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George MacDonald

54 quotes

• “I think the reason children get tired of their toys so soon is just that it is against human nature to be really interested in what is of no use. If you say that a beautiful thing is always interesting, I answer, that a beautiful thing is of the highest use. Is not the diamond that flashes all its colours into the heart of a poet as useful as the diamond with which the glazier divides the sheets of glass into panes for our windows?”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) first seen 1873 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The History of Gutta Percha Willie, the Working Genius (1873)

• “To receive honestly is the best thanks for a good thing.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) first seen 1881 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Mary Marston (1881), Chapter V

• “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 (1824–1905) first seen 1883 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Princess and Curdie (1883)

• “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 (1824–1905) first seen 1883 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Donal Grant (1883)

• “In the midst of life we are in death," said one; it is more true that in the midst of death we are in life. Life is the only reality; what men call death is but a shadow — a word for that which cannot be — a negation, owing the very idea of itself to that which it would deny. But for life there could be no death. If God were not, there would not even be nothing. Not even nothingness preceded life. Nothingness owes its very idea to existence.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) first seen 1886 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: From "Life" in Unspoken Sermons Series II (1886)

• “I firmly believe people have hitherto been a great deal too much taken up about doctrine and far too little about practice. The word doctrine, as used in the Bible, means teaching of duty, not theory. I preached a sermon about this. We are far too anxious to be definite and to have finished, well-polished, sharp-edged systems — forgetting that the more perfect a theory about the infinite, the surer it is to be wrong, the more impossible it is to be right.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: From a letter to his father, quoted in George MacDonald and His Wife (1924) by Greville MacDonald

• “Alas! how easily things go wrong! A sigh too deep or a kiss too long, And then comes a mist and a weeping rain, And life is never the same again.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “What we call evil, is the only and best shape, which, for the person and his condition at the time, could be assumed by the best good.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “That is always the way with you men; you believe nothing the first time; and it is foolish enough to let mere repetition convince you of what you consider in itself unbelievable.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “What distressed me most — more even than my own folly — was the perplexing question, How can beauty and ugliness dwell so near?”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Afterwards I learned, that the best way to manage some kinds of painful thoughts, is to dare them to do their worst; to let them lie and gnaw at your heart till they are tired; and you find you still have a residue of life they cannot kill.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “So, then, as darkness had no beginning, neither will it ever have an end. So, then, is it eternal. The negation of aught else, is its affirmation. Where the light cannot come, there abideth the darkness. The light doth but hollow a mine out of the infinite extension of the darkness. And ever upon the steps of the light treadeth the darkness; yea, springeth in fountains and wells amidst it, from the secret channels of its mighty sea. Truly, man is but a passing flame, moving unquietly amid the surrounding rest of night; without which he yet could not be, and whereof he is in part compounded.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Why are all reflections lovelier than what we call the reality? — not so grand or so strong, it may be, but always lovelier?”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “All that man sees has to do with man. Worlds cannot be without an intermundane relationship. The community of the centre of all creation suggests an interradiating connection and dependence of the parts. Else a grander idea is conceivable than that which is already embodied.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Benefits conferred awaken love in some minds, as surely as benefits received in others.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Endurance must conquer, where force could not reach.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Thou goest thine, and I go mine — Many ways we wend; Many days, and many ways, Ending in one end. Many a wrong, and its curing song; Many a road, and many an inn; Room to roam, but only one home For all the world to win.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “It is better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold up his head in his pride and fancied innocence. I learned that he that will be a hero, will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work, is sure of his manhood.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “You would not think any duty small, If you yourself were great.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The man that feareth, Lord, to doubt, In that fear doubteth thee.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “...the regions where there is only life, and therefore all that is not music is silence.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “It may be an infinitely less evil to murder a man than to refuse to forgive him. The former may be the act of a moment of passion: the latter is the heart’s choice.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “We are and remain such creeping Christians, because we look at ourselves and not at Christ; because we gaze at the marks of our own soiled feet, and the trail of our own defiled garments....Each, putting his foot in the footprint of the Master, and so defacing it, turns to examine how far his neighbor’s footprint corresponds with that which he still calls the Master’s, although it is but his own.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Where did you come from baby dear? Out of the everywhere into the here.... Where did you get your eyes so blue? Out of the skies as I came through.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Diamond, however, had not been out so late before in all his life, and things looked so strange about him! — just as if he had got into Fairyland, of which he knew quite as much as anybody; for his mother had no money to buy books to set him wrong on the subject.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “For that great Love speaks in the most wretched and dirty hearts; only the tone of its voice depends on the echoes of the place in which it sounds.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “A true friend is forever a friend.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Afflictions are but the shadow of His wings.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Were I asked, what is a fairytale? I should reply, Read Undine: that is a fairytale ; then read this and that as well, and you will see what is a fairytale. Were I further begged to describe the fairytale, or define what it is, I would make answer, that I should as soon think of describing the abstract human face, or stating what must go to constitute a human being. A fairytale is just a fairytale, as a face is just a face; and of all fairytales I know, I think Undine the most beautiful.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Some thinkers would feel sorely hampered if at liberty to use no forms but such as existed in nature, or to invent nothing save in accordance with the laws of the world of the senses; but it must not therefore be imagined that they desire escape from the region of law. Nothing lawless can show the least reason why it should exist, or could at best have more than an appearance of life.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “A fairytale is not an allegory. There may be allegory in it, but it is not an allegory. He must be an artist indeed who can, in any mode, produce a strict allegory that is not a weariness to the spirit.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “But surely you would explain your idea to one who asked you?" I say again, if I cannot draw a horse, I will not write THIS IS A HORSE under what I foolishly meant for one. Any key to a work of imagination would be nearly, if not quite, as absurd. The tale is there, not to hide, but to show: if it show nothing at your window, do not open your door to it; leave it out in the cold. To ask me to explain, is to say, "Roses! Boil them, or we won't have them!" My tales may not be roses, but I will not boil them. So long as I think my dog can bark, I will not sit up to bark for him.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “We are often unable to tell people what they need to know because they want to know something else.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “That which is in a man, not that which lies beyond his vision is the main factor in what is about to befall him: the operation upon him is the event.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Come, come to Him who made thy heart; Come weary and oppressed; To come to Jesus is thy part; His part, to give thee rest.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “All is loss that comes between us and Christ.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “God Himself — His thoughts, His will, His love, His judgments are men's home. To think His thoughts, to choose His will, to judge His judgments, and thus to know that He is in us, with us, is to be at home. And to pass through the valley of the shadow of death is the way home, but only thus, that as all changes have hitherto lead us nearer to this home, the knowledge of God, so this greatest of all outward changes — for it is but an outward change — will surely usher us into a region where there will be fresh possibilities of drawing nigh in heart, soul, and mind to the Father of us all.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I record the conviction that in one way or another, special individual help is given to every creature to endure to the end. It has been my own experience, that always when suffering, whether mental or bodily, approached the point where further endurance appeared impossible, the pulse of it began to ebb and a lull ensued. You are tender-hearted, and you want to be true, and are trying to be; learn these two things: 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. Do not be in a hurry, but be diligent. Enter into the sublime patience of the Lord. Trust to God to weave your little thread into the great web, though the pattern shows it not yet. When God's people are able and willing thus to labor and wait, remember that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day; the grand harvest of the ages shall come to its reaping, and the day shall broaden itself to a thousand years, and the thousand years shall show themselves as a perfect and finished day.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) first seen 1887 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: As quoted in The Way To Win : Showing How To Succeed In Life (1887) by John Thomas Dale, p. 89

