Right gladly would He free them from their misery, but He knows only one way: He will teach them to be like himself, meek and lowly, bearing with gladness the yoke of His Father's will. This in the one, the only right, the only possible way of freeing them from their sin, the cause of their unrest.
George MacDonaldMy prayers, my God, flow from what I am not; I think thy answers make me what I am.
George MacDonaldWhen I can no more stir my soul to move, and life is but the ashes of a fire; when I can but remember that my heart once used to live and love, long and aspire- O, be thou then the first, the one thou art; be thou the calling, before all answering love, and in me wake hope, fear, boundless desire.
George MacDonaldThe trees bathed their great heads in the waves of the morning, while their roots were planted deep in gloom; save where on the borders of the sunshine broke against their stems, or swept in long streams through their avenues, washing with brighter hue all the leaves over which it flowed; revealing the rich brown of the dacayed leaves and fallen pine-cones, and the delicate greens of the long grasses and tiny forests of moss that covered the channel over which it passed in the motionless rivers of light.
George MacDonaldGod 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.
George MacDonaldWhat distressed me most - more even than my own folly - was the perplexing question - How can beauty and ugliness dwell so near? Even with her altered complexion and face of dislike; disenchanted of the belief that clung around her; known for a living, walking sepulcher, faithless, deluding, traitorous; I felt, notwithstanding all this, that she was beautiful. Upon this I pondered with undiminished perplexity.
George MacDonald