Inspirational Quotes by George MacDonald
“Yet I know that good is coming to me—that good is always coming; though few have at all times the simplicity and the courage to believe it. What we call evil, is the only and best shape, which, for the person and his condition at the time, could be assumed by the best good.”
― George MacDonald ,
from Phantastes
“As in all sweetest music, a tinge of sadness was in every note. Nor do we know how much of the pleasures even of life we owe to the intermingled sorrows. Joy cannot unfold the deepest truths, although deepest truth must be deepest joy. Cometh white-robed Sorrow, stooping and wan, and flingeth wide the doors she may not enter. Almost we linger with Sorrow for very love.”
― George MacDonald ,
from Phantastes
“It was evening. The sun was below the horizon; but his rosy beams yet illuminated a feathery cloud, that floated high above the world. I arose, I reached the cloud; and, throwing myself upon it, floated with it in sight of the sinking sun. He sank, and the cloud grew gray; but the grayness touched not my heart. It carried its rose-hue within; for now I could love without needing to be loved again.”
― George MacDonald ,
from Phantastes
“One who not merely beholds the outward shows of things, but catches a glimpse of the soul that looks out of them ...”
“Where is the good of planning upon an "if?" To trust is to get ready, uncle says. Trust is better than foresight.”
“those whose business it is to open doors, so often mistake and shut them”
“No gift unrecognized as coming from God is at its own best: therefore many things that God would gladly give us, things even that we need because we are, must wait until we ask for them, that we may know whence they come: when in all gifts we find Him, then in Him we shall find all things.”
“Have you forgiven me?' I asked. 'How can I say I have, when I never had anything to forgive?' 'Well then, I must go unforgiven for I cannot forgive myself.' I said. 'O Mrs. Percivale! If you think how the world is flooded with forgiveness, you will just dip in your cup, and take what you want.”
“God is God to us not that we may say he is, but that we may know him; and when we know him, then we are with him, at home, at the heart of the universe, the heirs of all things.”
“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
“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
“Ay, truly, for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness.”
“SECOND MURDERER Look behind you, my lord. 279 FIRST MURDERER Take that, and that. (Stabs him.)”
“It is the heart that is not yet sure of its God that is afraid to laugh in His presence.”
“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]”
“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—”
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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.