“But God lets men have their playthings, like the children they are, that they may learn to distinguish them from true possessions. If they are not learning that he takes them from them, and
tries the other way: for lack of them and its misery, they will perhaps seek the true!”
Quote by George MacDonald
“Come, come to Him who made thy heart; Come weary and oppressed; To come to Jesus is thy part; His part, to give thee rest.”
Source: The Poetical Works of George MacDonald (Volumes I and II)
“Diamond, however, had not been out so late before in all his life, and things looked so strange about him! - just as if he had got into Fairyland, of which he knew quite as much as anybody;
for his mother had no money to buy books to set him wrong on the subject.”
Source: Greatest Christmas Novels in One Volume: Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, Heidi, The Romance of a Christmas Card, The Little City of Hope, The Wonderful Life, Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Peter Pan…
“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.”
“I say again, if I cannot draw a horse, I will not write THIS IS A HORSE under what I foolishly meant for one.”
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 there be music in my reader, I would gladly wake it.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)
“Never be discouraged because good things get on so slowly here; and never fail daily to do that good which lies next to your hand.”
“Not even nothingness preceded life. Nothingness owes its very idea to existence.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)
“Some thinkers would feel sorely hampered if at liberty to use no forms but such as existed in nature, or to invent nothing save in accordance with the laws of the world of the senses; but
it must not therefore be imagined that they desire escape from the region of law.”
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 word doctrine, as used in the Bible, means teaching of duty, not theory.”
Source: An expression of character: the letters of George MacDonald
“There is no cheating in nature and the simple unsought feelings of the soul. There must be a truth involved in it, though we may but in part lay hold of the meaning.”
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