George MacDonald

How strange this fear of death is! We are never frightened at a sunset.

— George MacDonald

They say that Time and Space exist not, save in our thoughts. If so, then that which has been is, and the Past can never cease.

— George MacDonald

The best preparation for the future is the present well seen to, and the last duty done.

— George MacDonald

Man finds it hard to get what he wants, because he does not want the best; God finds it hard to give, because He would give the best, and man will not take it.

— George MacDonald

To receive honestly is the best thanks for a good thing.

— George MacDonald

Two people may be at the same spot in manners and behaviour, and yet one may be getting better, and the other worse, which is the greatest of differences that could possibly exist between them.

— George MacDonald

Attitudes are more important than facts.

— George MacDonald

"In the midst of life we are in death," said one; it is more true that in the midst of death we are in life. Life is the only reality; what men call death is but a shadow — a word for that which cannot be — a negation, owing the very idea of itself to that which it would deny. But for life there could be no death. If God were not, there would not even be nothing. Not even nothingness preceded life. Nothingness owes its very idea to existence.

— George MacDonald

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

That is always the way with you men; you believe nothing the first time; and it is foolish enough to let mere repetition convince you of what you consider in itself unbelievable.

— George MacDonald

What distressed me most — more even than my own folly — was the perplexing question, How can beauty and ugliness dwell so near?

— George MacDonald

Afterwards I learned, that the best way to manage some kinds of painful thoughts, is to dare them to do their worst; to let them lie and gnaw at your heart till they are tired; and you find you still have a residue of life they cannot kill.

— George MacDonald

Why are all reflections lovelier than what we call the reality? — not so grand or so strong, it may be, but always lovelier?

— George MacDonald

All that is not God is death.

— George MacDonald

There is no cheating in nature and the simple unsought feelings of the soul. There must be a truth involved in it, though we may but in part lay hold of the meaning.

— George MacDonald

All that man sees has to do with man. Worlds cannot be without an intermundane relationship. The community of the centre of all creation suggests an interradiating connection and dependence of the parts. Else a grander idea is conceivable than that which is already embodied.

— George MacDonald

Benefits conferred awaken love in some minds, as surely as benefits received in others.

— George MacDonald

Endurance must conquer, where force could not reach.

— George MacDonald

Thou goest thine, and I go mine — For all the world to win.

— George MacDonald

It is better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold up his head in his pride and fancied innocence. I learned that he that will be a hero, will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work, is sure of his manhood.

— George MacDonald

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.

— George MacDonald

Diamond, however, had not been out so late before in all his life, and things looked so strange about him! — just as if he had got into Fairyland, of which he knew quite as much as anybody; for his mother had no money to buy books to set him wrong on the subject.

— George MacDonald

For that great Love speaks in the most wretched and dirty hearts; only the tone of its voice depends on the echoes of the place in which it sounds.

— George MacDonald

Age is not all decay; it is the ripening, the swelling, of the fresh life within, that withers and bursts the husks.

— George MacDonald

A true friend is forever a friend.

— George MacDonald

To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved.

— George MacDonald

Afflictions are but the shadow of His wings.

— George MacDonald

Some thinkers would feel sorely hampered if at liberty to use no forms but such as existed in nature, or to invent nothing save in accordance with the laws of the world of the senses; but it must not therefore be imagined that they desire escape from the region of law. Nothing lawless can show the least reason why it should exist, or could at best have more than an appearance of life.

— George MacDonald

A fairytale is not an allegory. There may be allegory in it, but it is not an allegory. He must be an artist indeed who can, in any mode, produce a strict allegory that is not a weariness to the spirit.

— George MacDonald

We are often unable to tell people what they need to know because they want to know something else.

— George MacDonald

If instead of a gem, or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give.

— George MacDonald

That which is in a man, not that which lies beyond his vision is the main factor in what is about to befall him: the operation upon him is the event.

— George MacDonald

Come, come to Him who made thy heart; Come weary and oppressed; To come to Jesus is thy part; His part, to give thee rest.

— George MacDonald

All is loss that comes between us and Christ.

— George MacDonald

Division has done more to hide Christ from the view of men than all the infidelity that has ever been spoken.

— George MacDonald

You have tasted of death now,” said the old man. “Is it good?

— George MacDonald

It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected. The best men do not want to govern their fellowmen.

— George MacDonald

It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected. The best men do not want to govern their fellowmen.

— George MacDonald

The principle part of faith is patience.

— George MacDonald

Age is not all decay; it is the ripening, the swelling, of the fresh life within, that withers and bursts the husk.

— George MacDonald