George MacDonald famous quotes

What does God want me to do?”, not “What will God do if I do so and so?
-- George MacDonald

#Doe #Want #Want Me

Above all things, I delight in listening to stories, and sometimes in telling them.
-- George MacDonald

#Listening #Stories #Delight

Any faith in Him, however small, is better than any belief about Him, however great.
-- George MacDonald

#Belief

To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved.
-- George MacDonald

#Love #Life #Friendship

We die daily. Happy those who daily come to life as well.
-- George MacDonald

#Life #Inspire #Wells

If instead of a gem, or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give.
-- George MacDonald

#Inspirational #Friendship #Encouragement

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

#Men #Greed #Liberty

Never tell a child 'you have a soul.' Teach him, you are a soul; you have a body.
-- George MacDonald

#Children #Soul #Body

Few delights can equal the presence of one whom we trust utterly.
-- George MacDonald

#Friendship #Trust #Tragedy

He may delay because it would not be safe to give us at once what we ask: we are not ready for it. To give ere we could truly receive, would be to destroy the very heart and hope of prayer, to cease to be our Father. The delay itself may work to bring us nearer to our help, to increase the desire, perfect the prayer, and ripen the receptive condition.
-- George MacDonald

#Prayer #Father #Heart

Forgiveness is the giving, and so the receiving, of life.
-- George MacDonald

#Forgiveness #Giving #Receiving

Work is not always required. There is such a thing as sacred idleness.
-- George MacDonald

#Inspirational #Stress #Practice

I find that doing of the will of God leaves me no time for disputing about His plans.
-- George MacDonald

#God #Leaving Me #Gods Will

God 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. How often we look upon God as our last and feeblest resource! We go to Him because we have nowhere else to go. And then we learn that the storms of life have driven us, not upon the rocks, but into the desired haven.
-- George MacDonald

#Adversity #Men #Skills

Love makes everything lovely; hate concentrates itself on the one thing hated.
-- George MacDonald

#Hate #Lovely #Hated

The first thing a kindness deserves is acceptance, the second, transmission.
-- George MacDonald

#Kindness #Acceptance #Firsts

It is not the high summer alone that is God's. The winter also is His. And into His winter He came to visit us. And all man's winters are His - the winter of our poverty, the winter of our sorrow, the winter of our unhappiness - even 'the winter of our discontent.
-- George MacDonald

#Summer #Winter #Men

All about us, in earth and air, wherever the eye or ear can reach, there is a power ever breathing itself forth in signs, now in daisy, now in a wind-waft, a cloud, a sunset; a power that holds constant and sweetest relation with the dark and silent world within us. The same God who is in us, and upon whose tree we are the buds, if not yet the flowers, also is all about us- inside, the Spirit; outside, the Word. And the two are ever trying to meet in us...
-- George MacDonald

#Faith #Flower #Inspiration

How strange this fear of death is! We are never frightened at a sunset.
-- George MacDonald

#Death #Sunset #Literature

"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?"
-- George MacDonald

#Christian #Prayer #Ideas

Sad, indeed, would the whole matter be if the Bible had told us everything God meant us to believe. But herein is the Bible greatly wronged. It nowhere lays claim to be regarded as the Word, the Way, the Truth. The Bible leads us to Jesus, the inexhaustible, the ever-unfolding Revelation of God. It is Christ "in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge," not the Bible, save as leading to Him.
-- George MacDonald

#Leadership #Jesus #Believe

Trust to God to weave your thread into the great web, though the pattern shows it not yet.
-- George MacDonald

#Patterns #Thread #Shows

All things are possible with God, but all things are not easy.
-- George MacDonald

#Easy

For when is the child the ideal child in our eyes and to our hearts? Is it not when with gentle hand he takes his father by the beard, and turns that father's face up to his brothers and sisters to kiss? when even the lovely selfishness of love-seeking has vanished, and the heart is absorbed in loving?
-- George MacDonald

#Brother #Children #Father

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. 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

#Men #Worry #Needs

When we are out of sympathy with the young, then I think our work in this world is over
-- George MacDonald

