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 MacDonaldThe ideal is the only absolute real; and it must become the real in the individual life as well, however impossible they may count it who never tried it.
George MacDonaldIt 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 MacDonaldIt matters little where a man may be at this moment; the point is whether he is growing.
George MacDonaldAs you grow ready for it, somewhere or other you will find what is needful for you in a book.
George MacDonaldAnnihilation 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 MacDonaldWhat I would say is this, that the light is not blinding because God would hide, but because the truth is too glorious for our vision.
George MacDonaldHe 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.
George MacDonaldOne who not merely beholds the outward shows of things, but catches a glimpse of the soul that looks out of them, whose garment and revelation they are-if he be such, I say, he will stand, for more than a moment, speechless with something akin to that which made the morning stars sing together.
George MacDonaldForgiveness unleashes joy. It brings peace. It washes the slate clean. It sets all the highest values of love in motion.
George MacDonaldThe truly wise talk little about religion and are not given to taking sides on doctrinal issues. When they hear people advocating or opposing the claims of this or that party in the church, they turn away with a smile such as men yield to the talk of children. They have no time, they would say, for that kind of thing. They have enough to do in trying to faithfully practice what is beyond dispute.
George MacDonaldI am sometimes almost terrified at the scope of the demands made upon me, at the perfection of the self-abandonment required of me; yet outside of such absoluteness can be no salvation.
George MacDonaldOn Good Friday Jesus died But rose again at Eastertide.....Lord, teach us to understand that your Son died to save us not from suffering but from ourselves, not from injustice...but from being unjust. He died that we might live - but live as he lives, by dying as he died who died to himself.
George MacDonaldJoy cannot unfold the deepest truths. Cometh white-robed Sorrow, stooping and wan, and flingeth wide the door she must not enter.
George MacDonaldHer face was fair and pretty, with eyes like two bits of night sky, each with a star dissolved in the blue.
George MacDonaldGod is the God of the animals in a far lovelier way, I suspect, than many of us dare to think, but he will not be the God of a man by making a good beast of him.
George MacDonaldIn whatever man does without God, he must fail miserably, or succeed more miserably.
George MacDonaldTo love righteousness is to make it grow, not to avenge it. Throughout his life on earth, Jesus resisted every impulse to work more rapidly for a lower good.
George MacDonaldPrimarily, God is not bound to punish sin; he is bound to destroy sin. The only vengeance worth having on sin is to make the sinner himself its executioner.
George MacDonaldTo free a man from suffering, he must be set right, put in health; and the health at the root of man's being, his rightness, is to be free from wrongness, that is, from sin. A man is right when there is no wrong in him. I do not mean set free from the sins he has done: that will follow; I mean the sins he is doing, or is capable of doing; the sins in his being which spoil his nature — the wrongness in him — the evil he consents to; the sin he is, which makes him do the sin he does.
George MacDonaldLET A MAN THINK AND CARE ever so little about God, he does not therefore exist without God. God is here with him, upholding, warming, delighting, teaching him-making life a good thing to him. God gives him himself, though the man knows it not.
George MacDonaldThe part of the 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 MacDonaldI would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God's thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest and most precious thing in all thinking.
George MacDonaldBut more impressive than the facts and figures as to height, width, age, etc., are the entrancing beauty and tranquility that pervade the forest, the feelings of peace, awe and reverence that it inspires.
George MacDonaldThe possession of wealth is, as it were, prepayment, and involves an obligation of honor to the doing of correspondent work.
George MacDonaldRemember, then, that whoever does not mean good is always in danger of harm. But I try to give everybody fair play, and those that are in the wrong are in far more need of it always than those who are in the right: they can afford to do without it.
George MacDonaldOne of the grandest things in having rights is, that though they are your rights you may give them up
George MacDonaldIf both Church and fairy-tale belong to humanity, they may occasionally cross circles, without injury to either.
George MacDonaldThe miracles of Jesus were the ordinary works of his Father, wrought small and swift that we might take them in.
George MacDonald[God desires] not that He may say to them, "Look how mighty I am, and go down upon your knees and worship," for power alone was never yet worthy of prayer; but that He may say thus: "Look, my children, you will never be strong but with my strength. I have no other to give you. And that you can get only by trusting in me. I can not give it you any other way. There is no other way."
George MacDonald