E.G. Runyan > E.G.'s Quotes

“We are all very anxious to be understood, and it is very hard not to be. But there is one thing much more necessary. To understand other people.”
― George MacDonald

“I thought I saw how stories of this kind could sneak past a certain inhibition which had paralyzed much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings. And reverence itself did harm. The whole subject was associated with lowered voices; almost as if it were something medical. But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their true potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could.”
― C. S. Lewis

“That evening I was so sad that I didn't know what to do. It was completely impossible to get to sleep. Dad must have understood, because he came up to my room long after he had said good night. He brought his guitar.
I didn't say anything. Neither did Dad, who sat on the edge of the bed. But after a while, he cleared his throat and began to play. He played the Trille tune, just like when I was tiny. It's my very own song, and it was Dad who wrote it. When he finished, he said that he'd written a brand-new song for me, called "Sad Son, Sad Dad."
"Do you want to hear it, Trille?"
I gave a tiny nod.
And as the wintry wind swirled around the house and everyone else slept, my dad played "Sad Son, Sad Dad." I almost couldn't see him because it was so dark. I just listened.
And suddenly I realized what dads are for.”
― Maria Parr, Adventures with Waffles

“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Dear Internet: One Billion Hysterical Opinions Do Not Carry the Weight of a Single Fact.”
― Eoin Colfer, Deny All Charges

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.”
― C.S. Lewis

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
― C.S. Lewis

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“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.”
― George MacDonald

“Only he knew that to be left alone is not always to be forsaken.”
― George MacDonald, At the Back of the North Wind

“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.”
― George MacDonald, Phantastes

“A genuine work of art must mean many things; the truer its art, the more things it will mean. If my drawing, on the other hand, is so far from being a work of art that it needs THIS IS A HORSE written under it, what can it matter that neither you nor your child should know what it means? It is there not so much to convey a meaning as to wake a meaning. If it do not even wake an interest, throw it aside. A meaning may be there, but it is not for you. If, again, you do not know a horse when you see it, the name written under it will not serve you much. At all events, the business of the painter is not to teach zoology.”
― George MacDonald, The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories

“What God may hereafter require of you, you must not give yourself the least trouble about. Everything He gives you to do, you must do as well as ever you can, and that is the best possible preparation for what He may want you to do next. If people would but do what they have to do, they would always find themselves ready for what came next.”
― George MacDonald

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”
― Jim Elliot

“To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.”
― Timothy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God

“I hardly ever fall down, and I love running! Running is so great, so free. I can climb trees, and I always know what’s around me, even things that don’t make any noise. And I can hear the sun’s song every day, and the mountains all around us, and did you know there’s a night-sun? It’s true. I hear it sing almost every night. It’s mysterious and . . . misty and beautiful. It isn’t hot like the sun; it’s cold so you don’t feel it. And I can hear a million other things in the sky at night. The universe is a great big band making the best songs every night and I can hear them!” He paused and lowered his voice. No one stirred or made the least sound. Andrius raised his finger to his eye. “Because I can hear out of my eyes. And I want to teach you how too.”
― W.A. Fulkerson, For Whom the Sun Sings

“Thank you for nothing, you stupid reptile.”
― Cressida Cowell, How to Train Your Dragon

“That’s what it is to care for a person,” Toby said. There was not even a hint of mocking in his voice. “If you’re not afraid, you’re not doing it right.”
― Jonathan Auxier, Sweep: The Story of a Girl and Her Monster

“I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“If I didn't work as hard as I could, then I think it would be a bit like saying, 'God, thanks for giving me this ability, but I don't really care about it. I'm going to do something else, and I'm not going to work quite as hard.”
― Tim Tebow, Through My Eyes

“So the boy…the boy must die?” asked Snape quite calmly.
“And Voldemort himself must do it, Severus. That is essential.”
Another long silence. Then Snape said, “I thought…all these years…that we were protecting him for her. For Lily.”
“We have protected him because it has been essential to teach him, to raise him, to let him try his strength,” said Dumbledore, his eyes still tight shut. “Meanwhile, the connection between them grows ever stronger, a parasitic growth: Sometimes I have thought he suspects it himself. If I know him, he will have arranged matters so that when he does set out to meet his death, it will truly mean the end of Voldemort.”
Dumbledore opened his eyes. Snape looked horrified.
“You have kept him alive so that he can die at the right moment?”
“Don’t be shocked, Severus. How many men and women have you watched die?”
“Lately, only those whom I could not save,” said Snape. He stood up. “You have used me.”
“Meaning?”
“I have spied for you and lied for you, put myself in mortal danger for you. Everything was supposed to be to keep Lily Potter’s son safe. Now you tell me you have been raising him like a pig for slaughter--”
“But this is touching, Severus,” said Dumbledore seriously. “Have you grown to care for the boy, after all?”
“For him?” shouted Snape. “Expecto Patronum!”
From the tip of his wand burst the silver doe: She landed on the office floor, bounded once across the office, and soared out of the window. Dumbledore watched her fly away, and as her silvery glow faded he turned back to Snape, and his eyes were full of tears.
“After all this time?”
“Always,” said Snape.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

“Why let the young folk have all the dumb ideas?”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England

“Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'

'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit.

'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.'

'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?'

'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.”
― Margery Williams Bianco, The Velveteen Rabbit

“I like rescuing damsels in distress.'
'I'm not a damsel in distress.'
'Could you pretend? I'm actually just searching for an excuse to see you again.”
― Elizabeth Camden, The Prince of Spies

“Fairy tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

“Those who are content with what they are, have the less concern about what they seem.”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant

“Do you think Jesus came to deliver us from the punishment of our sins? He would not have moved a step for that. The terrible thing is to be bad, and all punishment is to help to deliver us from it, nor will it cease till we have given up being bad. God will have us good; and Jesus works out the will of his father.”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant

“I was born at a very early age.”
― S.D. Smith, Mooses with Bazookas: And Other Stories Children Should Never Read