The Last Castle Quotes

“You must seek to Him who brought you and your conscience together and told you to agree. Let God, over all and in all, tell you whether or not you were wrong. If you cannot tell whether you did well or ill, you should not vex your soul. God is your refuge, even from the wrongs of your own judgement. Pray to Him to let you know the truth, that if needful you may repent. Be patient and not sorrowful until He shows you, nor fear that He will judge you harshly because He must judge you truly. That were to wrong God. Trust in Him even when you fear wrong in yourself, for He will deliver you therefrom.”
― George MacDonald, The Last Castle

“Duty cannot bring his men to hand-to-hand conflict with the same power as Queen Love.”
― George MacDonald, The Last Castle

“No man can rid him of himself and live, for that involves an impossibility. But he can rid himself of that haunting shadow of his own self, which he has pampered and fed upon shadowy lies, until it is bloated and black with pride and folly. When that demon-king of shades is once cast out, and the man's house is possessed of God instead, then first he finds his true substantial self, which is the servant- nay, the child- of God. To rid you of yourself you must offer it again to Him who made it. Be empty so that He may fill you.”
― George MacDonald, The Last Castle

“The demon has a name that is known among men, though it frightens few and draws many, alas! His name is Self, and he is the shadow of your own self. First he made you love him, which was evil, and now he has made you hate him, which is evil also. But if he be cast out and never more enter into your heart, but remain as a servant in your hall, then you will recover from this sickness, and be whole and sound, and will find the varlet serviceable.”
― George MacDonald, The Last Castle

“Ere thou ride, look well to thy girths,and as thou ridest say thy prayers, for it pleaseth not God that every man on the right side should live, and thou mayest find the presence in which thou standest change suddenly from that of mortal man to living God.”
― George MacDonald, The Last Castle

“Not every man that thinks the other way is a rogue or a fool.”
― George MacDonald, The Last Castle

“She thus unknowingly made a step toward the discovery that it is infinitely better to think wrongly and act rightly upon that wrong thinking, than it is to think rightly and not to do as that thinking requires us. He who acts rightly will soon think rightly; he who acts wrongly will soon think wrongly. Any two persons acting faithfully upon opposite convictions are divided but by a wall; any two, in belief most harmonious, who do not act upon it, are divided by infinite gulfs of the blackness of darkness, across which neither ever beholds the real self of the other.”
― George MacDonald, The Last Castle

“Hate will sharpen observation, affording opportunity for many a shrewd guess, and the construction of clever and false theories, but will leave the observer blind to the whole.”
― George MacDonald, The Last Castle

“For the best men and the weightiest questions are never seen in their time, save by the few.”
― George MacDonald, The Last Castle

“She was beginning to learn that a man may be right, although the creed for which he is ready to die may contain much that is wrong.”
― George MacDonald, The Last Castle

“To confess uprightness in one of the opposite party seemed to most men to involve treachery to their own.”
― George MacDonald, The Last Castle

“Then go - but beware of private quarrels in such a season of strife. You two may meet some day in mortal conflict on the battlefield. For my part, I would rather slay my friend than my enemy.”
― George MacDonald, The Last Castle

“Anger and stupidity are near of kin, and when a man whose mental movements are naturally deliberate is suddenly spurred, he is in great danger of acting the fool.”
― George MacDonald, The Last Castle

“His was a party whose distinctive and animating spirit was the love of freedom, which broke out upon occasion in the wildest vagaries of speech and doctrine. Yet it justified itself in its leaders, including Milton and Cromwell, who accorded to the consciences of others the freedom they demanded for their own - the love of liberty meaning not merely the love of enjoying freedom, but that respect for the thing itself which renders a man incapable of violating it in another.”
― George MacDonald, The Last Castle

“Many men say right and many men say wrong. I might be more ready to speak my mind were it not that I greatly doubt some of those who cry loudest for liberty. I fear that once they had power, they would be the first to trample her underfoot. Liberty with some men means my liberty to do, and your liberty to suffer.”
― George MacDonald, The Last Castle