Lilith Quotes

“A man is as free as he chooses to make himself, never an atom freer.”
― George MacDonald, Lilith

“Whose work is it but your own to open your eyes? But indeed the business of the universe is to make such a fool out of you that you will know yourself for one, and begin to be wise.”
― George MacDonald, Lilith, First and Final

“You doubt because you love truth.”
― George MacDonald, Lilith

“there is no harm in being afraid. The only harm is in doing what Fear tells you. Fear is not your master! Laugh in his face and he will run away.”
― George MacDonald, Lilith

“Doubt may be a poor encouragement to do anything, but it is a bad reason for doing nothing.”
― George MacDonald, Lilith

“I tell you, there are more worlds, and more doors to them, than you will think of in many years!”
― George MacDonald, Lilith

“There is no slave but the creature that wills against its Creator.”
― George MacDonald, Lilith

“But there is a light that goes deeper than the will, a light that lights up the darkness behind it: that light can change your will, can make it truly yours and not another's - not the Shadow's. Into the created can pour itself the creating will, and so redeem it!”
― George MacDonald, Lilith

“The part of the philanthropist is indeed a dangerous one; and the man who would do his neighbour good must first study how not to do him evil, and must begin by pulling the beam out of his own eye.”
― George MacDonald, Lilith

“Those are not the tears of repentance!... Self-loathing is not sorrow. Yet it is good, for it marks a step in the way home, and in the father's arms the prodigal forgets the self he abominates.”
― George MacDonald, Lilith

“The only way to come to know where you are is to begin to make yourself at home.”
― George MacDonald, Lilith

“I am ready,' I replied.
'How do you know you can do it?'
'Because you require it,' I answered.”
― George MacDonald, Lilith

“When a man dreams his own dream, he is the sport of his dream; when Another gives it him, that Other is able to fulfill it.”
― George MacDonald, Lilith

“I had chosen the dead rather than the living, the thing thought rather than the thing thinking.”
― George MacDonald, Lilith

“I looked, and saw: before her, cast from an unseen heavenly mirror, stood the reflection of herself, and beside it a form of splendent beauty. She trembled, and sank again on the floor helpless. She knew the one that God had intended her to be, the other that she had made herself.”
― George MacDonald, Lilith

“I was a bookworm then, but when I came to know it, I woke among the butterflies.”
― George MacDonald, Lilith

“Thou art beautiful because God created thee, but thou art a slave to sin... wickedness has made you ugly.”
― George MacDonald, Lilith

“Books are but dead bodies to you, and a library nothing but a catacomb!”
― George MacDonald, Lilith, First and Final

“Every one, as you ought to know, has a beast-self—and a bird-self, and a stupid fish-self, ay, and a creeping serpent-self too—which it takes a deal of crushing to kill! In truth he has also a tree-self and a crystal-self, and I don’t know how many selves more—all to get into harmony. You can tell what sort a man is by his creature that comes oftenest to the front.”
― George MacDonald, Lilith: A Romance

“Yes,' he answered; 'and you will be dead, so long as you refuse to die.”
― George MacDonald, Lilith

“...I am still librarian in your house, for I never was dismissed, and never gave up the office. Now I am librarian here as well.'

'But you have just told me you were sexton here!'

'So I am. It is much the same profession. Except you are a true sexton, books are but dead bodies to you, and a library nothing but a catacomb!”
― George MacDonald, Lilith

“The darkness knows neither the light nor itself; only the light knows itself and the darkness also. None but God hates evil and understands it.”
― George MacDonald, Lilith

“Nobody knows what anything is; a man can only learn what a thing means!”
― George MacDonald, Lilith

“Oblige me by telling me where I am."
"That is impossible. You know nothing about whereness. The only way to come to know where you are is to begin to make yourself at home.”
― George MacDonald, Lilith

“Strange dim memories, which will not abide identification, often, through misty windows of the past, look out upon me in the broad daylight, but I never dream now. It may be, notwithstanding, that, when most awake, I am only dreaming the more! But when I wake at last into that life which as a mother her child, carries life in its bosom, I shall know that I wake, and shall doubt no more. I wait; asleep or awake, I wait.”
― George MacDonald, Lilith

“you understood any world besides your own, you would understand your own much better.—When a heart is really alive, then it is able to think live things. There is one heart all whose thoughts are strong, happy creatures, and whose very dreams are lives. When some pray, they lift heavy thoughts from the ground, only to drop them on it again; others send up their prayers in living shapes, this or that, the nearest likeness to each. All live things were thoughts to begin with, and are fit therefore to be used by those that think. When one says to the great Thinker:—‘Here is one of thy thoughts: I am thinking it now!’ that is a prayer—a word to the big heart”
― George MacDonald, Lilith: A Romance

“If you know you are yourself, you know that you are not somebody else; but do you know that you are yourself? Are”
― George MacDonald, Lilith

“All the days of my appointed time will I wait till my change come.”
― George MacDonald, Lilith

“It opened a little way, and a face came into the opening. It was Lona's. It's eyes were closed, but the face itself was upon me, and seemed to see me. It was as white as Eve's, white as Mara's, but did not shine like their faces. She spoke, and her voice was like a sleepy night-wind in the grass.

"Are you coming, king?" it said. "I cannot rest until you are with me, gliding down the river to the great sea, and the beautiful dream-land. The sleepiness is full of lovely things: come and see them.”
― George MacDonald, Lilith

“The man who grounds his action on another's cowardice, is essentially a coward himself.”
― George MacDonald, Lilith