Inspirational Quotes by George MacDonald
“To hear one talk is better than to see one.”
topics: writing-character-development
“I firmly believe people have hitherto been a great deal too much taken up about doctrine and far too little about practice. The word doctrine, as used in the Bible, means teaching of duty, not theory. I preached a sermon about this. We are far too anxious to be definite and to have finished, well-polished, sharp-edged systems — forgetting that the more perfect a theory about the infinite, the surer it is to be wrong, the more impossible it is to be right.”
“The sign or cause of coming death is an indescribable longing for something, they know not what, which seizes them, and drives them into solitude, consuming them within, till the body fails. When a youth and a maiden look too deep into each other's eyes, this longing seizes and possesses them; but instead of drawing nearer to each other, they wander away, each alone, into solitary places, and die of their desire. But it seems to me, that thereafter they are born babes upon our earth: where, if, when grown, they find each other, it goes well with them; if not, it will seem to go ill. MacDonald, George. Phantastes, a Faerie Romance for Men and Women (Kindle Locations 1214-1218). Kindle Edition.”
topics: love
“A condition which of declension would indicate a devil, may of growth indicate a saint.”
“If you do not obey Him, you will not know Him. You will tell me, some of you, that I am always beating that anvil–that obedience to Christ is Christianity. Let me die insisting upon it. For my Lord insists upon it.”
“However strange it may well seem, to do one's duty will make any one conceited who only does it sometimes. Those who do it always would as soon think of being conceited of eating their dinner as of doing their duty. What honest boy would pride himself on not picking pockets? A thief who was trying to reform would. To be conceited of doing one's duty is then a sign of how little one does it, and how little one sees what a contemptible thing it is not to do it. Could any but a low creature be conceited of not being contemptible? Until our duty becomes to us common as breathing, we are poor creatures.”
“Ser ou não ser, eis a questão. Qual é mais digna ação da alma; sofrer os dardos penetrantes da sorte injusta, ou opor-se a esta corrente de calamidades e dar-lhes fim com atrevida resistência? Morrer... dormir... nada mais... Morrer é dormir, sonhar talvez...”
topics: filosófico
“When sorrows come, they don't come as lonely outposts, but swell in troops”
“Ay, sir. To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.”
“But all is in vain, for that is our mood. Even the nature keeps it's habits and doesn't care, for what the shame objects.”
“Then she would laugh like the very spirit of fun; only in her laugh there was something missing. What it was, I find myself unable to describe. I think it was a certain tone, depending upon the possibility of sorrow--MORBIDEZZA, perhaps. She never smiled.”
topics: the-light-princess
“GHOST: "Mark me." HAMLET: "I will." GHOST: "My hour is almost come, when I to sulph’uous and tormenting flames must render up myself." (...) I am thy father’s spirit, doom’d for a certain term to walk the night and for the day confin’d to waste in fires, till the foul crimes done in my days of nature are burnt and purg’d away.”
“Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself, She turns to favor and to prettiness.”
“Bütün bunlar görünüş gerçekten. Gösteriş olabilir bütün bunlar. Ama hiçbiri anlatmaz bunların Benim içimdekini.”
topics: shakespeare
“... it's dangerous when the low souls infiltrate themselves within mighty adversaries and their furious hounds.”
“Oh the folly of any mind that would explain God before obeying Him! That would map out the character of God instead of crying, Lord, what wouldst thou have me to do?”
“[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 He knows Prayer to be the thing we need first and most? What if the main object in God’s idea of prayer be the supplying of our great, our endless need—the need of Himself?…Hunger may drive the runaway child home, and he may or may not be fed at once, but he needs his mother more than his dinner.”
“Nor will God force any door to enter in. He may send a tempest about the house; the wind of His admonishment may burst doors and windows, yea, shake the house to its foundations; but not then, not so, will He enter. The door must be opened by the willing hand, ere the foot of Love will cross the threshold.”
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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.