• “If sin must be kept alive, then hell must be kept alive; but while I regard the smallest sin as infinitely loathsome, I do not believe that any being, never good enough to see the essential ugliness of sin, could sin so as to deserve such punishment. I am not now, however, dealing with the question of the duration of punishment, but with the idea of punishment itself; and would only say in passing, that the notion that a creature born imperfect, nay, born with impulses to evil not of his own generating, and which he could not help having, a creature to whom the true face of God was never presented, and by whom it never could have been seen, should be thus condemned, is as loathsome a lie against God as could find place in heart too undeveloped to understand what justice is, and too low to look up into the face of Jesus.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) first seen 1889 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: From ‘’Justice’’ in Unspoken Sermons Series III (1889)

• “But tell me how it is that she could be so beautiful without any heart at all — without any place even for a heart to live in." "I cannot quite tell," she said; "but I am sure she would not look so beautiful if she did not take means to make herself look more beautiful than she is. And then, you know, you began by being in love with her before you saw her beauty … But the chief thing that makes her beautiful is this: that, although she loves no man, she loves the love of any man; and when she finds one in her power, her desire to bewitch him and gain his love (not for the sake of his love either, but that she may be conscious anew of her own beauty, through the admiration he manifests), makes her very lovely—with a self-destructive beauty...”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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, even if that soul know him not, bringing him inwardly close to that spirit; a power that cannot be but for good; for in proportion as selfishness intrudes, the love ceases, and the power which springs therefrom dies. Yet 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. This is possible in the realms of lofty Death.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Is it not a strange drift this of men," said the curate, "to hide what is under the veil of what is not? to seek refuge in lies, as if that which is not, could be an armor of adamant? to run from the daylight for safety, deeper into the cave? In the cave house the creatures of the night, — the tigers and hyenas, the serpent and the old dragon of the dark; in the light are true men and women, and the clear-eyed angels. But the reason is only too plain; it is, alas! that they are themselves of the darkness and not of the light. They do not fear their own. They are more comfortable with the beasts of darkness than with the angels of light. They dread the peering of holy eyes into their hearts; they feel themselves naked and fear to be shamed, therefore cast the garment of hypocrisy about them. They have that in them so strange to the light that they feel it must be hidden from the eye of day, as a thing hideous, that is, a thing to be hidden. But the hypocrisy is worse than all it would hide. That they have to hide again, as a more hideous thing still.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The natural world has its laws, and no man must interfere with them in the way of presentment any more than in the way of use; but they themselves may suggest laws of other kinds, and man may, if he pleases, invent a little world of his own, with its own laws; for there is that in him which delights in calling up new forms — which is the nearest, perhaps, he can come to creation. When such forms are new embodiments of old truths, we call them products of the Imagination; when they are mere inventions, however lovely, I should call them the work of the Fancy: in either case, Law has been diligently at work.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Suppose my child ask me what the fairytale means, what am I to say?" If you do not know what it means, what is easier than to say so? If you do see a meaning in it, there it is for you to give him. A genuine work of art must mean many things; the truer its art, the more things it will mean. If my drawing, on the other hand, is so far from being a work of art that it needs THIS IS A HORSE written under it, what can it matter that neither you nor your child should know what it means? It is there not so much to convey a meaning as to wake a meaning. If it do not even wake an interest, throw it aside. A meaning may be there, but it is not for you. If, again, you do not know a horse when you see it, the name written under it will not serve you much.”

  George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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