George MacDonald’s greatness as an author, poet and writer can be best described through the words of C.S Lewis or GK Chesterton. When Lewis got himself a copy of MacDonald’s legendary book ‘Phantastes’ he claimed ‘I knew I had crossed a great frontier’. As for Chesterton, while reading MacDonald’s ‘The Princess and the Goblin’ he stated that the book had ‘made a difference to my whole existence’. Born in Scotland, MacDonald graduated from the University of Aberdeen before studying at Highbury College for the Congregational ministry. MacDonald in addition to pursuing his life as a Christian pastor turned to writing. He penned several fantasy and fairy tales in his lifetime. MacDonald often claimed that his books were not for children and instead for the child-like, despite their age. So, whether you are five, fifteen or fifty, MacDonald’s books are for the child living inside you. An exponent and a pioneering figure in the field of fantasy literature, MacDonald through his writing style and works influenced some of the then to-be greatest authors and writers including W. H. Auden, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien and Madeleine L'Engle. Fantasy tales apart, MacDonald penned some legendary quotes that touch varied topics of life and give readers a new perspective and a new angle to ponder about. Check this section and explore some of the most popular George MacDonald quotes.
Man finds it hard to get what he wants, because he does not want the best; God finds it hard to give, because He would give the best, and man will not take it.
People must believe what they can, and those who believe more must not be hard upon those who believe less. I doubt if you would have believed it all yourself if you hadn't seen some of it.
There is this difference between the growth of some human beings and that of others: in the one case it is a continuous dying, in the other a continuous resurrection.
George MacDonald
The best thing you can do for your fellow, next to rousing his conscience, is — not to give him things to think about, but to wake things up that are in him; or say, to make him think things for himself.
It is when people do wrong things wilfully that they are the more likely to do them again.
George MacDonald
Only he knew that to be left alone is not always to be forsaken.
George MacDonald
Whose work is it but your own to open your eyes? But indeed the business of the universe is to make such a fool out of you that you will know yourself for one, and begin to be wise.
You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it himself. (Quoted by C.S.Lewis in Mere Christianity)
To love righteousness is to make it grow, not to avenge it. Throughout his life on earth, Jesus resisted every impulse to work more rapidly for a lower good.
No, there is no escape. There is no heaven with a little of hell in it - no place to retain this or that of the devil in our hearts or our pockets. Out Satan must go, every hair and feather.
George MacDonald
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.
Annihilation itself is no death to evil. Only good where evil was, is evil dead. An evil thing must live with its evil until it chooses to be good. That alone is the slaying of evil.
George MacDonald
If both Church and fairy-tale belong to humanity, they may occasionally cross circles, without injury to either.
George MacDonald
A Baby Sermon-
The lighting and thunder, they go and they come: But the stars and the stillness are always at home
George MacDonald
My prayers, my God, flow from what I am not;
I think thy answers make me what I am.
It may be an infinitely less evil to murder a man than to refuse to forgive him. The former may be the act of a moment of passion: the latter is the heart’s choice.
George MacDonald
But words are vain; reject them all—
They utter but a feeble part:
Hear thou the depths from which they call,
The voiceless longing of my heart.
But there are victories far worse than defeats; and to overcome an angel too gentle to put out all his strength, and ride away in triumph on the back of a devil, is one of the poorest.
George MacDonald
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.
There is no slave but the creature that wills against its Creator.
George MacDonald
I repent me of the ignorance wherein I ever said that God made man out of nothing: there is no nothing out of which to make anything; God is all in all, and he made us out of himself.
I am sometimes almost terrified at the scope of the demands made upon me, at the perfection of the self-abandonment required of me; yet outside of such absoluteness can be no salvation.
Anything big enough to occupy our minds is big enough to hang a prayer on.
George MacDonald
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.
If instead of a gem, or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give.
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.
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.
...though I cannot promise to take you home," said North Wind, as she sank nearer and nearer to the tops of the houses, "I can promise you it will be all right in the end. You will get home somehow.
We don't have a soul. We are a soul. We have a body."
George Macdonald, 1892
George MacDonald
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.
There is no strength in unbelief. Even the unbelief of what is false is no source of might. It is the truth shining from behind that gives the strength to disbelieve.
George MacDonald
Obedience is the opener of eyes.
George MacDonald
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 part of the philanthropist is indeed a dangerous one; and the man who would do his neighbour good must first study how not to do him evil, and must begin by pulling the beam out of his own eye.
George MacDonald
God's finger can touch nothing but to mold it into loveliness.
George MacDonald
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.
Those are not the tears of repentance!... Self-loathing is not sorrow. Yet it is good, for it marks a step in the way home, and in the father's arms the prodigal forgets the self he abominates.
George MacDonald
We must do the thing we must
Before the thing we may;
We are unfit for any trust
Till we can and do obey.
George MacDonald
In moments of doubt I cry, ‘Could God Himself create such lovely things as I dreamed?’
‘Whence then came thy dream?’ answers Hope.
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.
It is because the young cannot recognize the youth of the aged, and the old will not acknowledge the experience of the young, that they repel each other.
A kind of love to the cheerful little stream arose in my heart. It was born in a desert; but it seemed to say to itself, "I will flow, and sing, and lave my banks, till I make my desert a paradise.
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.
George MacDonald
In the windowless tomb of a blind mother, in the dead of the night, under feeble rays of a lamp in an alabaster globe, a girl came into the darkness with a wail.
George MacDonald
No one can say he is himself, until first he knows that he is, and then what himself is. In fact, nobody is himself, and himself is nobody.
George MacDonald
People must believe what they can, and those who believe more must not be hard upon those who believe less.
George MacDonald
How kind is weariness sometimes! It is like the Father's hand laid a little heavy on the heart to make it still.
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