George MacDonald

Christ died to save us, not from suffering, but from ourselves; not from injustice, far less from justice, but from being unjust. He died that we might live'but live as He lives, by dying as He died who died to Himself.

I was a bookworm then, but when I came to know it, I woke among the butterflies.

I was doing the wrong of never wanting or trying to better. And now I see that I have been letting things go as the would for a long time. Whatever came into my head I did and whatever didn't come into my head I didn't d…

I should like to remark, for the sake of princes and princesses in general, that it is a low and contemptible thing to refuse to confess a fault, or even an error. If a true princess has done wrong, she is always uneasy…

How terribly, then, have the theologians misrepresented God in the measures of the low and showy, not the lofty and simple humanities! Nearly all of them represent him as a great King on a grand throne, thinking how gran…

Suppose you didn't know him, would that make any difference?''No,' said Willie, after thinking a little. 'Other people would knowhim if I didn't.''Yes, and if nobody knew him, God would know him, and anybody God hasthoug…

Wherever there is anything to love, there is beauty in some form.

But in truth there was more expression in the flower than was yet in the face. The flower expressed what God was thinking of when He made it; the face, what the girl was thinking of her self. When she ceased thinking of…

Books are but dead bodies to you, and a library nothing but a catacomb!

I should not be surprised, said Mr. Graham, that the day should come when men will refuse to believe in God simply on the ground of the apparent injustice of things. They would argue that there might be either an omnipot…

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.

...To trust in the strength of God in our weakness; to say, 'I am weak: so let me be: God is strong;' to seek from him who is our life, as the natural, simple cure of all that is amiss with us, power to do, and be, and l…

His little heart was so full of merriment that it could not hold it all, and it ran over into theirs.

It's not good at all'mind that, Diamond'to do everything for those you love, and not give them a share in the doing. It's not kind. It's making too much of yourself.

It is a hard thing for a rich man to grow poor; but it is an awful thing for him to grow dishonest, and some kinds of speculation lead a man deep into dishonesty before he thinks what he is about. Poverty will not make a…

Thou art beautiful because God created thee, but thou art a slave to sin... wickedness has made you ugly.

I do not write for children, but for the childlike, whether of five, or fifty, or seventy-five.

With every morn my life afresh must breakThe crust of self, gathered about me fresh;That thy wind-spirit may rush in and shakeThe darkness out of me, and rend the meshThe spider-devils spin out of the flesh-Eager to net…

I've been thinking about it a great deal, and it seems to me that although one sixpence is as good as another sixpence, not twenty lambs would do instead of one sheep whose face you knew. Somehow, when once you've looked…

A mountain is a strange and awful thing. In old times, without knowing so much of their strangeness and awfulness as we do, people were yet more afraid of mountains. But then somehow they had not come to see how beautifu…

Anybody with leisure can do that who is willing to begin where everything ought to be begun--that is, at the beginning. Nothing worth calling good can or ever will be started full grown. The essential of any good is life…

Roses, wild roses, everywhere! So plentiful were they, they were not only perfumed the air, they seemed to dye it a faint rose-hue. The colour floated abroad with the scent, and clomb, and spread, until the whole wesr bl…

How old are you?Ten, answered Tangle.You don't look like it, said the lady.How old are you, please? returned Tangle.Thousands of years old, answered the lady.You don't look like it, said Tangle.Don't I? I think I do. Don…

God is all right'why should we mind standing in the dark for a minute outside his window? Of course we miss the inness, but there is a bliss of its own in waiting. What if the rain be falling, and the wind blowing; what…

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…

I had chosen the dead rather than the living, the thing thought rather than the thing thinking.

May had now set in, but up here among the hills, she was May by curtesy only; or if she was May, she would never be might. She was, indeed, only April with her showers and sunshine, her tearful, childish laughter, and ag…

I wish I had [made that song]. No, I don't That would be to take it from somebody else. But it's mine for all that.''What makes it yours?''I love it so.''Does loving a thing make it yours?''I think so, Mother -- at least…

Bees and butterflies, moths and dragonflies, the flowers and the brooks and the clouds.

But when we are following the light, even its extinction is a guide.

And when heart and head go together, nothing can stand before them

Even if there be no hereafter, I would live my time believing in a grand thing that ought to be true if it is not. And if these be not truths, then is the loftiest part of our nature a waste. Let me hold by the better th…

[91] Why Should It Be Necessary? 'But if God is so good as you represent Him, and if He knows all that we need, and better far than we do ourselves, why should it be necessary to ask Him for anything?' I answer, What if…

a man may be haunted with doubts, and only grow thereby in faith. Doubts are the messengers of the Living One to the honest. They are the first knock at our door of things that are not yet, but have to be, understood'. D…

Then the great old, young, beautiful princess turned to Curdie.'Now, Curdie, are you ready?' she said.'Yes ma'am,' answered Curdie.'You do not know what for.''You do, ma'am. That is enough.

But, sir, isn't death a dreadful thing? asked Malcolm.That depends on whether a man regards it as his fate or as the will of a perfect God. Its obscurity is its dread. But if God be light, then death itself must be full…

How kind you are, North Wind!''I am only just. All kindness is but justice. We owe it.

It is amazing from what a mere fraction of a fact concerning him a man will dare judge the whole of another man

Doubt swells and surges, with swelling doubt behind!My soul in storm is but a tattered sail,Streaming its ribbons on the torrent gale;In calm, 'tis but a limp and flapping thing:Oh! swell it with thy breath; make it a wi…

Seek not that your sons and your daughters should not see visions, should not dream dreams; seek that they should see true visions, that they should dream noble dreams. Such out-going of the imagination is one with aspir…

But it was little to Curdie that men who did not know what he was about should not approve of his proceedings.

Then what do you see? asked Irene, who perceived at once that for her not to believe him was at least as bad as for him not to believe her.

He may delay because it would not be safe to give us at once what we ask: we are not ready for it. To give ere we could truly receive, would be to destroy the very heart and hope of prayer, to cease to be our Father. The…

Let me, if I may, be ever welcomed to my room in winter by a glowing hearth, in summer by a vase of flowers. If I may not, let me think how nice they would be and bury myself in my work. I do not think that the road to c…

Above all things, I delight in listening to stories, and sometimes in telling them.

The back door of every tomb opens on a hilltop.

We die daily. Happy those who daily come to life as well.

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.

Ere long, I learned that it was not myself, but only my shadow, that I had lost. I learned that it is better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold up his head in his pride and fancied inn…

Afterwards I learned, that the best way to manage some kinds of painful thoughts, is to dare them to do their worst; to let them lie and gnaw at your heart till they are tired; and you find you still have a residue of li…