Inspirational Quotes by George MacDonald
“lots of turmoil - we have two fires in Santa Fe mountains..not much compared to California but along with other issues I like "when sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions"..”
topics: hamlet-act-4-scene-5
“Parece natural en la vejez excedernos en la desconfianza, igual que es propio de los jóvenes andar escasos de juicio.”
“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.”
“To be or not to be - that is the question! Is it wilder to withstand all the arrows and bullets of violent fate in the heart or to take arms and stand against the sea of grief.”
“Bütün bunlar görünüş gerçekten. Gösteriş olabilir bütün bunlar. Ama hiçbiri anlatmaz bunların Benim içimdekini.”
topics: shakespeare
“why, she would hang on him, As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on:”
topics: lust
“A beast does not know that he is a beast, and the nearer a man gets to being a beast the less he knows it.”
“I will attempt no historical or theological classification of MacDonald’s thought, partly because I have not the learning to do so, still more because I am no great friend to such pigeonholing. One very effective way of silencing the voice of conscience is to impound in an Ism the teacher through whom it speaks: the trumpet no longer seriously disturbs our rest when we have murmured “Thomist,” “Barthian,” or “Existentialist.”
“I have never concealed the fact that I regarded him as my master; indeed I fancy I have never written a book in which I did not quote from him.”
“Truth is one, and he who does the truth in the small thing is of the truth; he who will do it only in a great thing, who postpones the small thing near him to the great farther from him, is not of the truth.”
“We may trust God with our past as heartily as with our future. It will not hurt us so long as we do not try to hide things, so long as we are ready to bow our heads in hearty shame where it is fit we should be ashamed. For to be ashamed is a holy and blessed thing. Shame is a thing to shame only those who want to appear, not those who want to be. Shame is to shame those who want to pass their examination, not those who would get into the heart of things…. To be humbly ashamed is to be plunged in the cleansing bath of truth.”
“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.”
“The more originating, living, visible truth, embracing all truths in all relations, is Jesus Christ. He is true: He is the live Truth.”
“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. Communion with God is the one need of the soul beyond all other need: prayer is the beginning of that communion, and some need is the motive of that prayer…. So begins a communion, a taking with God, a coming-to-one with Him, which is the sole end of prayer, yea, of existence itself in its infinite phases.”
“[350] The Root of All Rebellion It is because we are not near enough to Thee to partake of thy liberty that we want a liberty of our own different from thine. [351] Two Silly Young Women”
“The cessation of labor affords but the necessary occasion; makes it possible, as it were, for the occupant of an outlying station in the wilderness to return to his Father’s house for fresh supplies…. The child-soul goes home at night, and returns in the morning to the labors of the school.”
“[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.”
“Not only then has each man his individual relation to God, but each man has his peculiar relation to God. He is to God a peculiar being, made after his own fashion, and that of no one else. Hence he can worship God as no man else can worship Him.”
“A man is in bondage to whatever he cannot part with that is less than himself.”
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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.