George MacDonald quotes:

To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved.

If instead of a gem, or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give.

The more I work with the body, keeping my assumptions in a temporary state of reservation, the more I appreciate and sympathize with a given disease. The body no longer appears as a sick or irrational demon, but as a process with its own inner logic and wisdom.

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

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

Afflictions are but the shadows of God's wings.

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

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

Light-leaved acacias, by the door, Stood up in balmy air, Clusters of blossomed moonlight bore, And breathed a perfume rare.

I find that doing of the will of God leaves me no time for disputing about His plans.

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

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

There are thousands willing to do great things for one willing to do a small thing.

Truth is truth, whether from the lips of Jesus or Balaam.

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.

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

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

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

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

Man finds it hard to get what he wants, because he does not want the best; God finds it hard to give, because He would give the best, and man will not take it.

There is little hope of the repentance and redemption of certain some until they have committed one or another of the many wrong things of which they are daily, through a course of unrestrained selfishness, becoming more and more capable."

There is little hope of the repentance and redemption of certain some until they have committed one or another of the many wrong things of which they are daily, through a course of unrestrained selfishness, becoming more and more capable.

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

Love is the opener as well as closer of eyes.

The back door of every tomb opens on a hilltop.

To inquire into what God has made is the main function of the imagination. It is aroused by facts, is nourished by facts; seeks for higher and yet higher laws in those facts; but refuses to regard science as the sole interpreter of nature, or the laws of science as the only region of discovery.

For when is the child the ideal child in our eyes and to our hearts? Is it not when with gentle hand he takes his father by the beard, and turns that father's face up to his brothers and sisters to kiss? when even the lovely selfishness of love-seeking has vanished, and the heart is absorbed in loving?

For repose is not the end of education; its end is a noble unrest, an ever renewed awaking from the dead, a ceaseless questioning of the past for the interpretation of the future, an urging on of the motions of life, which had better far be accelerated into fever, than retarded into lethargy.

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.

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

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.

When I look like this into the blue sky, it seems so deep, so peaceful, so full of a mysterious tenderness, that I could lie for centuries and wait for the dawning of the face of God out of the awe-inspiring loving-kindness.

Faith is obedience, not compliance.

It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected. The best men do not want to govern their fellowmen.

Age is not all decay; it is the ripening, the swelling, of the fresh life within, that withers and bursts the husk.

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.

What distressed me most - more even than my own folly - was the perplexing question - How can beauty and ugliness dwell so near? Even with her altered complexion and face of dislike; disenchanted of the belief that clung around her; known for a living, walking sepulcher, faithless, deluding, traitorous; I felt, notwithstanding all this, that she was beautiful. Upon this I pondered with undiminished perplexity...

Ah, what is it we send up thither, where our thoughts are either a dissonance or a sweetness and a grace?

Annihilation itself is no death to evil. Only good where evil was, is evil dead. An evil thing must live with its evil until it chooses to be good. That alone is the slaying of evil.

Attitudes are more important than facts.

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

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

Philosophy is really homesickness.

Work is not always required. There is such a thing as sacred idleness.

The whole trouble is that we won't let God help us.

But there are not a few who would be indignant at having their belief in God questioned, who yet seem greatly to fear imagining Him better than He is.

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.

Only he knew that to be left alone is not always to be forsaken.

A God must have a God for company. And lo! thou hast the Son-God to thy friend. Thou honour'st his obedience, he thy law. Into thy secret life-will he doth see; Thou fold'st him round in live love perfectly- One two, without beginning, without end; In love, life, strength, and truth, perfect without a flaw.

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

Love loves unto purity. Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of that which it beholds. Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love's kind, must be destroyed. And our God is a consuming fire.

Right gladly would He free them from their misery, but He knows only one way: He will teach them to be like himself, meek and lowly, bearing with gladness the yoke of His Father's will. This in the one, the only right, the only possible way of freeing them from their sin, the cause of their unrest.

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

It is not the cares of today, but the cares of tomorrow, that weigh a man down. For the needs of today we have corresponding strength given. For the morrow we are told to trust. It is not ours yet. It is when tomorrow's burden is added to the burden of today that the weight is more than a man can bear.

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.

Except the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus make a man sick of his opinions, he may hold them to doomsday for me; for no opinion, I repeat is Christianity, and no preaching of any plan of salvation is the preaching of the glorious gospel of the living God.

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.

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.

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

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

If God were not only to hear our prayers, as he does ever and always, but to answer them as we want them answered, he would not be God our Saviour but the ministering genius of our destruction.

All words, then, belonging to the inner world of the mind, are of the imagination, are originally poetic words.

