Inspirational Quotes by George MacDonald
“whoever is diligent will soon be cheerful,”
― George MacDonald ,
“The stars are spinning their threads, And the clouds are the dust that flies, And the suns are weaving them up For the time when the sleepers shall rise. The ocean in music rolls, And gems are turning to eyes, And the trees are gathering souls For the day when the sleepers shall rise. The weepers are learning to smile, And laughter to glean the sighs; Burn and bury the care and guile, For the day when the sleepers shall rise. Oh, the dews and the moths and the daisy red, The larks and the glimmers and flows! The lilies and sparrows and daily bread, And the something that nobody knows!”
― George MacDonald ,
“I Have been asked to tell you about the back of the north wind. An old Greek writer mentions a people who lived there, and were so comfortable that they could not bear it any longer, and drowned themselves. My story is not the same as his. I do not think Herodotus had got the right account of the place. I am going to tell you how it fared with a boy who went there.”
“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.”
“For the world is - allow us the homely figure - the human being turned inside out. All that moves in the mind is symbolized in Nature. Or, to use another more philosophical, and certainly not less poetic figure, the world is a sensuous analysis of humanity, and hence an inexhaustible wardrobe for the clothing of human thought. Take any word expressive of emotion - take the word 'emotion' itself - and you will find that its primary meaning is of the outer world. In the swaying of the woods, in the unrest of the "wavy plain" the imagination saw the picture of a well-known condition of the human mind; and hence the word 'emotion'. The man who cannot invent will never discover. Wisdom as well as folly will serve a fool's purpose; he turns all into folly.”
― George MacDonald ,
from A Dish of Orts
“The Lord of gladness delights in the laughter of a merry heart. These wedding guests could have done without wine, surely without more wine and better wine. But the Father looks with no esteem upon a bare existence, and is ever working, even by suffering, to render life more rich and plentiful. His gifts are to the overflowing of the cup; but when the cup would overflow, he deepens its hollow, and widens its brim. Our Lord is profuse like his Father, yea, will, at his own sternest cost, be lavish to his brethren. He will give them wine indeed. But even they who know whence the good wine comes, and joyously thank the giver, shall one day cry out, like the praiseful ruler of the feast to him who gave it not, "Thou hast kept the good wine until now.”
“The ruin of a man's teaching comes of his followers, such as having never touched the foundation he has laid, build upon it wood, hay, and stubble, fit only to be burnt. Therefore, if only to avoid his worst foes, his admirers, a man should avoid system. The more correct a system the worse will it be misunderstood; its professed admirers will take both its errors and their misconceptions of its truths, and hold them forth as its essence.”
― George MacDonald ,
from Weighed and Wanting
topics: religion
“The library, although duly considered in many alterations of the house and additions to it, had nevertheless, like an encroaching state, absorbed one room after another until it occupied the greater part of the ground floor.”
― George MacDonald ,
from Lilith
“I seemed alone with Death absolute! It was not the absence of everything I felt, but the presence of Nothing. The darkness knows neither the light nor itself; only the light knows itself and the darkness also. None but God hates evil and understand it.”
― George MacDonald ,
from Lilith
topics: darkness
“If you know you are yourself, you know that you are not somebody else; but do you know that you are yourself? Are you sure you are not your own father?—or, excuse me, your own fool?—Who are you, pray?” I”
― George MacDonald ,
from Lilith: A Romance
“Now I knew that life and truth were one; that life mere and pure is in itself bliss; that where being is not bliss, it is not life, but life-in-death. Every inspiration of the dark wind that blew where it listed went out a sigh of thanksgiving. At last I was! I lived, and nothing could touch my life! My darling walked beside me, and we were on our way home to see the Father!”
― George MacDonald ,
from Lilith
“The question is not at present, however, of removing mountains, a thing that will one day be simple to us, but of waking and rising from the dead now.”
“the churchyard, in ruins, some of the people who used to pray there, go there still. they need help from each other to get their thinking done, and their feelings hatched, so they talk and sing together, and then, they say, the big thought floats out of their hearts like a great ship out of the river at high water.”
― George MacDonald ,
from Lilith
“On thee, the troubler of the poor world's peace! The worm of conscience still be-gnaw thy soul! Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou liv'st, And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends!”
“Why, then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me it is a prison.”
“ ’Tis now the very witching time of night, 419 When churchyards yawn and hell itself ⟨breathes⟩ 420 out 421 Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot 422 blood 423 And do such ⟨bitter⟩ business as the day 424 Would quake to look on. Soft, now to my mother. 425 O heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever 426 The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom. 427 Let me be cruel, not unnatural. 428 I will speak ⟨daggers⟩ to her, but use none. 429 My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites: 430 How in my words somever she be shent, 431 To give them seals never, my soul, consent. 432 He exits.”
“But is it not rather that art rescues nature from the weary and sated regards of our senses, and the degrading injustice of our anxious everyday life, and, appealing to the imagination, which dwells apart, reveals Nature in some degree as she really is, and as she represents herself to the eye of the child, whose everyday life, fearless and unambitious, meets the true import of the wonder-teeming world around him, and rejoices therein without questioning?”
― George MacDonald ,
from Phantastes
“With a fiction it was the same. Mine was the whole story. For I took the place of the character who was most like myself, and his story was mine; until, grown weary with the life of years condensed in an hour, or arrived at my deathbed, or the end of the volume, I would awake, with a sudden bewilderment, to the consciousness of my present life, recognising the walls and roof around me, and finding I joyed or sorrowed only in a book.”
― George MacDonald ,
from Phantastes
“Twilight-kind, oppressing the heart as with a condensed atmosphere of dreamy undefined love and longing.”
― George MacDonald ,
from Phantastes
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George MacDonald was a Scottish author, poet, and Christian minister.
Known particularly for his poignant fairy tales and fantasy novels, George MacDonald inspired many authors, such as W. H. Auden, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, E. Nesbit and Madeleine L'Engle. G. K. Chesterton cited The Princess and the Goblin as a book that had "made a difference to my whole existence."
Even Mark Twain, who initially disliked MacDonald, became friends with him, and there is some evidence that Twain was influenced by MacDonald.
MacDonald grew up influenced by his Congregational Church, with an atmosphere of Calvinism. But MacDonald never felt comfortable with some aspects of Calvinist doctrine; indeed, legend has it that when the doctrine of predestination was first explained to him, he burst into tears (although assured that he was one of the elect). Later novels, such as Robert Falconer and Lilith, show a distaste for the idea that God's electing love is limited to some and denied to others.