George MacDonald Quotes

“But then to every lover of the truth, a true thing is dearer because it is old-fashioned, and dearer because it is new-fashioned: and true music, like true love, like all truth, laughs at the god Fashion, because it knows him to be but an ape.”
― George MacDonald, George MacDonald: The Complete Novels

“How many things are there in the world in which the wisest of us can ill descry the hand of God! Who not knowing could read the lily in its bulb, the great oak in the pebble-like acorn? God’s beginnings do not look like his endings, but they are like; the oak is in the acorn, though we cannot see it.”
― George MacDonald, George MacDonald: The Complete Novels

“Her intercourse with Andrew had as yet failed to open her eyes to the fact that the faith required of us is faith in a person, and not in the truest of statements concerning anything, even concerning him; or to the fact, that faith in the living One, the very essence of it, consists in obedience to Him. A man can obey before he is sure, and except he obey the command he knows to be right, wherever it may come from, he will never be sure. To find the truth, man or woman must be true.”
― George MacDonald, George MacDonald: The Complete Novels

“I maun hae buiks. I wad get the newspapers whiles, but no aften, for they’re a sair loss o’ precious time. Ye see they tell ye things afore they’re sure, an’ ye hae to spen’ yer time the day readin’ what ye’ll hae to spen’ yer time the morn readin’ oot again; an’ ye may as weel bide till the thing’s sattled a wee.”
― George MacDonald, George MacDonald: The Complete Novels

“There is a childhood into which we have to grow, just as there is a childhood which we must leave behind; a childlikeness which is the highest gain of humanity, and a childishness from which but few of those who are counted the wisest among men, have freed themselves in their imagined progress towards the reality of things.”
― George MacDonald, George MacDonald: The Complete Novels

“Ye’re a scholar — that’s easy to see, for a’ ye’re sae plain spoken. It dis a body’s hert guid to hear a man ‘at un’erstan’s things say them plain oot i’ the tongue his mither taucht him. Sic a ane ‘ill gang straucht till’s makker, an’ fin’ a’thing there hame-like. Lord, I wuss minnisters wad speyk like ither fowk!”
― George MacDonald, George MacDonald: The Complete Novels

“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. Cometh white-robed Sorrow, stooping and wan, and flingeth wide the doors she may not enter. Almost we linger with Sorrow for very love.”
― George MacDonald, George MacDonald: The Complete Fantasy Collection - 8 Novels & 30+ Short Stories and Fairy Tales (Illustrated): Scottish Christian fantasy: 8 novels & 30+ tales

“She thanked God for the country, but soon was praying to him for the town. The neighborly offer of the country to console her for the loss of the town she received with alarm, hastening to bethink herself that God cared more for one miserable, selfish, wife-and-donkey-beating costermonger of unsavory Shoreditch, than for all the hills and dales of Cumberland, yea and all the starry things of his heavens. She would care only as God cared, and from all this beauty gather strength to give to sorrow.”
― George MacDonald, George MacDonald: The Complete Novels

“THE SHADOWS Table of Contents Old Ralph Rinkelmann made his living by comic sketches, and all but lost it again by tragic poems. So he was just the man to be chosen king of the fairies, for in Fairyland the sovereignty is elective. It is no doubt very strange that fairies should desire to have a mortal king; but the fact is, that with all their knowledge and power, they cannot get rid of the feeling that some men are greater than they are, though they can neither fly nor play tricks. So at such times as there happens to be twice the usual number of sensible electors, such a man as Ralph Rinkelmann gets to be chosen. They”
― George MacDonald, George MacDonald: The Complete Fantasy Collection - 8 Novels & 30+ Short Stories and Fairy Tales (Illustrated): Scottish Christian fantasy: 8 novels & 30+ tales

“Oh! many and many a dreary year Must pass away ere the buds appear: Many a night of darksome sorrow Yield to the light of a joyless morrow, Ere birds again, on the clothed trees, Shall fill the branches with melodies. She will dream of meadows with wakeful streams; Of wavy grass in the sunny beams;”
― George MacDonald, George MacDonald: The Complete Fantasy Collection - 8 Novels & 30+ Short Stories and Fairy Tales (Illustrated): Scottish Christian fantasy: 8 novels & 30+ tales

“It sounded like a welcome already overshadowed with the coming farewell. 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, George MacDonald: The Complete Fantasy Collection - 8 Novels & 30+ Short Stories and Fairy Tales (Illustrated): Scottish Christian fantasy: 8 novels & 30+ tales

“It sounded like a welcome already overshadowed with the coming farewell. As in all sweetest music, a tinge of sadness was in every note.”
― George MacDonald, George MacDonald: The Complete Fantasy Collection - 8 Novels & 30+ Short Stories and Fairy Tales (Illustrated): Scottish Christian fantasy: 8 novels & 30+ tales

“Even the memories of past pain are beautiful; and past delights, though beheld only through clefts in the grey clouds of sorrow, are lovely as Fairy Land.”
― George MacDonald, George MacDonald: The Complete Fantasy Collection - 8 Novels & 30+ Short Stories and Fairy Tales (Illustrated): Scottish Christian fantasy: 8 novels & 30+ tales

“That is quite the impression on my own mind. Something compels me to go on, as if my only path was onward, but I feel less inclined this morning to continue my adventures.”
― George MacDonald, George MacDonald: The Complete Fantasy Collection - 8 Novels & 30+ Short Stories and Fairy Tales (Illustrated): Scottish Christian fantasy: 8 novels & 30+ tales

“The only thing that damped my pleasure was a cloud of something between sorrow and delight that crossed my mind with the frequently returning thought of my last night’s hostess. “But then,” thought I, “if she is sorry, I could not help it; and she has all the pleasures she ever had. Such a day as this is surely a joy to her, as much at least as to me. And her life will perhaps be the richer, for holding now within it the memory of what came, but could not stay.”
― George MacDonald, George MacDonald: The Complete Fantasy Collection - 8 Novels & 30+ Short Stories and Fairy Tales (Illustrated): Scottish Christian fantasy: 8 novels & 30+ tales

“But they did not lose courage, for there is a kind of capillary attraction in the facing of two souls, that lifts faith quite beyond the level to which either could raise it alone:”
― George MacDonald, George MacDonald: The Complete Fantasy Collection - 8 Novels & 30+ Short Stories and Fairy Tales (Illustrated): Scottish Christian fantasy: 8 novels & 30+ tales

“The boy should enclose and keep, as his life, the old child at the heart of him, and never let it go. He must still, to be a right man, be his mother's darling, and more, his father's pride, and more. The child is not meant to die, but to be for ever fresh-born.”
― George MacDonald, George MacDonald: The Complete Fantasy Collection - 8 Novels & 30+ Short Stories and Fairy Tales (Illustrated): Scottish Christian fantasy: 8 novels & 30+ tales