The necessary unlikeness between the creator and the created holds within it the equally necessary likeness of the thing made to him who makes it, and so of the work of the made to the work of the maker... The imagination of man is made in the image of the imagination of God.

If we speak of direct means for the culture of the imagination, the whole is comprised in two words--food and exercise.

Indeed, a man is rather being thought than thinking, when a new thought arises in his mind.

Past tears are present strength.

The greatest forces lie in the region of the uncomprehended.

It may seem strange that one with whom I had held so little communion should have so engrossed my thoughts, but benefits conferred awaken love in some minds, as surely as benefits received in others.

With every morn my life afresh must breakThe crust of self, gathered about me fresh;That thy wind-spirit may rush in and shakeThe darkness out of me, and rend the meshThe spider-devils spin out of the flesh-Eager to net the soul before it wake,That it may slumberous lie, and listen to the snake.George MacDonald

Heed not thy feeling. Do thy work.

To say on the authority of the Bible that God does a thing no honourable man would do, is to lie against God; to say that it is therefore right, is to lie against the very spirit of God.

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

Who can give a man this, his own name?

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?

Our Lord speaks of many coming up to His door confident of admission, whom He yet sends away. Faith is obedience, not confidence.

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.

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.

Obedience is the opener of eyes.

The nearer persons come to each other, the greater is the room and the more are the occasions for courtesy; but just in proportion to their approach the gentleness of most men diminishes.

Understanding is the reward of obedience. Obedience is the key to every door. I am perplexed at the stupidity of the ordinary religious being. In the most practical of all matters he will talk and speculate and try to feel, but he will not set himself to do.

As in all sweetest music, a tinge of sadness was in every note. Nor do we know how much of the pleasures even of life we owe to the intermingled sorrows. Joy cannot unfold the deepest truths, although deepest truth must be deepest joy.

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

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.

How kind you are, North Wind!''I am only just. All kindness is but justice. We owe it.

Primarily, God is not bound to punish sin; he is bound to destroy sin. The only vengeance worth having on sin is to make the sinner himself its executioner.

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

...it is so silly of people to fancy that old age means crookedness and witheredness and feebleness and sticks and spectacles and rheumatism and forgetfulness! It is so silly! Old age has nothing whatever to do with all that. The right old age means strength and beauty and mirth and courage and clear eyes and strong painless limbs.

Timely service, like timely gifts, is doubled in value.

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

You doubt because you love truth.

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.

God left the world unfinished for man to work his skill upon. He left the electricity still in the cloud, the oil still in the earth.

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

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.

To keep a lamp burning we have to keep putting oil in it.

How strange this fear of death is! We are never frightened at a sunset.

To have what we want is riches; but to be able to do without is power.

"But if God is so good as you represent Him, and if He knows all that we need, and better far than we do ourselves, why should it be necessary to ask Him for anything?" I answer, "What if He knows prayer to be the thing we need first and most? What if the main object in God's idea of prayer be the supplying of our great, our endless need - the need of Himself?"

...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.

[God desires] not that He may say to them, "Look how mighty I am, and go down upon your knees and worship," for power alone was never yet worthy of prayer; but that He may say thus: "Look, my children, you will never be strong but with my strength. I have no other to give you. And that you can get only by trusting in me. I can not give it you any other way. There is no other way."

A Baby Sermon- The lighting and thunder, they go and they come: But the stars and the stillness are always at home

A condition which of declension would indicate a devil, may of growth indicate a saint.

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

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

A man is in bondage to whatever he cannot part with that is less than himself.

A man may sink by such slow degrees that, long after he is a devil, he may go on being a good churchman or a good dissenter and thinking himself a good Christian.

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.

A perfect faith would lift us absolutely above fear

A true friend is forever a friend.

A voice is in the wind I do not know A meaning on the face of the high hills Whose utterance I cannot comprehend. A something is behind them: that is God.

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

Alas! how easily things go wrong!

Alas! this time is never the time for self-denial, it is always the next time. Abstinence is so much more pleasant to contemplate upon the other side of indulgence.

Alas, how easily things go wrong! A sigh too much, a kiss too long And there follows a mist and a weeping rain And life is never the same again

All about us, in earth and air, wherever the eye or ear can reach, there is a power ever breathing itself forth in signs, now in daisy, now in a wind-waft, a cloud, a sunset; a power that holds constant and sweetest relation with the dark and silent world within us. The same God who is in us, and upon whose tree we are the buds, if not yet the flowers, also is all about us- inside, the Spirit; outside, the Word. And the two are ever trying to meet in us...

All haste implies weakness.

All is loss that comes between us and Christ.

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.

All that is made seems planless to the darkened mind, because there are more plans than it looked for...There seems no plan because it is all plan: there seems no centre because it is all centre.