George MacDonald Quotes

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.

It is not the end, but the means to the end, that makes a story.

To love someone means to see them as God intended them to be.

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.

To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved.

Laughter is wine for the soul – laughter soft, or loud and deep, tinged through with seriousness – the hilarious declaration made by man that life is worth living.

A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.

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

I am beginning to suspect that nothing that happens is fortuitous, even when exactly what happens is foolish and wrong.

There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.

To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved.

Faith is reason grown courageous.

Home is the one place in all this world where hearts are sure of each other. It is the place of confidence. It is the place where we tear off that mask of guarded and suspicious coldness which the world forces us to wear in self-defense and where we pour out the unreserved communications of full and confiding hearts.

George MacDonald Quotes part 2

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

There is nothing like the presence of a strange and holy discontent to reveal to us the reality of our fallen natures.

The best and safest thing is to keep a balance in your life, acknowledge the great powers around us and in us. If you can do that, and live that way, you are really a wise man.

Good humor is a tonic for mind and body. It is the best antidote for anxiety and depression. It is a business asset. It attracts and keeps friends. It lightens human burdens. It is the direct route to serenity and contentment.

I believe that we are solely responsible for our choices, and we have to accept the consequences of every deed, word, and thought throughout our lifetime.

Even our tears can become a sweet oblation unto God…

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

You have not failed until you quit trying.

Friendship is the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring all right out just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful friendly hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping and, with a breath of comfort, blow the rest away.

The time of trusting implicitly anyone is past for me. I have not the word of Him to whom I could give absolute trust.

The secret of a good memory is attention, and attention to a subject depends upon our interest in it.

You can give your children only two things, one is roots and the other is wings.

Truth is truth, whether it’s spoken by God or the Devil.

To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved.

Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed. It is all part of the fairy tale.

I can only maintain that it does mean something to me without at least my own prayer attached to it.

I think one’s feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.

Friends are needed both for joy and for sorrow.

It is, I find, in zoology as it is in botany: all nature is so full, that that district produces the greatest variety which is the most examined.

What we think of ourselves, that is what we are.

A book worth reading only in childhood is not worth reading even then.

Money can neither love nor hate, only help and hinder.

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.

To lose one’s self in a book is so dangerous that if it were a drug I should call it poison.

Those who want venture must wait for it.

When a man sees a carcass he must leave it to tear another.

Even if a man could fall at the rate of a thousand miles a minute, for an infinite time, he would never reach an end.

Merely having an expert opinion does not make you an optimist, it just makes you uninformed because all a true optimist abstains from is the conclusion that something cannot be done.

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 tomorrow we are told to trust. It is not ours yet.

I cannot help thinking that sufferings and disappointments have the same gooEssential happens in and to man as a great artist, who, conceiving anew the Ideal, becomes discontented with his first attempts and endeavors to make them more like that.

It is strange how slight a taste the public has for what is really excellent.

There is all the difference in the world, they say, between skill and art. Art is more godlike and therefore more dangerous.