#Sympathy #Thinking #World

When we understand the outside of things, we think we have them. Yet the Lord puts his things in subdefined, suggestive shapes, yielding no satisfactory meaning to the mere intellect, but unfolding themselves to the conscience and heart.
-- George MacDonald

#Heart #Thinking #Shapes

In whatever man does without God, he must fail miserably, or succeed more miserably.
-- George MacDonald

#Men #Doe #Succeed

Man finds it hard to get what he wants, because he does not want the best; God finds it hard to give, because He would give the best, and man will not take it.
-- George MacDonald

#God #Men #Giving

It is not the cares of today, but the cares of tomorrow, that weigh a man down.
-- George MacDonald

#Men #Worry #Care

It has been well said that no man ever sank under the burden of the day. It is, when tomorrow's burden is added to the burden of today, that the weight is more than a man can bear. Never load yourselves so, my friends. If you find yourselves so loaded, at least remember this: it is your own doing, not God's. He begs you to leave the future to Him, and mind the present.
-- George MacDonald

#Men #Mind #Bears

You must learn to be strong in the dark as well as in the day, else you will always be only half brave.
-- George MacDonald

#Strong #Dark #Brave

He 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 MacDonald

#Father #Giving

Age is not all decay; it is the ripening, the swelling, of the fresh life within, that withers and bursts the husk.
-- George MacDonald

#Reality #Age #Decay

A beast does not know that he is a beast, and the nearer a man gets to being a beast, the less he knows it.
-- George MacDonald

#Men #Doe #Politics

Whose work is it but your own to open your eyes? But indeed the business of the universe is to make such a fool out of you that you will know yourself for one, and begin to be wise.
-- George MacDonald

#Wise #Eye #Fool

Annihilation 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 MacDonald

#Evil #Slaying #Annihilation

As in all sweetest music, a tinge of sadness was in every note. Nor do we know how much of the pleasures even of life we owe to the intermingled sorrows. Joy cannot unfold the deepest truths, although deepest truth must be deepest joy.
-- George MacDonald

#Sadness #Joy #Sorrow

The 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 MacDonald

#Wise #Children #Party

To have what we want is riches; but to be able to do without is power.
-- George MacDonald

#Power #Want #Able

The purposes of God point to one simple end-that we should be as he is, think the same thoughts, mean the same things, possess the same blessedness.
-- George MacDonald

#God #Mean #Simple

As you grow ready for it, somewhere or other you will find what is needful for you in a book.
-- George MacDonald

#Book #Library #Grows

Past tears are present strength.
-- George MacDonald

#Past #Tears

Half of the misery in the world comes from trying to look, instead of trying to be, what one is not.
-- George MacDonald

#Hypocrite #Trying #Looks

No man has the mind of Christ, except him who makes it his business to obey him.
-- George MacDonald

#Men #Mind #Christ

To be humbly ashamed is to be plunged in the cleansing bath of truth.
-- George MacDonald

#Cleansing #Baths #Sin

To receive honestly is the best thanks for a good thing.
-- George MacDonald

#Thanks #Good Things #Honestly

You doubt because you love truth.
-- George MacDonald

#Doubt #Truth Love

The miracles of Jesus were the ordinary works of his Father, wrought small and swift that we might take them in.
-- George MacDonald

#Jesus #Father #Miracle

One of the good things that come of a true marriage is, that there is one face on which changes come without your seeing them; or rather there is one face which you can still see the same, through all the shadows which years have gathered upon it.
-- George MacDonald

#Anniversary #Marriage #Years

Obedience is the key to every door.
-- George MacDonald

#Doors #Keys #Obedience

Instead of asking yourself whether you believe or not, ask yourself whether you have, this day, done one thing because He said, Do it! or once abstained because He said, Do not do it! It is simply absurd to say you believe, or even want to believe, in Him, if you do not do anything He tells you.
-- George MacDonald

#Believe #Asking #Done

It is simply absurd to say you believe, or even want to believe, in Him, if you do not do anything He tells you.
-- George MacDonald

#Believe #Want #Absurd

My prayers, my God, flow from what I am not; I think thy answers make me what I am.
-- George MacDonald

