“Trust to God to weave your thread into the great web, though the pattern shows it not yet.”
“One thing is clear to me, that no indulgence of passion destroys the spiritual nature so much as respectable selfishness.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)
“To the dim and bewildered vision of humanity, God's care is more evident in some instances than in others; and upon such instances men seize, and call them providences. It is well that they can; but it would be gloriously better if they could believe that the whole matter is one grand providence.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)
“He who seeks the Father more than anything He can give, is likely to have what he asks, for he is not likely to ask amiss.”
Source: Lilith
“Why should my love be powerless to help another?”
Source: Unspoken Sermons Series I, II, and III
“What would the Living One have me do?”
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
“It is not the high summer alone that is God's. The winter also is His. And into His winter He came to visit us. And all man's winters are His - the winter of our poverty, the winter of our sorrow, the winter of our unhappiness - even 'the winter of our discontent.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)
“I believe that no hell will be lacking which would help the just mercy of God to redeem his children.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)
“I am an emptiness for Thee to fill; my soul a cavern for Thy sea”
Source: The Poetical Works of George MacDonald (Volumes I and II)
“For the bliss of the animals lies in this, that, on their lower level, they shadow the bliss of those--few at any moment on the earth--who do not 'look before and after, and pine for what is not,' but live in the holy carelessness of the eternal now.”
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
“No, there is no escape. There is no heaven with a little of hell in it--no plan to retain this or that of the devil in our hearts or our pockets. Out Satan must go, every hair and feather!”
Source: The Heart of George MacDonald: A One-Volume Collection of His Most Important Fiction, Essays, Sermons, Drama, and Biographical Information
“Many a life has been injured by the constant expectation of death. It is life we have to do with, not death. The best preparation for the night is to work diligently while the day lasts. The best preparation for death is 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
“I firmly believe people have hitherto been a great deal too much taken up about doctrine and far too little about practice. The word "doctrine," as used in the Bible, means teaching of duty, not theory.”
Source: An expression of character: the letters of George MacDonald
“[God desires] not that He may say to them, "Look how mighty I am, and go down upon your knees and worship," for power alone was never yet worthy of prayer; but that He may say thus: "Look, my children, you will never be strong but with my strength. I have no other to give you. And that you can get only by trusting in me. I can not give it you any other way. There is no other way."”
“On Good Friday Jesus died But rose again at Eastertide.....Lord, teach us to understand that your Son died to save us not from suffering but from ourselves, not from injustice...but from being unjust. He died that we might live - but live as he lives, by dying as he died who died to himself.”
“Doubts are the messengers of the Living One to the honest. They are the first knock at our door of things that are not yet, but have to be, understood. . . . Doubts must precede every deeper assurance; for uncertainties are what we first see when we look into a region hitherto unknown, unexplored, unannexed.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)
“It has been well said that no man ever sank under the burden of the day. It is, when tomorrow's burden is added to the burden of today, that the weight is more than a man can bear. Never load yourselves so, my friends. If you find yourselves so loaded, at least remember this: it is your own doing, not God's. He begs you to leave the future to Him, and mind the present.”
Source: Annals Of A Quiet Neighbourhood
“I wondered over again for the hundredth time what could be the principle which, in the wildest, most lawless, fantastically chaotic, apparently capricious work of Nature, always kept it beautiful.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)
“It is only by loving a thing that you can make it yours.”
“The greatest forces lie in the region of the uncomprehended.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)
“No man has the mind of Christ, except him who makes it his business to obey him.”
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
“When we understand the outside of things, we think we have them. Yet the Lord puts his things in subdefined, suggestive shapes, yielding no satisfactory meaning to the mere intellect, but unfolding themselves to the conscience and heart.”
Source: Unspoken Sermons Series I, II, and III
“One who not merely beholds the outward shows of things, but catches a glimpse of the soul that looks out of them, whose garment and revelation they are-if he be such, I say, he will stand, for more than a moment, speechless with something akin to that which made the morning stars sing together.”
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 first thing in all progress is to leave something behind.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)
“Never tell a child 'you have a soul.' Teach him, you are a soul; you have a body.”
“To be kind neither hurts nor compromises.”
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
“The kingdom of heaven is not come even when God's will is our law; it is fully come when God's will is our will.”
“"But if God is so good as you represent Him, and if He knows all that we need, and better far than we do ourselves, why should it be necessary to ask Him for anything?" I answer, "What if He knows prayer to be the thing we need first and most? What if the main object in God's idea of prayer be the supplying of our great, our endless need - the need of Himself?"”
Source: Unspoken Sermons Series I, II, and III
“Beauty and sadness always go together.”
Source: The Complete Poetry of George MacDonald: A Book of Strife, in the Form of the Diary of an Old Soul + Rampolli: Growths from a Long-planted Root + A Hidden Life Collection and Other Poems
“When I look like this into the blue sky, it seems so deep, so peaceful, so full of a mysterious tenderness, that I could lie for centuries and wait for the dawning of the face of God out of the awe-inspiring loving-kindness.”
“In low theologies, hell is invariably the deepest truth, and the love of God is not so deep as hell.”
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
“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.”
“It matters little where a man may be at this moment; the point is whether he is growing.”
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
“This is and has been the Father's work from the beginning-to bring us into the home of His heart.”
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
“This is a wise, sane Christian faith: that a man commit himself, his life, and his hopes to God; that God undertakes the special protection of that man; that therefore that man ought not to be afraid of anything.”
“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.”
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
“Faith is that which, knowing the Lord's will, goes and does it; or, not knowing it, stands and waits, content in ignorance as in knowledge, because God wills - neither pressing into the hidden future, nor careless of the knowledge which opens the path of action”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)
“Man's rank is his power to uplift.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)
“We can walk without fear, full of hope and courage and strength to do His will, waiting for the endless good which He is always giving as fast as He can get us able to take it in.”
Source: Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood
“In whatever man does without God, he must fail miserably, or succeed more miserably.”
Source: Unspoken Sermons
“The face of the Son of God, who, instead of accepting the sacrifice of one of his creatures to satisfy his justice or support his dignity, gave himself utterly unto them, and therein to the Father by doing his lovely will; who suffered unto the death, not that men might not suffer, but that their suffering might be like his, and lead them up to his perfection.”
“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.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)
“Good souls many will one day be horrified at the things they now believe of God.”
Source: Unspoken Sermons Series I, II, and III
“But there are not a few who would be indignant at having their belief in God questioned, who yet seem greatly to fear imagining Him better than He is.”
Source: Life Essential: The Hope of the Gospel
“A true friend is forever a friend.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)
“The miracles of Jesus were the ordinary works of his Father, wrought small and swift that we might take them in.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)
“To receive honestly is the best thanks for a good thing.”
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
“Never was there a more injurous mistake than to say it was thebusiness only of the clergy to care for souls.”
“The birds, the poets of the animal creation - what though they never get beyond the lyrical! - awoke to utter their own joy, and awake like joy in others of God's children.”
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
“Endurance must conquer, where force could not reach.”
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
