Thomas Wingfold, Curate, Volume 1 Quotes

“If this be a type of the way the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children," said the curate to himself, "there must be more in the progression of history than political economy can explain. It would drive us to believe in an economy wherein rather the well-being of the whole was the result of individual treatment, and not the well-being of the individual the result of the management of the whole?”
― George MacDonald, Thomas Wingfold, Curate V1

“The perplexed man cried out within the clergyman, and pressed for some acknowledgment from God of the being he had made. But—was it strange to tell? or if strange, was it not the most natural result nevertheless?—almost the same moment he began to pray in this truer fashion, the doubt rushed up in him like a torrent-spring from the fountains of the great deep—Was there—could there be a God at all? a real being who might actually hear his prayer? In this crowd of houses and shops and churches, amidst buying and selling, and ploughing and praising and backbiting, this endless pursuit of ends and of means to ends, while yet even the wind that blew where it listed blew under laws most fixed, and the courses of the stars were known to a hair's-breadth, —was there—could there be a silent invisible God working his own will in it all? Was there a driver to that chariot whose multitudinous horses seemed tearing away from the pole in all directions? and was he indeed, although invisible and inaudible, guiding that chariot, sure as the flight of a comet, straight to its goal? Or was there a soul to that machine whose myriad wheels went grinding on and on, grinding the stars into dust, matter into man, and man into nothingness? Was there—could there be a living heart to the universe that did positively hear him—poor, misplaced, dishonest, ignorant Thomas Wingfold, who had presumed to undertake a work he neither could perform nor had the courage to forsake, when out of the misery of the grimy little cellar of his consciousness he cried aloud for light and something to make a man of him? For now that Thomas had begun to doubt like an honest being, every ugly thing within him began to show itself to his awakened probity.”
― George MacDonald, Thomas Wingfold, Curate V1

“Those who gain no experience are those who shirk the King's highway for fear of encountering the Duty seated by the roadside.”
― George MacDonald, Thomas Wingfold, Curate, Volume 1

“Perhaps you have had more friends than you are aware of. You owe something to the man, for instance, who, with his outspoken antagonism, roused you first to a sense of what was lacking to you." "I hope I shall be grateful to God for it some day," returned
Wingfold. "I cannot say that I feel much obligation to Mr. Bascombe.
And yet when I think of it,—perhaps—I don't know—what ought a man
to be more grateful for than honesty?”
― George MacDonald, Thomas Wingfold, Curate V1