George MacDonald

“Who can give a man this, his own name?”

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

“Entering by a wide gateway, but without gates, into an inner court,surrounded on all sides by great marble pillars supporting galleriesabove, I saw a large fountain of porphyry in the middle, throwingup a lofty column of water, which fell, with a noise as of the fusionof all sweet sounds, into a basin beneath; overflowing which, it raninto a single channel towards the interior of the building. Althoughthe moon was by this time so low in the west, that not a ray of herlight fell into the court, over the height of the surrounding buildings; yet was the court lighted by a second reflex from the sun ofother lands. For the top of the column of water, just as it spread tofall, caught the moonbeams, and like a great pale lamp, hung highin the night air, threw a dim memory of light (as it were) over thecourt below.”

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

“Life eternal, this lady of thine hath a sore heart, and we cannot help her. Thou art help, O Mighty Love. Speak to her, and let her know thy will, and give her strength to do it, O Father of Jesus Christ, Amen.”

“Trust is born in love, and our need is to love God, not apprehendfacts concerning him.”

“It is amazing from what a mere fraction of a fact concerning him a man will dare judge the whole of another man”

“The poetry of life, the inner side of nature, rises near the surface to meet the eyes of the man who makes. The advantage gained by the carpenter of Nazareth at his bench is the inheritance of every workman as he imitates his maker in the divine - that is, honest - work.”

“No one, however strong he may feel his obligations, will ever be manenough to fulfill them except that he be a Christian-that is,one who,like Christ, cares first for the will of the Father.”

“Wherever there is anything to love, there is beauty in some form.”

“It would hardly be kindness if he didn't punish sin, not to use every means to put the evil thing far from us. Whatever may be meant by the place of misery Mr. Sutherland, it's only another form of his love. Love shining through the fogs of evil, and thus made to look very different.”

“I don't believe that he thinks about His glory except for the sakeof truth and men's hearts dying for the lack of it.”

“How often do we look upon God as our last and feeblest resource! Wego to Him because we have nowhere else to go. And when we learn thatthe storms of life have not driven us upon the rocks but into thedesired heaven.”

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

“Our minds are small because they are faithless,' I said to myself.'If we had faith in God our hearts would share in His greatness andpeace for we should not then be shut up in ourselves, but would walkabroad in him”

“Often in the summer, as I go to or come from the vestry, I sit downfor a moment on the turf that covers my old friend Rodgers, and thinkthat this body of mine is everyday moldering away, til it shall fall aheap of dust into it's appointed place. But what is that to me? It isto me the drawing nigh of the fresh morning of life when I shall beyoung and strong again, glad in the presence of the wise and beloveddead, and unspeakably glad in the presence of God.”

“Have you forgiven me?' I asked.'How can I say I have, when I never had anything to forgive?''Well then, I must go unforgiven for I cannot forgive myself.' I said.'O Mrs. Percivale! If you think how the world is flooded withforgiveness, you will just dip in your cup, and take what you want.”

“Suppose you didn't know him, would that make any difference?''No,' said Willie, after thinking a little. 'Other people would knowhim if I didn't.''Yes, and if nobody knew him, God would know him, and anybody God hasthought worth making, it's an honor to do anything for.”

“To will not from self, but with the Eternal, is to live.”

“When a feeling was there, they felt as if it would never go; when it was gone, they felt as if it had never been; when it returned, they felt as if it had never gone.”

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

“I was doing the wrong of never wanting or trying to better. And now I see that I have been letting things go as the would for a long time. Whatever came into my head I did and whatever didn’t come into my head I didn’t do.”

“Obedience is the opener of eyes.”

“One who not merely beholds the outward shows of things, but catches a glimpse of the soul that looks out of them ...”

“He was in fact a poet without words, the more absorbed and endangered, that the springing waters were dammed back in his soul, where, finding no utterance, they grew, and swelled, and undermined.”

“She would be one of those who kneel to their own shadows till feet grow on their knees; then go down on their hands till their hands grow into feet; then lay their faces on the ground till they grow into snouts; when at last they are a hideous sort of lizards, each of which believes himself the best, wisest, and loveliest being in the world, yea, the very centre of the universe. And so they run about for ever looking for their own shadows that they may worship them, and miserable because they cannot find them, being themselves too near the ground to have any shadows; and what becomes of them at last, there is but one who knows.”

“What honest boy would pride himself on not picking pockets ? A thief who was trying to reform would. To be conceited of doing one's duty is then a sign of how little one does it, and how little one sees what a contemptible thing it is not to do it. Could any but a low creature be conceited of not being contemptible? Until our duty becomes to us common as breathing, we are poor creatures.”

“She would wonder what had hurt her when she found her face wet with tears, and then would wonder how she could have been hurt without knowing it.”

“You must learn to be strong in the dark as well as in the day, else you will always be only half brave.”

“But it was little to Curdie that men who did not know what he was about should not approve of his proceedings.”

