Inspirational Quotes by George MacDonald

“Instead, in the morning, mangled and sleeping the sleep of the sword, they slopped and floated like the ocean's leavings.”

“Come, lead me to the block. Bear him my head. 108 They smile at me who shortly shall be dead. 109”

“Shine out, fair sun, till I have bought a glass, That I may see my shadow as I pass.”

“Chorus for a Cat I will never subject be, I am free. Try to curb me and, no doubt, You'll find out Just exactly what a claw Is for! Or I'll dematerialize Before your eyes: Ere you lay a finger on Me, I'm gone! You may think I'm in the lane; Think again! You may guess I'm on the roof; Any proof? I am not to hold or bind, Or find. I will hunt and sing and fight In the night. All day long I lie and doze, Comatose: Never answer when you call And bawl. If to order me you choose, You will lose. Try to understand my mind And you'll find Truest friendship I will give While I live; Kindly amiability, And sympathy. If subservience you prefer, Buy a cur!”

“...the prose tradition had died two centuries before and the recreation of a full canon of all-purpose Scots was beyond even Scott's skill, nor did he attempt it, except, perhaps in the magnificent . He took the only course open to him, of writing his narrative in English and using Scots only for those who, given their social class, would still be speaking it: daft Davie Gellatley in , the gypsies and Dandie Dinmont in , the Headriggs in , Edie Ochiltree and the fisher-folk of Musselcrag in , Andrew Fairservice in , the Deanses in , Meg Dods in , and so on. The procedure gave reality to the Scots characters whose ways and ethos it was Scott's main purpose to portray, and the author in his best English, which lumbered along rather badly at times, did little more than lay out the setting for the action and act as impressario for the characters as they played their roles... ...Scott's felicity in conveying character and action through their Scots speech inspired his imitators for the next hundred years - Susan Ferrier, Hogg, Macdonald, Stevenson, Barrie, Crockett, Alexander, George Douglas, and John Buchan. The tradition of narrative in standard English and dialogue in various degrees of dialect has been the usual procedure since.”

“Entering by a wide gateway, but without gates, into an inner court, surrounded on all sides by great marble pillars supporting galleries above, I saw a large fountain of porphyry in the middle, throwing up a lofty column of water, which fell, with a noise as of the fusion of all sweet sounds, into a basin beneath; overflowing which, it ran into a single channel towards the interior of the building. Although the moon was by this time so low in the west, that not a ray of her light fell into the court, over the height of the surrounding buildings; yet was the court lighted by a second reflex from the sun of other lands. For the top of the column of water, just as it spread to fall, caught the moonbeams, and like a great pale lamp, hung high in the night air, threw a dim memory of light (as it were) over the court below.”

“Never tell a child ‘you have a soul. Teach him, you are a soul; you have a body.’ As we learn to think of things always in this order, that the body is but the temporary clothing of the soul, our views of death and the unbefittingness of customary mourning will approximate to those of Friends of earlier generations.”

“Now he learned what law and order and truth are, what consent and harmony mean; how the individual may find his own end in a higher end, where law and freedom mean the same thing, and the purest certainty exists without the slightest constraint.”

“Of all things let us avoid the false refuge of a weary collapse, a hopeless yielding to things as they are. It is the life in us that is discontented: we need more of what is discontented, not more of the cause of its discontent.”

“There is no heaven with a little hell in it - no plan to retain this or that of the devil in our hearts or our pockets. Out Satan must go, every hair and feather! ... There is no clothing in a robe of imputed righteousness, the poorest of legal cobwebs spun by spiritual spiders. ... Christ is our righteousness, not that we should escape punishment, still less escape being righteous, but as the live potent Creator of righteousness in us, so that we, with our wills receiving His spirit, shall like Him resist unto blood, striving against sin; shall know in ourselves, as He knows, what a lovely thing is righteousness, what a mean, ugly, unnatural thing is unrighteousness. He is our righteousness, and that righteousness is no fiction, no pretense, no imputation. ... Any system which tends to persuade men that there is any salvation but that of becoming righteous even as Jesus is righteous; that a man can be made good, as a good dog is good, without his own willed share in the making; that a man is saved by having his sins hidden under a robe of imputed righteousness - that system, so far this tendency, is of the devil and not of God. Thank God, not even error shall injure the true of heart. They grow in truth, and as love casts out fear, so truth casts out falsehood.”

“There is a great deal more to be got out of things than is generally got out of them, whether the thing be a chapter of the Bible or a yellow turnip, and the marvel is that those who use the most material should so often be those that show the least result in strength or character.”

“This is another to be added to the many proofs that verisimilitude is not in the least an essential element of verity.”

“Is it not time I lost a few things when I care for them so unreasonably? This losing of things is of the mercy of God: It comes to teach us to let them go.”

“A man is enslaved to anything he cannot part with which is less than himself.”

“the road is difficult. - But come; loss now will be gain then! To wait is harder than to run, and its meed is the fuller.”

“When you have got quite alone, sit down and be lonely…fold your hands in your lap, and be still. Do not try to think anything… by and by, it may be, you will begin to know something of nature. Nature will soon speak to you, or not until, as Henri Vaughn says, some veil be broken in you”

“She did not cry long, however, for she was as brave as could be expected of a princess her age.”

“Let us keep our shame and be made clean! Shame is not defilement, though a mean pride persuades men so. On the contrary, the man who is honestly ashamed has begun to be clean.”

“You can't live on amusement. It is the froth on water — an inch deep and then the mud.”

“I can but pray the Father o' a' to haud his e'e upon her, an' his airms aboot her, an' keep aff the hardenin' o' the hert 'at despises coonsel!”