“Difficulty adds to result, as the ramming of powder sends the bullet the further.”
Source: The Complete Novels of George Macdonald (Illustrated): The Princess and the Goblin, The Princess and Curdie, Phantastes, At the Back of the North Wind, Lilith, David Elginbrod, Malcolm, Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood, Wilfrid Cumbermede and many more
“God chooses that men should be tried, but let a man beware of tempting his neighbor.”
Source: The Miracles of Our Lord
“The Lord never came to deliver men from the consequences of their sins while yet those sins remained...Yet men, loving their sins and feeling nothing of their dread hatefulness, have, consistent with their low condition, constantly taken this word concerning the Lord to mean that he came to save them from the punishment of their sins.”
“We profess to think Jesus the grandest and most glorious of men, yet hardly care to be like him. When we are offered his Spirit, that is, his very nature within us, for the asking, we will hardly take the trouble to ask for it.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)
“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.”
Source: Creation in Christ: Unspoken Sermons
“Instead of asking yourself whether you believe or not, ask yourself whether you have, this day, done one thing because He said, Do it! or once abstained because He said, Do not do it! It is simply absurd to say you believe, or even want to believe, in Him, if you do not do anything He tells you.”
Source: Unspoken Sermons Series I, II, and III
“Any faith in Him, however small, is better than any belief about Him, however great.”
“Those that hope little cannot grow much.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)
“The direst foe of courage is the fear itself, not the object of it; and the man who can overcome his own terror is a hero and more.”
Source: The Complete Novels of George Macdonald (Illustrated): The Princess and the Goblin, The Princess and Curdie, Phantastes, At the Back of the North Wind, Lilith, David Elginbrod, Malcolm, Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood, Wilfrid Cumbermede and many more
“I came from God, and I'm going back to God, and I won't have any gaps of death in the middle of my life.”
Source: The Complete Novels of George Macdonald (Illustrated): The Princess and the Goblin, The Princess and Curdie, Phantastes, At the Back of the North Wind, Lilith, David Elginbrod, Malcolm, Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood, Wilfrid Cumbermede and many more
“The whole trouble is that we won't let God help us.”
Source: The Complete Works of George MacDonald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Theological Writings & Essays (Illustrated): The Princess and the Goblin, Phantastes, At the Back of the North Wind, Lilith, England’s Antiphon, David Elginbrod, Malcolm, The Light Princess, The Golden Key and many more
“Truth is a very different thing from fact; it is the loving contact of the soul with spiritual fact, vital and potent. It does not work in the soul independently of all faculty or qualification there for setting it forth or defending it. Truth in the inward parts is a power, not an opinion.”
Source: THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE + PAUL FABER, SURGEON + THERE AND BACK - The Complete Series: The Curate's Awakening, The Lady's Confession & The Baron's Apprenticeship
“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.”
Source: The Princess and Curdie
“A condition which of declension would indicate a devil, may of growth indicate a saint.”
Source: Unspoken Sermons
“Moderation is the basis of justice.”
“It is simply absurd to say you believe, or even want to believe, in Him, if you do not do anything He tells you.”
Source: Unspoken Sermons, completed: MacDonald's Works
“Not only then has each man his individual relation to God, but each man has his peculiar relation to God.”
Source: Unspoken Sermons
“Timely service, like timely gifts, is doubled in value.”
“Fear is faithlessness.”
Source: SIR GIBBIE & DONAL GRANT: The Baronet’s Song and The Shepherd’s Castle (Adventure Classic)
“Light-leaved acacias, by the door,
Stood up in balmy air,
Clusters of blossomed moonlight bore,
And breathed a perfume rare.”
Source: The Disciple, and Other Poems
“The region of the senses is the unbelieving part of the human soul.”
Source: The Complete Works of George MacDonald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Theological Writings & Essays (Illustrated): The Princess and the Goblin, Phantastes, At the Back of the North Wind, Lilith, England’s Antiphon, David Elginbrod, Malcolm, The Light Princess, The Golden Key and many more
“There is no inborn longing that shall not be fulfilled. I think that is as certain as the forgiveness of sins.”
Source: ADELA CATHCART – The Complete Fantasy Tales Series: The Light Princess, The Shadows, Christmas Eve, The Giant’s Heart, The Broken Swords, The Cruel Painter, The Castle and many more
“It is a happy thing for us that this is really all we have to concern ourselves about--what to do next. No man can do the second thing. He can do the first.”
