“You doubt because you love truth.”
“But we believe – nay, Lord we only hope, That one day we shall thank thee perfectly For pain and hope and all that led or drove Us back into the bosom of thy love.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)
“Anything big enough to occupy our minds is big enough to hang a prayer on.”
“I watched her departure, as one watches a sunset. She went like a radiance through the dark wood, which was henceforth bright to me, from simply knowing that such a creature was in it.”
Source: MacDonalds’ Fairy-Tale Treasure Chest
“He may delay because it would not be safe to give us at once what we ask: we are not ready for it. To give ere we could truly receive, would be to destroy the very heart and hope of prayer, to cease to be our Father. The delay itself may work to bring us nearer to our help, to increase the desire, perfect the prayer, and ripen the receptive condition.”
Source: Unspoken Sermons, completed: MacDonald's Works
“Well, perhaps; but I begin to think there are better things than being comfortable.”
Source: George MacDonald: The Complete Fantasy Collection - 8 Novels & 30+ Short Stories and Fairy Tales (Illustrated): The Princess and the Goblin, Lilith, Phantastes, The Princess and Curdie, At the Back of the North Wind, Portent, The Lost Princess, Adela Cathcart, Dealings with the Fairies and many more
“Somehow, I can't say how, it tells me that all is right; that it is coming to swallow up all cries.”
Source: At the Back of the North Wind
“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.”
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
“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.”
Source: George MacDonald: The Complete Fantasy Collection - 8 Novels & 30+ Short Stories and Fairy Tales (Illustrated): The Princess and the Goblin, Lilith, Phantastes, The Princess and Curdie, At the Back of the North Wind, Portent, The Lost Princess, Adela Cathcart, Dealings with the Fairies and many more
“Primarily, God is not bound to punish sin; he is bound to destroy sin. The only vengeance worth having on sin is to make the sinner himself its executioner.”
“You must learn to be strong in the dark as well as in the day, else you will always be only half brave.”
Source: The Day Boy and the Night Girl
“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.”
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 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.”
Source: The Lost Princess: A Double Tale
“Above all things, I delight in listening to stories, and sometimes in telling them.”
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
“If both Church and fairy-tale belong to humanity, they may occasionally cross circles, without injury to either.”
Source: George MacDonald: The Complete Fantasy Collection - 8 Novels & 30+ Short Stories and Fairy Tales (Illustrated): The Princess and the Goblin, Lilith, Phantastes, The Princess and Curdie, At the Back of the North Wind, Portent, The Lost Princess, Adela Cathcart, Dealings with the Fairies and many more
“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.”
Source: Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women
“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.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)
“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.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)
“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.”
Source: The Princess Treasury
“I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God's thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest and most precious thing in all thinking.”
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
“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.”
Source: Unspoken Sermons Series I, II, and III
“Alas, how easily things go wrong! A sigh too much, a kiss too long And there follows a mist and a weeping rain And life is never the same again”
Source: MacDonalds’ Fairy-Tale Treasure Chest
“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.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)
“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.”
Source: Unspoken Sermons Series I, II, and III
“In moments of doubt I cry, ‘Could God Himself create such lovely things as I dreamed?’ ‘Whence then came thy dream?’ answers Hope.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)
“God's finger can touch nothing but to mold it into loveliness.”
Source: Discovering the character of God
“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.”
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
“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.”
Source: The Imagination, and Other Essays
“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.”
Source: Discovering the character of God
“Suppose you didn't know him, would that make any difference?' 'No,' said Willie, after thinking a little. 'Other people would know him if I didn't.' 'Yes, and if nobody knew him, God would know him, and anybody God has thought worth making, it's an honor to do anything for.”
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
“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.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)
“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.”
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
“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!”
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
“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.”
“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.”
Source: The Hope of the Gospel: MacDonald's Works
“Past tears are present strength.”
Source: Scottish Supernatural Classics: The Three Perils of Man, Thrawn Janet and Other Stories, Phantastes and Lilith
“As in all sweetest music, a tinge of sadness was in every note. Nor do we know how much of the pleasures even of life we owe to the intermingled sorrows. Joy cannot unfold the deepest truths, although deepest truth must be deepest joy.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)
“Cleverness is cheap. It is faith that He praises.”
“It may be infinitely worse to refuse to forgive than to murder, because”
“Forgiveness is the giving and so the receiving of life. the latter may be an impulse of a moment of heat; whereas the former is a cold and deliberate choice of the heart.”
“The purposes of God point to one simple end-that we should be as he is, think the same thoughts, mean the same things, possess the same blessedness.”
“LET A MAN THINK AND CARE ever so little about God, he does not therefore exist without God. God is here with him, upholding, warming, delighting, teaching him-making life a good thing to him. God gives him himself, though the man knows it not.”
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
“I am so tried by the things said about God. I understand God's patience with the wicked, but I do wonder how he can be so patient with the pious!”
“We have to do with God, to whom no one can look without the need of being good waking up in his heart; to think about God is to begin to be good.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)
“In the midst of death we are in life. Life is the only reality; what men call death is but a shadow.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)
“Life and religion are one, or neither is any thing.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)
“Oh, I believe that there is no away; that no love, no life, goes ever from us; it goes as He went, that it may come again, deeper and closer and surer, and be with us always, even to the end of the world.”
“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.”
Source: The Princess Treasury
“The principle part of faith is patience.”
“I am perplexed at the stupidity of the ordinary religious being. In the most practical of all matters he will talk and speculate and try to feel, but he will not set himself to do.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)
