George MacDonald Quotes

243 Sourced Quotes

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?

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

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

George MacDonald
There are things that must be done in faith, else they never have being.

George MacDonald
Real good-breeding is independent of the forms and refinements of what has assumed to itself the name of society.

George MacDonald
This is and has been the Father's work from the beginning-to bring us into the home of His heart.

George MacDonald
The region of the senses is the unbelieving part of the human soul.

George MacDonald
Better to have the poet's heart than brain,
Feeling than song.

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

George MacDonald
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.

George MacDonald
No; but you came, and found the riddles waiting for you! Indeed you are yourself the only riddle. What you call riddles are truths, and seem riddles because you are not true.

George MacDonald
And in thy own sermon, thou
That the sparrow falls dost allow,
It shall not cause me any alarm;
For neither so comes the bird to harm,
Seeing our Father, thou hast said,
Is by the sparrow's dying bed;
Therefore it is a blessed place,
And the sparrow in high grace.

George MacDonald
God is the God of the animals in a far lovelier way, I suspect, than many of us dare to think, but he will not be the God of a man by making a good beast of him.

George MacDonald
You've got to save your own soul first, and then the souls of your neighbors if they will let you; and for that reason you must cultivate, not a spirit of criticism, but the talents that attract people to the hearing of the Word.

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

George MacDonald
What I would say is this, that the light is not blinding because God would hide, but because the truth is too glorious for our vision.

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

George MacDonald
Good souls many will one day be horrified at the things they now believe of God.

George MacDonald
All those evil doctrines about God that work misery and madness have their origin in the brains of the wise and prudent, not in the hearts of children.

George MacDonald
Now and then, when I look round on my books, they seem to waver as if a wind rippled their solid mass, and another world were about to break through.

George MacDonald
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
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.

George MacDonald
O Christ, my life, possess me utterly.
Take me and make a little Christ of me.
If I am anything but thy father's son,
'Tis something not yet from the darkness won.
Oh, give me light to live with open eyes.
Oh, give me life to hope above all skies.

George MacDonald
How many people would like to be good, if only they might be good without taking trouble about it! They do not like goodness well enough to hunger and thirst after it, or to sell all that they have that they may buy it; they will not batter at the gate of the kingdom of heaven; but they look with pleasure on this or that aerial castle of righteousness, and think it would be rather nice to live in it.

George MacDonald
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.

George MacDonald
A man must learn to love his children, not because they are his, but because they are children, else his love will be scarcely a better thing at last than the party-spirit of the faithful politician.

George MacDonald
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.

George MacDonald
God hides nothing. His very work from the beginning is revelation--a casting aside of veil after veil, a showing unto men of truth after truth. On and on from fact Divine He advances, until at length in His Son Jesus He unveils His very face.

George MacDonald
The flaming rose gloomed swarthy red; The borage gleams more blue; Dim starred with white flowers, a flowering bed Glimmer the rich dusk through.

George MacDonald