nature so much as respectable selfishness.

If man could do what in his wildest self-worship he can imagine, the grand result would be that he would be his own God, which is the Hell of Hells.

Her face was fair and pretty, with eyes like two bits of night sky, each with a star dissolved in the blue.

I do not myself believe there is any misfortune. What men call such is merely the shadowside of a good.

The year's fruit must fall that the next year's may come, and the winter is the only way to the spring.

Where there is no choice, we do well to make no difficulty.

The mind of the many is not the mind of God.

VISITORS FROM THE HALL.

Above all things, I delight in listening to stories, and sometimes in telling them.

her - nobody but Sarah;

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.

A beast does not know that he is a beast, and the nearer a man gets to being a beast, the less he knows it.

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

But a man may then imagine in your work what he pleases, what you never meant!
Not what he pleases, but what he can.

If I be a child of God, I must be like him, even in the matter of creative energy.

It is not the cares of today, but the cares of tomorrow, that weigh a man down.

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

The first thing a kindness deserves is acceptance, the second, transmission.

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.

And her life will perhaps be the richer, for holding now within it the memory of what came, but could not stay.

His little heart was so full of merriment that it could not hold it all, and it ran over into theirs.

There is no inborn longing that shall not be fulfilled. I think that is as certain as the forgiveness of sins.

Every soul has a landscape that changes with the wind that sweeps the sky, with the clouds that return after its rain.

sweeter than joy itself, for the heart of the laugh was love.

Forgiveness unleashes joy. It brings peace. It washes the slate clean. It sets all the highest values of love in motion.

There is endless room for rebellion against ourselves.

Where did you come from, baby dear? Out of the everywhere and into here.

A devil - "A power that lives against its life

whoever is diligent will soon be cheerful,