Inspirational Quotes by George MacDonald

“How terribly, then, have the theologians misrepresented God in the measures of the low and showy, not the lofty and simple humanities! Nearly all of them represent him as a great King on a grand throne, thinking how grand he is, and making it the business of his being and the end of his universe to keep up his glory, wielding the bolts of a Jupiter against them that take his name in vain. They would not allow this, but follow out what they say, and it comes much to this. Brothers, have you found our king? There he is, kissing little children and saying they are like God. There he is at table with the head of a fisherman lying on his bosom, and somewhat heavy at heart that even he, the beloved disciple, cannot yet understand him well. The simplest peasant who loves his children and his sheep were - no, not a truer, for the other is false, but - a true type of our God beside that monstrosity of a monarch.”

“I should like to remark, for the sake of princes and princesses in general, that it is a low and contemptible thing to refuse to confess a fault, or even an error. If a true princess has done wrong, she is always uneasy until she has had an opportunity of throwing the wrongness away from her by saying: 'I did it; and I wish I had not; and I am sorry for having done it.' So you see there is some ground for supposing that Curdie was not a miner only, but a prince as well. Many such instances have been known in the world's history.”

“As the love of him who is love transcends ours as the heavens are higher than the earth, so must he desire in his child infinitely more than the most jealous love of the best mother can desire in hers. He would have him rid of all discontent, all fear, all grudging, all bitterness in word or thought, all gauging and measuring of his own with a different rod from that he would apply to another's. He will have no curling of the lip; no indifference in him to the man whose service in any form he uses; no desire to excel another, no contentment at gaining by his loss. He will not have him receive the smallest service without gratitude; would not hear from him a tone to jar the heart of another, a word to make it ache, be the ache ever so transient.”

“Wherever there is anything to love, there is beauty in some form.”

“Never, my little one, hide anything from those that love you. Never let anything that makes itself a nest in your heart, grow into a secret, for then at once it will begin to eat a hole in it.”

“It is because the young cannot recognize the youth of the aged, and the old will not acknowledge the experience of the young, that they repel each other.”

“Yes,' he answered; 'and you will be dead, so long as you refuse to die.”

“Until a man has love, it is well he should have fear. So long as there are wild beasts about, it is better to be afraid than secure.”

“How often do we look upon God as our last and feeblest resource! We go to Him because we have nowhere else to go. And when we learn that the storms of life have not driven us upon the rocks but into the desired heaven.”

“But in truth there was more expression in the flower than was yet in the face. The flower expressed what God was thinking of when He made it; the face, what the girl was thinking of her self. When she ceased thinking of herself, then, like the flower, she would show what God was thinking of when he made her.”

“Suppose you didn't know him, would that make any difference?' 'No,' said Willie, after thinking a little. 'Other people would know him if I didn't.' 'Yes, and if nobody knew him, God would know him, and anybody God has thought worth making, it's an honor to do anything for.”

“...To trust in the strength of God in our weakness; to say, ‘I am weak: so let me be: God is strong;’ to seek from him who is our life, as the natural, simple cure of all that is amiss with us, power to do, and be, and live, even when we are weary,—this is the victory that overcometh the world. To believe in God our strength in the face of all seeming denial, to believe in him out of the heart of weakness and unbelief, in spite of numbness and weariness and lethargy; to believe in the wide-awake real, through all the stupefying, enervating, distorting dream; to will to wake, when the very being seems athirst for a godless repose;—these are the broken steps up to the high fields where repose is but a form of strength, strength but a form of joy, joy but a form of love. ‘I am weak,’ says the true soul, ‘but not so weak that I would not be strong; not so sleepy that I would not see the sun rise; not so lame but that I would walk! Thanks be to him who perfects strength in weakness, and gives to his beloved while they sleep!”

“Don't bother about believing it, if you don't like it,' said the Princess. 'It doesn't so much matter what you believe as what I am.”

“Then the maiden climbed into a tree, and, seating herself in the branches, began to knit.”

“Short summers lightly have a forward spring.”

“[91] Why Should It Be Necessary? “But if God is so good as you represent Him, and if He knows all that we need, and better far than we do ourselves, why should it be necessary to ask Him for anything?” I answer, What if He knows Prayer to be the thing we need first and most? What if the main object in God’s idea of prayer be the supplying of our great, our endless need—the need of Himself?…Hunger may drive the runaway child home, and he may or may not be fed at once, but he needs his mother more than his dinner. Communion with God is the one need of the soul beyond all other need: prayer is the beginning of that communion, and some need is the motive of that prayer”

“That struggle was too strong, hateful and long-lasting, which had come on the people, dire wrack and ruin - the greatest of night-evils.”

“Over the waves, with the wind behind her and foam at her neck, she flew like a bird until her curved prow had covered the distance...”

“When you are young so many things are difficult to believe, and yet the dullest people will tell you that they are true--such things, for instance, as that the earth goes round the sun, and that it is not flat but round. But the things that seem really likely, like fairy-tales and magic, are, so say the grown-ups, not true at all. Yet they are so easy to believe, especially when you see them happening. And, as I am always telling you, the most wonderful things happen to all sorts of people, only you never hear about them because the people think that no one will believe their stories, and so they don't tell them to anyone except me. And they tell me, because they know that I can believe anything.”

“Gerald's look assured her that he and the others would be as near angels as children could be without ceasing to be human.”