Donal Grant Quotes

“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

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

“To have what we want is riches, but to be able to do without is power.”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant

“Jesus Christ is the very God I want. I want a father like him, like the father of him who came as our big brother to take us home. No other than the God exactly like Christ can be the true God. Cast away from you that doctrine of devils, that Jesus died to save us from our father. There is no safety, no good of any kind but with the father, his father and our father, his God and our God.”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant

“You must not forget what you have been teaching me all this time–that the will of our God, the perfect God, is all in all! He is not a God far off: oh, Donal, to know that is enough to have lived for if one never learned anything more in all her life! You have taught me that, and I love you–love you next to God and his Christ, with a true heart fervently.”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant

“if Donal was in any danger of loving the things of this world, it was in the shape of books–books he had a strong inclination to accumulate and hoard.”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant

“The beauty of love is, that it does not take care of itself, but of the person loved.”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant

“Come then, let us do something!” said Davie.

“Come away,” rejoined Donal. “What shall we do first?”

“I don't know: you must tell me, sir.”

“What would you like best to do—I mean if you might do what you pleased?”

Davie thought a little, then said:

“I should like to write a book.”

“What kind of a book?”

“A beautiful story.”

“Isn’t it just as well to read such a book? Why should you want to write one?”

“Because then I should have it go just as I wanted it! I am always—almost always—disappointed with the thing that comes next. But if I wrote it myself, then I shouldn’t get tired of it; it would be what pleased me, and not what pleased somebody else.”

“Well,” said Donal, after thinking for a moment, “suppose you begin to write a book!”

“Oh, that will be fun!—much better than learning verbs and nouns!”

“But the verbs and nouns are just the things that go to make a story—with not a few adjectives and adverbs, and a host of conjunctions; and, if it be a very moving story, a good many interjections! These all you have got to put together with good choice, or the story will not be one you would care to read.—Perhaps you had better not begin till I see whether you know enough about those verbs and nouns to do the thing decently.”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant George MacDonald

“does my Anerew's hert guid to hae a crack wi' ane 'at kens something o' what the Maister wad be at. Mony ane 'll ca' him Lord, but feow 'ill tak the trible to ken what he wad hae o' them.”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant

“The minister was an honest man so far as he knew himself and honesty, and did not relish this form of submission. But he did not ask himself where was the difference between accepting the word of man and accepting man's explanation of the word of God!”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant

“I love you,” he said, “and love you to all eternity! I have love enough to live upon now, if you should die this night, and God will that, like the Apostle John, I tarry till he come. God, thou art too good to me! It is more than my heart will hold! Thou art a God indeed who makest men and women, and givest them to each other, and art not one moment jealous of the love wherewith they love each other!”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant

“There are some who, if you propose to examine into anything, immediately set you down as an unbeliever in that thing. A man who wants to find out what the Bible really means, is, by those who do not believe in it a tenth part as much as he, set down as an unbeliever in the Bible; whereas it is a proof of the very strongest probability to the contrary.”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant

“When we have no summer without, we must supply it from within. Those must have comfort in themselves who are sent to comfort others.”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant

“Every pain and every fear, yes, every doubt is a cry after God. What mother refuses to go to her child because he is only crying, not calling her by name!”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant

“Love is as lovely in the old as in the young–lovelier when in them, as often, more sympathetic and unselfish, that is true.”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant

“Ourselves our centre instead of God, is the source of all wrong and all misery.”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant

“The birds in the trees were singing
A song as old as the world,
Of love and green leaves and sunshine,
And winter folded and furled.

They sang that never was sadness
But it melted and passed away;
They sang that never was darkness
But in came the conquering day.”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant

“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!”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant

“And as to death, the fact is we know next to nothing about it. “Do we not!” say the faithless indignantly. “Do we not know the misery of it, the tears, and the sinking of the heart and the desolation!” Yes; you know those; but those are your things, not those of death. About death you know nothing. God has never told us anything about it but that the dead are alive to him, and that one day, they will be again to us.”
― George MacDonald, Donal Grant