George MacDonald Quotes
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.
A man's real belief is that which he lives by. What a man believes is the thing he does, not the thing he thinks.
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.
Forgiveness unleashes joy. It brings peace. It washes the slate clean. It sets all the highest values of love in motion.
Any faith in Him, however small, is better than any belief about Him, however great.
No man ever sank under the burden of the day. It is when tomorrow's burden is added to the burden of today that the weight is more than a man can bear.
It is by loving and not by being loved that one can come nearest to the soul of another.
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.
God left the world unfinished for man to work his skill upon. He left the electricity still in the cloud, the oil still in the earth.
If we do not die to ourselves, we cannot live to God, andhe that does not live to God, is dead.
In whatever man does without God, he must fail miserably, or succeed more miserably.
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.
Free will is not the liberty to do whatever one likes, but the power of doing whatever one sees ought to be done, even in the very face of otherwise overwhelming impulse. There lies freedom, indeed.
He who seeks the Father more than anything He can give, is likely to have what he asks, for he is not likely to ask amiss.
To give truth to him who loves it not is but to give him more plentiful material for misinterpretation.
This is and has been the Father's work from the beginning-to bring us into the home of His heart.
The purposes of God point to one simple end-that we should be as he is, think the same thoughts, mean the same things, possess the same blessedness.
You can't live on amusement. It is the froth on water - an inch deep and then the mud.
I find the doing of the will of God leaves me no time for disputing about his plans — I do not say for thinking about them.
Above all things, I delight in listening to stories, and sometimes in telling them.
If God were not only to hear our prayers, as he does ever and always, but to answer them as we want them answered, he would not be God our Saviour but the ministering genius of our destruction.
I write, not for children,but for the child-like, whether they be of five, or fifty, or seventy-five.
Trust to God to weave your thread into the great web, though the pattern shows it not yet.
The two pillars of 'political correctness' are, a) willful ignorance, and b) a steadfast refusal to face the truth.
Many a thief is a better man than many a clergyman, and miles nearer to the gate of the kingdom.
Not only then has each man his individual relation to God, but each man has his peculiar relation to God.
I am perplexed at the stupidity of the ordinary religious being. In the most practical of all matters he will talk and speculate and try to feel, but he will not set himself to do.
You must learn to be strong in the dark as well as in the day, else you will always be only half brave.
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.
To judge religion we must have it--not stare at it from the bottom of a seemingly interminable ladder.
My prayers, my God, flow from what I am not; I think thy answers make me what I am.
It is our best work that God wants, not the dregs of our exhaustion. I think he must prefer quality to quantity.
In low theologies, hell is invariably the deepest truth, and the love of God is not so deep as hell.