Source: The Complete Novels of George Macdonald (Illustrated): The Princess and the Goblin, The Princess and Curdie, Phantastes, At the Back of the North Wind, Lilith, David Elginbrod, Malcolm, Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood, Wilfrid Cumbermede and many more
“The doing of things from duty is but a stage on the road to the kingdom of truth and love.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)
“What a man is lies as certainly upon his countenance as in his heart, though none of his acquaintances may be able to read it. The very intercourse with him may have rendered it more difficult.”
Source: The Complete Novels of George Macdonald (Illustrated): The Princess and the Goblin, The Princess and Curdie, Phantastes, At the Back of the North Wind, Lilith, David Elginbrod, Malcolm, Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood, Wilfrid Cumbermede and many more
“Faith is obedience, not compliance.”
“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.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)
“All haste implies weakness.”
Source: Robert Falconer
“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.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)
“No one is likely to remember what is entirely uninteresting to him.”
“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.”
Source: THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE + PAUL FABER, SURGEON + THERE AND BACK - The Complete Series: The Curate's Awakening, The Lady's Confession & The Baron's Apprenticeship
“Common people, whether lords or shop-keepers, are slow to understand that possession, whether in the shape of birth or lands or money or intellect, is a small affair in the difference between men.”
Source: The Complete Novels of George Macdonald (Illustrated): The Princess and the Goblin, The Princess and Curdie, Phantastes, At the Back of the North Wind, Lilith, David Elginbrod, Malcolm, Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood, Wilfrid Cumbermede and many more
“Things come to the poor that can't get in at the door of the rich. Their money somehow blocks it up. It is a great privilege to be poor--one that no man covets, and brat a very few have sought to retain, but one that yet many have learned to prize.”
“There is an aching that is worse than any pain.”
“Religion is life essential.”
“To judge religion we must have it--not stare at it from the bottom of a seemingly interminable ladder.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)
“No man can make haste to be rich without going against the will of God, in which case it is the one frightful thing to be successful.”
Source: The Complete Works of George MacDonald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Theological Writings & Essays (Illustrated): The Princess and the Goblin, Phantastes, At the Back of the North Wind, Lilith, England’s Antiphon, David Elginbrod, Malcolm, The Light Princess, The Golden Key and many more
“Every soul has a landscape that changes with the wind that sweeps the sky, with the clouds that return after its rain.”
Source: The Complete Novels of George Macdonald (Illustrated): The Princess and the Goblin, The Princess and Curdie, Phantastes, At the Back of the North Wind, Lilith, David Elginbrod, Malcolm, Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood, Wilfrid Cumbermede and many more
“It needs brains to be a real fool.”
Source: The Complete Works of George MacDonald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Theological Writings & Essays (Illustrated): The Princess and the Goblin, Phantastes, At the Back of the North Wind, Lilith, England’s Antiphon, David Elginbrod, Malcolm, The Light Princess, The Golden Key and many more
“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.”
Source: The Complete Works of George MacDonald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Theological Writings & Essays (Illustrated): The Princess and the Goblin, Phantastes, At the Back of the North Wind, Lilith, England’s Antiphon, David Elginbrod, Malcolm, The Light Princess, The Golden Key and many more
“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.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)
“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 led 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.”
“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.”
Source: The Complete Novels of George Macdonald (Illustrated): The Princess and the Goblin, The Princess and Curdie, Phantastes, At the Back of the North Wind, Lilith, David Elginbrod, Malcolm, Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood, Wilfrid Cumbermede and many more
“Better to have the poet's heart than brain,
Feeling than song.”
Source: Within and Without
“Real good-breeding is independent of the forms and refinements of what has assumed to itself the name of society.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)
“I do not myself believe there is any misfortune. What men call such is merely the shadowside of a good.”
Source: The Complete Works of George MacDonald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Theological Writings & Essays (Illustrated): The Princess and the Goblin, Phantastes, At the Back of the North Wind, Lilith, England’s Antiphon, David Elginbrod, Malcolm, The Light Princess, The Golden Key and many more
“What can money do to console a man with a headache?”
Source: Writings: With Illustrations on Wood and Steel]
“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.”
Source: Sir Gibbie
“It's right to trust in God; but, if you don't stand to your halliards your craft'll miss stays, and your faith'll be blown out of the bolt-ropes in the turn of a marlinspike.”
Source: The Complete Works of George MacDonald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Theological Writings & Essays (Illustrated): The Princess and the Goblin, Phantastes, At the Back of the North Wind, Lilith, England’s Antiphon, David Elginbrod, Malcolm, The Light Princess, The Golden Key and many more
“Joy cannot unfold the deepest truths. Cometh white-robed Sorrow, stooping and wan, and flingeth wide the door she must not enter.”
