The Maiden's Bequest Quotes

“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.”
― George MacDonald, Alec Forbes of Howglen

“Even Annie did not then know that it was the soul's hunger, the vague sense of a need which nothing but the God of human faces, the God of the morning and of the starful night, the God of love and self-forgetfulness, can satisfy, that sent her money-loving, poverty-stricken, pining, grumbling old aunt out staring towards the east. It is this formless idea of something at hand that keeps men and women striving to tear from the bosom of the world the secret of their own hopes. How little they know what they look for in reality is their God! This is that for which their heart and their flesh cry out.”
― George MacDonald, Alec Forbes of Howglen

“Sorrow herself will reveal one day that she was only the beneficent shadow of Joy. Will Evil ever show herself the beneficent shadow of Good?”
― George MacDonald, Alec Forbes of Howglen

“he was more grateful for Truffey's generous forgiveness than he would have been for the richest living in Scotland. Such forgiveness is just giving us back ourselves—clean and happy. And for what gift can we be more grateful?”
― George MacDonald, Alec Forbes of Howglen

“He never married. But he wrote a good book.”
― George MacDonald, Alec Forbes of Howglen

“At length, one lovely morning, when the green corn lay soaking in the yellow sunlight, and the sky rose above the earth deep and pure and tender like the thought of God about it, Alec became suddenly aware that life was good, and the world beautiful . . . One of God's lyric prophets, the larks, was within earshot, pouring down a vocal summer of jubilant melody. The lark thought nobody was listening but his wife; but God heard in heaven, and the young prodigal heard on the earth.”
― George MacDonald, Alec Forbes of Howglen

“He did not torture himself with vain attempts to hold his brain as a mirror to his heart, that he might read his heart there. The heart is deaf and dumb and blind, but it has more in it — more life and blessedness, more torture and death — than any poor knowledge-machine of a brain can understand, or even delude itself into the fancy of understanding.”
― George MacDonald, Alec Forbes of Howglen

“For the absence of human companionship in bestial forms; the loss of green fields, free to her as to the winds of heaven, and of country sounds and odours; and an almost constant sense of oppression from the propinquity of one or another whom she had cause to fear, were speedily working sad effects upon her.”
― George MacDonald, Alec Forbes of Howglen

“A man must learn to love his children, not because they are his, but because they are children, else his love will be scarcely a better thing at last than the party-spirit of the faithful politician.”
― George MacDonald, Alec Forbes of Howglen

“In that ugly building, amidst that weary praying and inharmonious singing, with that blatant tone, and, worse than all, that merciless doctrine, there was yet preaching — that rare speech of a man to his fellow-men whereby in their inmost hearts they know that he in his inmost heart believes. There was hardly an indifferent countenance in all that wide space beneath, in all those far-sloping galleries above. Every conscience hung out the red or pale flag.”
― George MacDonald, Alec Forbes of Howglen

“She had left his church and gone to the missionars, and there found more spiritual nourishment than Mr Cowie's sermons could supply, but she could not forget his kisses, or his gentle words, or his shilling, for by their means, although she did not know it, Mr Cowie's self had given her a more confiding notion of God, a better feeling of his tenderness, than she could have had from all Mr Turnbull's sermons together. What equal gift could a man give? Was it not worth bookfuls of sound doctrine?”
― George MacDonald, Alec Forbes of Howglen

“I doobt the fau't's nae sae muckle i' my temper as i' my hert. It's mair love that I want, Tibbie. Gin I lo'ed my neebor as mysel', I cudna be sae ill-natert till him; though 'deed, whiles, I'm angry eneuch at mysel' — a hantle waur nor at him." "Verra true, Thamas," answered Tibbie. "Perfect love casteth oot fear, 'cause there's nae room for the twa o' them; and I daursay it wad be the same wi' the temper.”
― George MacDonald, Alec Forbes of Howglen

“The birds, the poets of the animal creation — what though they never get beyond the lyrical! — awoke to utter their own joy, and awake like joy in others of God's children.”
― George MacDonald, Alec Forbes of Howglen