“It opened a little way, and a face came into the opening. It was Lona's. It's eyes were closed, but the face itself was upon me, and seemed to see me. It was as white as Eve's, white as Mara's, but did not shine like their faces. She spoke, and her voice was like a sleepy night-wind in the grass."Are you coming, king?" it said. "I cannot rest until you are with me, gliding down the river to the great sea, and the beautiful dream-land. The sleepiness is full of lovely things: come and see them.”

“One day [the prince] lost sight of his retinue in a great forest. These forests are very useful in delivering princes from their courtiers, like a sieve that keeps back the bran. Then the princes get away to follow their fortunes. In this they have the advantage of the princesses, who are forced to marry before they have had a bit of fun. I wish our princesses got lost in a forest sometimes.”

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

“Roses, wild roses, everywhere! So plentiful were they, they were not only perfumed the air, they seemed to dye it a faint rose-hue. The colour floated abroad with the scent, and clomb, and spread, until the whole wesr blushed and glowed with the gathered incense of roses. And my heart fainted with longing in my bosom. Could I but see the spirit of the Earth, as I saw once the in dwelling woman of the beech-tree, and my beauty of the pale marble, I should be content. Content! -Oh, how gladly would I die of the light of her eyes! Yea, I would cease to be, if that would bring me one word of love from the one mouth. The twilight sand around, and infolded me with sleep. I slept as I had not slept for months. I did not awake till late in the morning; when, refreshed in body and mind I rose as from the death that wipes out the sadness of life, and then dies itself in the new morrow.”

“The trees bathed their great heads in the waves of the morning, while their roots were planted deep in gloom; save where on the borders of the sunshine broke against their stems, or swept in long streams through their avenues, washing with brighter hue all the leaves over which it flowed; revealing the rich brown of the dacayed leaves and fallen pine-cones, and the delicate greens of the long grasses and tiny forests of moss that covered the channel over which it passed in the motionless rivers of light.”

“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.”

“The back door of every tomb opens on a hilltop.”

“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.”

“The ruin of a man's teaching comes of his followers, such as having never touched the foundation he has laid, build upon it wood, hay, and stubble, fit only to be burnt. Therefore, if only to avoid his worst foes, his admirers, a man should avoid system. The more correct a system the worse will it be misunderstood; its professed admirers will take both its errors and their misconceptions of its truths, and hold them forth as its essence.”

“Anybody with leisure can do that who is willing to begin where everything ought to be begun--that is, at the beginning. Nothing worth calling good can or ever will be started full grown. The essential of any good is life, and the very body of created life, and essential to it, being its self operant, is growth. The larger start you make, the less room you leave for life to extend itself. You fill with the dead matter of your construction the places where assimilation ought to have its perfect work, building by a life-process, self-extending, and subserving the whole. Small beginnings with slow growings have time to root themselves thoroughly--I do not mean in place nor yet in social regard, but in wisdom. Such even prosper by failures, for their failures are not too great to be rectified without injury to the original idea.”

“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.”

“What a good thing, for instance, it was that one princess should sleep for a hundred years! Was she not saved from all the plague of young men who were not worthy of her? And did not she come awake exactly at the right moment when the right prince kissed her? For my part, I cannot help wishing a good many girls would sleep till just the same fate overtook them. It would be happier for them, and more agreeable to their friends.”

“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.”

“My spirits rose as I went deeper; into the forest; but I could not regain my former elasticity of mind. I found cheerfulness to be like life itself - not to be created by any argument. Afterwards I learned, that the best way to manage some kinds of pain fill 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. So, better and worse, I went on, till I came to a little clearing in the forest.”

“Let me, if I may, be ever welcomed to my room in winter by a glowing hearth, in summer by a vase of flowers. If I may not, let me think how nice they would be and bury myself in my work. I do not think that the road to contentment lies in despising what we have not got. Let us acknowledge all good, all delight that the worlds holds, and be content without it.”

“Let death do what it can, there is just one thing it cannot destroy, and that is life. Never in itself, only in the unfaith of man, does life recognize any sway of death.”

“One of my greatest difficulties in consenting to think of religion was that I thought I should have to give up my beautiful thoughts and my love for the things God has made. But I find that the happiness springing from all things not in themselves sinful is much increased by religion. God is the God of the Beautiful—Religion is the love of the Beautiful, and Heaven is the Home of the Beautiful—-Nature is tenfold brighter in the Sun of Righteousness, and my love of Nature is more intense since I became a Christian—-if indeed I am one. God has not given me such thoughts and forbidden me to enjoy them.”

“But I don't quite understand, Father: is nobody your friend but the one that does something for you?”

“Why don't you go on, Mother dear?' he asked. 'It's such nonsense!' said his mother. 'I believe it would go on for ever.' 'That's just what it did,' said Diamond.' 'What did?' she asked.' 'Why, the river. That's almost the very tune it used to sing.”

“Somehow, I can't say how, it tells me that all is right; that it is coming to swallow up all cries.”