George MacDonald

“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.”

“The greatest forces lie in the region of the uncomprehended.”

“Mary MagdaleneWith wandering eyes and aimless zeal, She hither, thither, goes;Her speech, her motions, all reveal A mind without repose.She climbs the hills, she haunts the sea, By madness tortured, driven;One hour's forgetfulness would be A gift from very heaven!She slumbers into new distress; The night is worse than day:Exulting in her helplessness; Hell's dogs yet louder bay.The demons blast her to and fro; She has not quiet place,Enough a woman still, to know A haunting dim disgrace.A human touch! a pang of death! And in a low delightThou liest, waiting for new breath, For morning out of night.Thou risest up: the earth is fair, The wind is cool; thou art free!Is it a dream of hell's despair Dissolves in ecstasy?That man did touch thee! Eyes divine Make sunrise in thy soul;Thou seest love in order shine:- His health hath made thee whole!Thou, sharing in the awful doom, Didst help thy Lord to die;Then, weeping o'er his empty tomb, Didst hear him Mary cry.He stands in haste; he cannot stop; Home to his God he fares:'Go tell my brothers I go up To my Father, mine and theirs.'Run, Mary! lift thy heavenly voice; Cry, cry, and heed not how; Make all the new-risen world rejoice- Its first apostle thou!What if old tales of thee have lied, Or truth have told, thou artAll-safe with Him, whate'er betide Dwell'st with Him in God's heart!”

“O Lord, I have been talking to the people;Thought's wheels have round me whirled a fiery zoneAnd the recoil of my word's airy rippleMy heart unheedful has puffed up and blown.Therefore I cast myself before thee prone:Lay cool hands on my burning brain and press From my weak heart the swelling emptiness.”

“It is vain to think that any weariness, however caused, any burden, however slight, may be got rid of otherwise than by bowing the neck to the yoke of the Father's will. There can be no other rest for heart and soul than He has created. From every burden, from every anxiety, from all dread of shame or loss, even loss of love itself, that yoke will set us free.”

“But in truth there was more expression in the flower than was yet in the face. The flower expressed what God was thinking of when He made it; the face, what the girl was thinking of her self. When she ceased thinking of herself, then, like the flower, she would show what God was thinking of when he made her.”

“I would I were in the kingdom of heaven if it be as you and Mr. Graham take it for!" said Clementina."You must be in it, my lady, or you couldn't wish it to be such as it is.""Can one be in it and yet seem to himself to be out of it. Malcolm?""So many are out of it that seem to be in it, my lady, that one might well imagine it the other way around with some.”

“Many a wrong, and it's curing song,many a road, and many an inn,Room to roam, but only one home,for all the world to win.George MacDonald, (Lilith)”

“But I never just quite liked that ryhme.''Why not, child?''Because it seems to say one's as good as another, or two new ones are better than one that's lost. . . . Somehow, when once you've looked into anybody's eyes, right deep down into them, I mean, nobody will do for that one any more. Nobody, ever so beautiful or so good, will make up for that one going out of sight.”

“I wish I had [made that song]. No, I don't That would be to take it from somebody else. But it's mine for all that.''What makes it yours?''I love it so.''Does loving a thing make it yours?''I think so, Mother -- at least more than anything else can. . . . Love makes the only myness,' said Diamond.”

“He was dimly angry with himself, he did not know why. It was that he had struck his wife. He had forgotten it, but was miserable about it, notwithstanding. And this misery was the voice of the great Love that had made him and his wife and the baby and Diamond, speaking in his heart, and telling him to be good. 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. On Mount Sinai, it was thunder; in the cabman's heart it was misery; in the soul of St John it was perfect blessedness.”

“The church grew very lonely about him, and he began to feel like a child whose mother has forsaken it. Only he knew that to be left alone is not always to be forsaken.”

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

“I am always hearing. . . the sound of a far off song. I do not exactly know where it is, or what it means; and I don't hear much of it, only the odour of its music, as it were, flitting across the great billows of the ocean outside this air in which I make such a storm; but what I do hear, is quite enough to make me able to bear the cry from the drowning ship. So it would you if you could hear it.''No it wouldn't,' returned Diamond stoutly. 'For they wouldn't hear the music of the far-away song; and if they did, it wouldn't do them any good. You see you and I are not going to be drowned, and so we might enjoy it.''But you have never heard the psalm, and you don't know what it is like. Somehow, I can't say how, it tells me that all is right; that it is coming to swallow up all the cries. . . . It wouldn't be the song it seems if it did not swallow up all their fear and pain too, and set them singing it themselves with all the rest.”