“Let me once more assert that Mr Malison was not a bad man. The misfortune was, that his notion of right fell in with his natural fierceness; and that, in aggravation of the too common feeling with which he had commenced his relations with his pupils, namely, that they were not only the natural enemies of the master, but therefore of all law, theology had come in and taught him that they were in their own nature bad — with a badness for which the only set-off he knew or could introduce was blows. Independently of any remedial quality that might be in them, these blows were an embodiment of justice; for "every sin," as the catechism teaches, "deserveth God's wrath and curse both in this life and that which is to come." The master therefore was only a co-worker with God in every pandy he inflicted on his pupils. I do not mean that he reasoned thus, but that such-like were the principles he had to act upon.”
― George MacDonald, Alec Forbes of Howglen

“Annie said her prayers, read her Bible, and tried not to forget God. Ah! could she only have known that God never forgot her, whether she forgot him or not, giving her sleep in her dreary garret, gladness even in Murdoch Malison's school-room, and the light of life everywhere!”
― George MacDonald, Alec Forbes of Howglen

“To know that she could not be near God in peace and love without fulfilling certain mental conditions — that he would not have her just as she was now, filled her with an undefined but terribly real misery . . .”
― George MacDonald, Alec Forbes of Howglen

“So there was but one way of setting matters right, as Mr Malison had generosity enough left in him to perceive; and that was, to make a friend of his adversary. Indeed there is that in the depths of every human breast which makes a reconciliation the only victory that can give true satisfaction.”
― George MacDonald, Alec Forbes of Howglen

“It was a profound pleasure to her not to know what was coming next, provided some one whom she loved did.”
― George MacDonald, Alec Forbes of Howglen

“The winter drew on — a season as different from the summer in those northern latitudes, as if it belonged to another solar system. Cold and stormy, it is yet full of delight for all beings that can either romp, sleep, or think it through.”
― George MacDonald, Alec Forbes of Howglen

“Is it true that all our experiences will one day revive in entire clearness of outline and full brilliancy of colour, passing before the horror-struck soul to the denial of time, and the assertion of ever-present eternity? If so, then God be with us, for we shall need him.”
― George MacDonald, Alec Forbes of Howglen by George Macdonald

“We dinna hear 'at the Saviour himsel' ever sae muckle as smiled," said he.
"Weel, that wad hae been little wonner, wi' what he had upo' 'm. But I'm nae sure that he didna, for a' that. Fowk disna aye tell whan a body lauchs. I'm thinkin' gin ane o' the bairnies that he took upo' 's knee,-- an' he was ill-pleased wi' them 'at wad hae sheued them awa'-- gin ane o' them had hauden up his wee timmer horsie, wi' a broken leg, he wadna hae wrocht a miracle maybe, I daursay, but he wad hae smilet, or maybe lauchen a wee, and he wad hae men't the leg some gait or ither to please the bairnie. And gin 't had been me, I wad raither hae had the men'in o' 's twa han's, wi' a knife to help them maybe, nor twenty miracles upo' 't.”
― George MacDonald, Alec Forbes of Howglen by George Macdonald

“In the minds of children the grass grows very quickly over their buried dead. But now she learned what death meant, or rather what love had been; not, however, as an added grief: it comforted her to remember how her father had loved her; and she said her prayers the oftener, because they seemed to go somewhere near the place where her father was. She did not think of her father being where God was, but of God being where her father was.”
― George MacDonald, Alec Forbes of Howglen

“O God, tak care o' me frae the rottans." There was no need to send an angel from heaven in answer to this little one's prayer: the cat would do. Annie heard a scratch and a mew at the door. The rats made one frantic scramble and were still. "It's pussy!" she cried, recovering the voice for joy that had failed her for fear. Fortified by her arrival, and still more by the feeling that she was a divine messenger sent to succour her because she had prayed, she sprang out of bed, darted across the room, and opened the door to let her in. A few moments and she was fast asleep, guarded by God's angel, the cat, for whose entrance she took good care ever after to leave the door ajar. There are ways of keeping the door of the mind also, ready as it is to fall to, ajar for the cat.”
― George MacDonald, Alec Forbes of Howglen

“But the fate of Brownie and of everything she had loved came back upon her; and the sorrow drove away the fear, and she cried till she could cry no longer, and then she slept. It is by means of sorrow, sometimes, that He gives his beloved sleep.”
― George MacDonald, Alec Forbes of Howglen

“A man must learn to love his children, not because they are his, but because they are children, else his love will be scarcely a better thing at last than the party-spirit of the faithful politician. I doubt if it will prove even so good a thing.”
― George MacDonald, Alec Forbes of Howglen