Inspirational Quotes by George MacDonald
“Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumbshows and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.”
“GHOST I am thy father’s spirit, 14 Doomed for a certain term to walk the night 15 And for the day confined to fast in fires 16 Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature 17 Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid 18 To tell the secrets of my prison house, 19 I could a tale unfold whose lightest word 20 Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, 21 Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their 22 spheres, 23 Thy knotted and combinèd locks to part, 24 And each particular hair to stand an end, 25 Like quills upon the fearful porpentine. 26 But this eternal blazon must not be 27 To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O list! 28 If thou didst ever thy dear father love—”
“Humility is essential greatness, the inside of grandeur.”
“With every morn my life afresh must break The crust of self, gathered about me fresh.”
“O Lord, I have been talking to the people; Thought's wheels have round me whirled a fiery zone And the recoil of my word's airy ripple My heart unheedful has puffed up and blown. Therefore I cast myself before thee prone: Lay cool hands on my burning brain and press From my weak heart the swelling emptiness.”
“The play’s the thing [600] Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King. [”
“O, lack and doubt and fear can only come Because of plenty, confidence, and love! They are the shadow-forms about their feet, Because they are not perfect crystal-clear To the all-searching sun in which they live. Dread of its loss is Beauty’s certain seal!”
“I think magic went out when people began to have steam-engines, and newspapers, and telephones and wireless telegraphing.”
“سخنانم رو به آسمان دارند، اما اندیشه ام بر زمین می ماند. سخن تا اندیشه با وی همراه نباشد هرگز به آسمان دسترس ندارد.”
“It may be an infinitely less evil to murder a man than to refuse to forgive him. The former may be the act of a moment of passion: the latter is the heart’s choice. It is spiritual murder, the worst, to hate, to brood over the feeling that excludes, that, in our microcosm, kills the image, the idea of the hated. [13]”
“It is the heart that is not yet sure of its God that is afraid to laugh in His presence.”
“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
“Не вечен мир, и все мы видим вновь, Как счастью вслед меняется любовь; Кому кто служит, мудрый, назови: Любовь ли счастью, счастье ли любви?”
“ولكن عليك ان تعلم ان اباك فقد ابا له , وذلك الاب الفقيد فقد اباه فكان على خلفه بما يترتب ليه من واجب بنوي ان يحزن حدادا عليه لفترة ما. بيد ان المثابرة على عزاء لا ينثني عناد شرير. انه حزن لا يليق بالرجال, يدل على ارادة تمردت وقلب غير حصين ونفس اعوزها الصبر وادراك بسيط لم يثقف حين نعلم ان امرا كان مقضيا وانه شائع شيوع اي شىء عادي نعرفه لم نحزن ونصر على مقاومته فنجعله يحز في القلب؟ استح فأنه لأثم والعقل يسخفه حين يكون موضوعه العادي موت الاباء وهو منذ البدء يصيح -منذ اول جسد فارقته الحياة-”
topics: هاملت
“ ’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.”
“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!”
“They that stand high have many blasts to shake 275 them, 276 And if they fall, they dash themselves to pieces.”
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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.