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George MacDonald quotes

English (41)

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“Thou doubtest because thou lovest the truth.” George MacDonald, Lilith
“We are often unable to tell people what they NEED to know, because they WANT to know something else, and would therefore only misunderstand what we said.” George MacDonald, Lilith
“Doubt . . . may be a poor encouragement to do anything, but it is a bad reason for doing nothing.” George MacDonald, Lilith
“The man who grounds his action on another's cowardice, is essentially a coward himself.” George MacDonald, Lilith
“Past tears are present strength” George MacDonald, Phantastes
“The only harm is in doing what Fear tells you. Fear is not your master! Laugh in his face and he will run away.” George MacDonald, Lilith
“There is no slave but the creature that wills against its creator.” George MacDonald, Lilith
“You know nothing about whereness. The only way to come to know where you are is to begin to make yourself at home.” George MacDonald, Lilith
“To try to be brave is to be brave.” George MacDonald, At the Back of the North Wind
“The part of philanthropist is indeed a dangerous one; and the man who would do his neighbour good must first study how not to do him evil, and must begin by pulling the beam out of his own eye.” George MacDonald, Lilith
“Joy cannot unfold the deepest truths, although deepest truth must be deepest joy.” George MacDonald, Phantastes
“Annihilation itself is no death to evil. Only good where evil was, is evil dead. An evil thing must live with its evil until it chooses to be good. That alone is the slaying of evil.” George MacDonald, Lilith
“A man is as free as he chooses to make himself, never an atom freer” George MacDonald, Lilith
“No one who will not sleep can ever wake.” George MacDonald, Lilith
“Except you are a true sexton, books are but dead bodies to you, and a library nothing but a catacomb!” George MacDonald, Lilith
“I had chosen the dead rather than the living, the thing thought rather than the thing thinking!” George MacDonald, Lilith
“Seeing is not believing—it is only seeing.” George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblin
“Whose work is it but your own to open your eyes? But indeed the business of the universe is to make such a fool of you that you will know yourself for one, and so begin to be wise!” George MacDonald, Lilith
“Blessed be the true life that the pauses between its throbs are not death!” George MacDonald, Lilith
“But come; loss now will be gain then! To wait is harder than to run, and its meed is the fuller.” George MacDonald, Lilith
“Self-loathing is not sorrow. Yet it is good, for it marks a step in the way home, and in the father's arms the prodigal forgets the self he abominates. Once with his father, he is to himself of no more account.” George MacDonald, Lilith
“Alas, how easily things go wrong! A sigh too much, or a kiss too long, And there follows a mist and a weeping rain, And life is never the same again.” George MacDonald, Phantastes
“To be or not to be, is NOT the question!” George MacDonald, Lilith
“Into the created can pour itself the creating will, and so redeem it!” George MacDonald, Lilith
“Only by the reflex of other lives can he ripen his specialty, develop the idea of himself, the individuality that distinguishes him from every other.” George MacDonald, Lilith
“When a man dreams his own dream, he is the sport of his dream; when Another gives it him, that Other is able to fulfil it.” George MacDonald, Lilith
“I saw now that a man alone is but a being that may become a man—that he is but a need, and therefore a possibility.” George MacDonald, Lilith
“People must believe what they can, and those who believe more must not be hard upon those who believe less.” George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblin
“Our life is no dream; but it ought to become one, and perhaps will.” George MacDonald, Phantastes
“that is the way fear serves us: it always sides with the thing we are afraid of.” George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblin
“It is when people do wrong things wilfully that they are the more likely to do them again.” George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblin
“All the days of my appointed time will I wait till my change come.” George MacDonald, Lilith
“if I'm not fair to other people, I'm not worth being understood myself.” George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblin
“the best way to manage some kinds of pain fill 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, Phantastes
“If you know you are yourself, you know that you are not somebody else; but do you know that you are yourself?” George MacDonald, Lilith
“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, At the Back of the North Wind
“Her face was fair and pretty, with eyes like two bits of night sky, each with a star dissolved in the blue.” George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblin
“And her life will perhaps be the richer, for holding now within it the memory of what came, but could not stay.” George MacDonald, Phantastes
“Even with her altered complexion and her face of dislike; disenchanted of the belief that clung around her; known for a living, walking sepulchre, faithless, deluding, traitorous; I felt notwithstanding all this, that she was beautiful.” George MacDonald, Phantastes
“I begin to think there are better things than being comfortable.” George MacDonald, At the Back of the North Wind
“What a good thing, for instance, it was that one princess should sleep for a hundred years! Was she not saved from all the plague of young men who were not worthy of her?” George MacDonald, At the Back of the North Wind

Related topics

life death self waiting doubt good fear action evil knowledge truth heart belief dream sleep encouragement strength cowardice past love

Related sources

Lilith (24)
Phantastes (7)
The Princess and the Goblin (6)
At the Back of the North Wind (4)