“The best preparation for the future is the present well seen to, and the last duty done.”
— George MacDonald
“The more I work with the body, keeping my assumptions in a temporary state of reservation, the more I appreciate and sympathize with a given disease. The body no longer appears as a sick or irrational demon, but as a process with its own inner logic and wisdom.”
— George MacDonald
“Forgiveness is the giving, and so the receiving, of life.”
— George MacDonald
“Few delights can equal the presence of one whom we trust utterly.”
— George MacDonald
“When we are out of sympathy with the young, then I think our work in this world is over.”
— George MacDonald
“To have what we want is riches but to be able to do without is power.”
— 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
“How strange this fear of death is! We are never frightened at a sunset.”
— George MacDonald
“The principle part of faith is patience.”
— 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
“Attitudes are more important than facts.”
— George MacDonald
“The west is broken into bars Of orange gold and gray Gone is the sun come are the stars And night infolds the day.”
— George Macdonald
“To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved.”
— George Macdonald
“It is not the cares of today but the cares of tomorrow that weigh a man down. For the needs of today we have corresponding strength given. For the morrow we are told to trust. It is not ours yet.”
— George Macdonald
“It is when tomorrow’s burden is added to the burden of today that the weight is more than a man can bear.”
— George Macdonald
“Fear is faithlessness.”
— George Macdonald
“A perfect faith would lift us absolutely above fear.”
— George Macdonald
“My prayers my God flow from what I am not I think Thy answers make me what I am.”
— George Macdonald
“This is a sane wholesome practical working faith: That it is a man’s business to do the will of God second that God himself takes on the care of that man and third that therefore that man ought never to be afraid of anything.”
— George Macdonald
“Timely service like timely gifts is doubled in value.”
— George Macdonald
“We die daily. Happy those who daily come to life as well.”
— George Macdonald
“Not only then has each man his individual relation to God but each man has his peculiar relation to God.”
— George Macdonald
“Forgiveness is the giving and so the receiving of life.”
— George Macdonald
“The principle part of faith is patience.”
— George Macdonald
“It is not by driving away our brother that we can be alone with God.”
— 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
“Where did you come from baby dear? Out of the Everywhere into here.”
— George Macdonald
“I should not be surprised,” said Mr. Graham, “that the day should come when men will refuse to believe in God simply on the ground of the apparent injustice of things. They would argue that there might be either an omnipotent being who did not care, or a good being who could not help, but that there could not be a being both all good and omnipotent or else he would never have suffered things to be as they are.”
— George MacDonald
“He was dimly angry with himself, he did not know why. It was that he had struck his wife. He had forgotten it, but was miserable about it, notwithstanding. And this misery was the voice of the great Love that had made him and his wife and the baby and Diamond, speaking in his heart, and telling him to be good. 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. On Mount Sinai, it was thunder; in the cabman’s heart it was misery; in the soul of St John it was perfect blessedness.”
— George MacDonald
“She would be one of those who kneel to their own shadows till feet grow on their knees; then go down on their hands till their hands grow into feet; then lay their faces on the ground till they grow into snouts; when at last they are a hideous sort of lizards, each of which believes himself the best, wisest, and loveliest being in the world, yea, the very centre of the universe. And so they run about for ever looking for their own shadows that they may worship them, and miserable because they cannot find them, being themselves too near the ground to have any shadows; and what becomes of them at last, there is but one who knows.”
— George MacDonald