#Prayer #Thinking #Answers

We can walk without fear, full of hope and courage and strength to do His will, waiting for the endless good which He is always giving as fast as He can get us able to take it in.
-- George MacDonald

#Giving #Waiting #Able

It may be an infinitely less evil to murder a man than to refuse to forgive him. The former may be the act of a moment of passion: the latter is the heart’s choice.
-- George MacDonald

#Passion #Heart #Men

Anything big enough to occupy our minds is big enough to hang a prayer on.
-- George MacDonald

#Prayer #Mind #Enough

Good souls many will one day be horrified at the things they now believe of God.
-- George MacDonald

#Believe #Soul #One Day

No man ever sank under the burden of the day. 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

#Men #Worry #Bears

When a feeling was there, they felt as if it would never go; when it was gone, they felt as if it had never been; when it returned, they felt as if it had never gone.
-- George MacDonald

#Feelings #Gone

One thing is clear to me, that no indulgence of passion destroys the spiritual nature so much as respectable selfishness.
-- George MacDonald

#Spiritual #Passion #Selfishness

The principle part of faith is patience.
-- George MacDonald

#Patience #Principles

Now I want you to think that in life troubles will come, which seem as if they never would pass away. The night and storm look as if they would last forever; but the calm and the morning cannot be stayed; the storm in its very nature is transient. The effort of nature, as that of the human heart, ever is to return to its repose, for God is Peace.
-- George MacDonald

#Morning #Heart #Night

No words can express how much the world owes to sorrow. Most of the Psalms were born in the wilderness. Most of the Epistles were written in a prison. The greatest thoughts of the greatest thinkers have all passed through fire. The greatest poets have "learned in suffering what they taught in song." In bonds Bunyan lived the allegory that he afterwards wrote, and we may thank Bedford Jail for the Pilgrim's Progress. Take comfort, afflicted Christian! When God is about to make pre-eminent use of a person, He put them in the fire.
-- George MacDonald

#Christian #Song #Fire

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 MacDonald

#Father #Yoke #Unrest

The first thing in all progress is to leave something behind.
-- George MacDonald

#Progress #Firsts #Behinds

A man's real belief is that which he lives by. What a man believes is the thing he does, not the thing he thinks.
-- George MacDonald

#Real #Believe #Men

All those evil doctrines about God that work misery and madness have their origin in the brains of the wise and prudent, not in the hearts of children.
-- George MacDonald

#Wise #Children #Heart

A perfect faith would lift us absolutely above fear
-- George MacDonald

#Faith #Perfect

The best thing you can do for your fellow, next to rousing his conscience, is — not to give him things to think about, but to wake things up that are in him; or say, to make him think things for himself.
-- George MacDonald

#Thinking #Giving #Next

Love is the opener as well as closer of eyes.
-- George MacDonald

#Eye #Love Is #Wells

There is this difference between the growth of some human beings and that of others: in the one case it is a continuous dying, in the other a continuous resurrection.
-- George MacDonald

#Differences #Growth #Dying

You can't live on amusement. It is the froth on water - an inch deep and then the mud.
-- George MacDonald

#Water #Amusement #Mud

It is by loving and not by being loved that one can come nearest to the soul of another.
-- George MacDonald

#Love #Inspirational #Soul

We are all very anxious to be understood, and it is very hard not to be. But there is one thing much more necessary.' What is that, grandmother?' To understand other people.' Yes, grandmother. I must be fair - for if I'm not fair to other people, I'm not worth being understood myself. I see.
-- George MacDonald

#Grandmother #People #Anxious

To try to be brave is to be brave.
-- George MacDonald

#Brave #Trying #Be Brave

Afflictions are but the shadows of God's wings.
-- George MacDonald

#God #Wings #Shadow

I write, not for children,but for the child-like, whether they be of five, or fifty, or seventy-five.
-- George MacDonald

#Children #Writing #Fifty

A man is as free as he chooses to make himself, never an atom freer.
-- George MacDonald

#Freedom #Men #Atoms

No story ever really ends, and I think I know why.
-- George MacDonald

#Thinking #Stories #Ends

Only he knew that to be left alone is not always to be forsaken.
-- George MacDonald

#Left Alone #Forsaken