Inspirational Quotes by George MacDonald
“Impossibilities “I thank thee, Lord, for forgiving me, but I prefer staying in the darkness: forgive me that too.”—“No; that cannot be. The one thing that cannot be forgiven is the sin of choosing to be evil, of refusing deliverance. It is impossible to forgive that. It would be to take part in it.”
“But at length, O God, will you not cast Death and Hell into the lake of Fire - even into your own consuming self? Death shall then die everlastingly. ... Then indeed will you be all in all. For then our poor brothers and sisters, every one - O God, we trust in you, the Consuming Fire - shall have been burnt clean and brought home. For if their moans, myriads of ages away, would turn heaven for us into hell - shall a man be more merciful than God? Shall, of all His glories, His mercy alone not be infinite? Shall a brother love a brother more than The Father loves a son? - more than The Brother Christ loves His brother? Would He not die yet again to save one brother more?”
“Come, lead me to the block. Bear him my head. 108 They smile at me who shortly shall be dead. 109”
“Instead, in the morning, mangled and sleeping the sleep of the sword, they slopped and floated like the ocean's leavings.”
“Hamlet, I will argue, is a play about reading and misreading, about the difficulties of interpretation.”
“See you now your bait of falsehood take this carp of truth; and thus do we of wisdom and of reach, with windlasses and with assays of bias, by indirections find directions out.”
topics: deception
“For in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.”
“Приходится говорить осмотрительно, а не то мы погибнем от двусмысленности”
“It seemed quite natural that the little lady should be there; for many things we never could believe, have only to happen, and then there is nothing strange about them.”
― George MacDonald ,
from Cross Purposes
“Better to sit at the waters birth, Than a sea of waves to win; To live in the love that floweth forth, Than the love that cometh in. Be thy a well of love, my child, Flowing, and free, and sure; For a cistern of love, though undefiled, Keeps not the spirit pure.”
“For repose is not the end of education; its end is a noble unrest, an ever renewed awaking from the dead, a ceaseless questioning of the past for the interpretation of the future, an urging on of the motions of life, which had better far be accelerated into fever, than retarded into lethargy.”
― George MacDonald ,
from A Dish of Orts
“Her intercourse with Andrew had as yet failed to open her eyes to the fact that the faith required of us is faith in a person, and not in the truest of statements concerning anything, even concerning him; or to the fact, that faith in the living One, the very essence of it, consists in obedience to Him. A man can obey before he is sure, and except he obey the command he knows to be right, wherever it may come from, he will never be sure. To find the truth, man or woman must be true.”
“I maun hae buiks. I wad get the newspapers whiles, but no aften, for they’re a sair loss o’ precious time. Ye see they tell ye things afore they’re sure, an’ ye hae to spen’ yer time the day readin’ what ye’ll hae to spen’ yer time the morn readin’ oot again; an’ ye may as weel bide till the thing’s sattled a wee.”
“THE SHADOWS Table of Contents Old Ralph Rinkelmann made his living by comic sketches, and all but lost it again by tragic poems. So he was just the man to be chosen king of the fairies, for in Fairyland the sovereignty is elective. It is no doubt very strange that fairies should desire to have a mortal king; but the fact is, that with all their knowledge and power, they cannot get rid of the feeling that some men are greater than they are, though they can neither fly nor play tricks. So at such times as there happens to be twice the usual number of sensible electors, such a man as Ralph Rinkelmann gets to be chosen. They”
“How many things are there in the world in which the wisest of us can ill descry the hand of God! Who not knowing could read the lily in its bulb, the great oak in the pebble-like acorn? God’s beginnings do not look like his endings, but they are like; the oak is in the acorn, though we cannot see it.”
“The more people trust in God, the less will they trust their own judgments, or interfere with the ordering of events.”
“So, teaching him only that which she loved, not that which she had been taught, Janet read to Gibbie of Jesus, and talked to him of Jesus, until at length his whole soul was full of the Man, of His doings, of His words, of His thoughts, of His life. Almost before he knew, he was trying to fashion his life after that of the Master. Janet had no inclination to trouble her own head, or Gibbie's heart, with what men call the plan of salvation. It was enough to her to find that he followed her Master.”
Group of Brands
© 2026 Bibleportal.com All rights reserved.
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.