“That's a poet.''I thought you said it was a bo-at.''Stupid pet! Don't you know what a poet it?''Why, a thing to sail on the water in.''Well, perhaps you're not so far wrong. Some poets do carry people over the sea....'...'A poet is a man who is glad of something, and tries to make other people glad of it too.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Theologians have done more to hide the Gospel of Christ than any of its adversaries.”

“Where people know their work and do it, life has few blank spaces for boredom and they are seldom to be pitied. Where people have not yet found their work, they may be more pitied than those that beg their bread. When a man knows his work and will not do it, pity him more than one who is to be hanged tomorrow.”

“Why are all reflections lovelier than what we call reality? -- not so grand or so strong, it may be, but always lovelier? Fair as is the gliding sloop on the shining sea, the wavering, trembling, unresting sail below is fairer still...All mirrors are magic mirrors. The commonest room is a room in a poem when I turn to the glass...There must be a truth involved in it, though we may but in part lay hold of the meaning.”

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

“When a man dreams his own dream, he is the sport of his dream; when Another gives it him, that Other is able to fulfill it.”

“I am ready,' I replied.'How do you know you can do it?''Because you require it,' I answered.”

“But there is a light that goes deeper than the will, a light that lights up the darkness behind it: that light can change your will, can make it truly yours and not another's - not the Shadow's. Into the created can pour itself the creating will, and so redeem it!”

“there is no harm in being afraid. The only harm is in doing what Fear tells you. Fear is not your master! Laugh in his face and he will run away.”

“Yes,' he answered; 'and you will be dead, so long as you refuse to die.”

“the road is difficult. - But come; loss now will be gain then! To wait is harder than to run, and its meed is the fuller.”

“We are often unable to tell people what they need to know, because they want to know something else, and would therefore only misunderstand what we said.”

“What does it all mean?' I said.'A good question,' he rejoined: 'nobody knows what anything is; a man can learn only what a thing means. Whether he do, depends on the use he is making of it.”

“Where was God?In him and his question.”

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

“Work done is of more consequence for the future than the foresight of an angel.”

“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.”

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

“God is all right—why should we mind standing in the dark for a minute outside his window? Of course we miss the inness, but there is a bliss of its own in waiting. What if the rain be falling, and the wind blowing; what if we stand alone, or, more painful still, have some dear one beside us, sharing our outness; what even if the window be not shining, because of the curtains of good inscrutable drawn across it; let us think to ourselves, or say to our friend, ‘God is; Jesus is not dead; nothing can be going wrong, however it may look so to hearts unfinished in childness.’ Let us say to the Lord, ‘Jesus, art thou loving the Father in there? Then we out here will do his will, patiently waiting till he open the door. We shall not mind the wind or the rain much. Perhaps thou art saying to the Father, ‘Thy little ones need some wind and rain: their buds are hard; the flowers do not come out. I cannot get them made blessed without a little more winter-weather.’ Then perhaps the Father will say, ‘Comfort them, my son Jesus, with the memory of thy patience when thou wast missing me. Comfort them that thou wast sure of me when everything about thee seemed so unlike me, so unlike the place thou hadst left.”

“In moments of doubt I cry, ‘Could God Himself create such lovely things as I dreamed?’ ‘Whence then came thy dream?’ answers Hope.”

“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.”

“To cease to wonder is to fall plumb-down from the childlike to the commonplace—the most undivine of all moods intellectual. Our nature can never be at home among things that are not wonderful to us.”

“Thy will be done. I yield up everything.'The life is more than meat' -- then more than health;'The body more than raiment' -- then more than wealth;The hairs I made not, thou art numbering.Thou art my life--I the brook, thou the spring.Because thine eyes are open, I can see;Because thou art thyself, 'tis therefore I am me.”

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

“Seek not that your sons and your daughters should not see visions, should not dream dreams; seek that they should see true visions, that they should dream noble dreams. Such out-going of the imagination is one with aspiration, and will do more to elevate above what is low and vile than all possible inculcations of morality.”

“In very truth, a wise imagination, which is the presence of the spirit of God, is the best guide that man or woman can have; for it is not the things we see the most clearly that influence us the most powerfully; undefined, yet vivid visions of something beyond, something which eye has not seen nor ear heard, have far more influence than any logical sequences whereby the same things may be demonstrated to the intellect. It is the nature of the thing, not the clearness of its outline, that determines its operation. We live by faith, and not by sight.”

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

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

“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.”

“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 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.”

“Alas, how easily things go wrong!A sigh too much, a kiss too longAnd there follows a mist and a weeping rainAnd life is never the same again”

“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.”