Certainly work is not always required of a man. There is such a thing as a sacred idleness - the c...
GEORGE MACDONALD But for money and the need of it, there would not be half the friendship in the world. It is powerfu...
GEORGE MACDONALD Do the things you know, and you shall learn the truth you need to know.
GEORGE MACDONALD Certainly work is not always required of a man. There is such a thing as a sacred idleness, the cult...
GEORGE MACDONALD To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved.
GEORGE MACDONALD You can't live on amusement. It is the froth on water -- an inch deep and then the mud.
GEORGE MACDONALD The best preparation for the future is the present well seen to, and the last duty done.
GEORGE MACDONALD God left the world unfinished for man to work his skill upon. He left the electricity still in the c...
GEORGE MACDONALD To have what we want is riches; but to be able to do without is power.
GEORGE MACDONALD The principal part of faith is patience.
GEORGE MACDONALD Nothing makes one feel so strong as a call for help.
GEORGE MACDONALD I find that doing of the will of God leaves me no time for disputing about His plans.
GEORGE MACDONALD It is not the cares of today, but the cares of tomorrow that weigh a man down. For the needs of toda...
GEORGE MACDONALD Afflictions are but the shadows of God's wings.
GEORGE MACDONALD You can't live on amusement. It is the froth on water -- an inch deep and then the mud.
GEORGE MACDONALD God never gave man a thing to do concerning which it were irreverent to ponder how the Son of God w...
GEORGE MACDONALD Friends, if we be honest with ourselves, we shall be honest with each other.
GEORGE MACDONALD It is our best work that God wants, not the dregs of our exhaustion. I think he must prefer quality ...
GEORGE MACDONALD The two pillars of 'political correctness' are:a) willful ignoranceb) a steadfast refusal to face th...
GEORGE MACDONALD A beast does not know that he is a beast, and the nearer a man gets to being a beast, the less he kn...
GEORGE MACDONALD Attitudes are more important than facts.
GEORGE MACDONALD What honest boy would pride himself on not picking pockets ? A thief who was trying to reform would....
GEORGE MACDONALD Afflictions are but the shadows of God's wings.
GEORGE MACDONALD We die daily. Happy those who daily come to life as well.
GEORGE MACDONALD The first thing a kindness deserves is acceptance, the second, transmission.
GEORGE MACDONALD It matters little where a man may be at this moment; the point is whether he is growing.
GEORGE MACDONALD Forgiveness is the giving, and so the receiving, of life.
GEORGE MACDONALD Love is the opener as well as closer of eyes.
GEORGE MACDONALD It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected. The best men do not want to...
GEORGE MACDONALD Man finds it hard to get what he wants, because he does not want the best; God finds it hard to give...
GEORGE MACDONALD Anything large enough for a wish to light upon, is large enough to hang a prayer upon.
GEORGE MACDONALD To keep a lamp burning we have to keep putting oil in it.
GEORGE MACDONALD If instead of a gem, or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of...
GEORGE MACDONALD How strange this fear of death is! We are never frightened at a sunset.
GEORGE MACDONALD Few delights can equal the presence of one whom we trust utterly.
GEORGE MACDONALD As you grow ready for it, somewhere or other you will find what is needful for you in a book.
GEORGE MACDONALD I want to help you to grow as beautiful as God meant you to be when He thought of you first.
GEORGE MACDONALD The more I work with the body, keeping my assumptions in a temporary state of reservation, the more ...
GEORGE MACDONALD Many a thief is a better man than many a clergyman, and miles nearer to the gate of the kingdom.
GEORGE MACDONALD You've got to save your own soul first, and then the souls of your neighbors if they will let you; ...
GEORGE MACDONALD Feast of Josephine Butler, Social Reformer, 1906 Commemoration of Apolo Kivebulaya, Priest, Evangel...
GEORGE MACDONALD The whole trouble is that we won't let God help us.
GEORGE MACDONALD Commemoration of Mellitus, First Bishop of London, 624 Sad, indeed, would the whole matter be if t...
GEORGE MACDONALD O Christ, my life, possess me utterly. Take me and make a little Christ of me. If I am anything bu...
GEORGE MACDONALD You can't live on amusement. It is the froth on water - an inch deep and then the mud.
GEORGE MACDONALD You must learn to be strong in the dark as well as in the day, else you will always be only half bra...
GEORGE MACDONALD And when heart and head go together, nothing can stand before them
GEORGE MACDONALD The best preparation for the future, is the present well seen to, and the last duty done.
GEORGE MACDONALD I want to help you to grow as beautiful as God meant you to be when he thought of you first.
GEORGE MACDONALD Where did you get that pearly ear? God spoke and it came out to hear.
GEORGE MACDONALD And so all growth that is not towards God Is growing to decay.
GEORGE MACDONALD Work is not always required. There is such a thing as sacred idleness.
GEORGE MACDONALD Age is not all decay; it is the ripening, the swelling, of the fresh life within, that withers and b...
GEORGE MACDONALD When we are out of sympathy with the young, then I think our work in this world is over.
GEORGE MACDONALD Whence that three-cornered smile of bliss? Three angels gave me at once a kiss.
GEORGE MACDONALD To receive honestly is the best thanks for a good thing.
GEORGE MACDONALD Alas! how easily things go wrong! A sigh too deep, or a kiss too long, And then comes a mist ...
GEORGE MACDONALD There is no strength in unbelief. Even the unbelief of what is false is no source of might. It is...
GEORGE MACDONALD The west is broken into bars Of orange, gold, and gray; Gone is the sun, come are the stars, ...
GEORGE MACDONALD Follow your heart, but be quiet for a while first. Ask questions, then feel the answer. Learn to tru...
GEORGE MACDONALD Division has done more to hide Christ from the view of all men than all the infidelity that has ever...
GEORGE MACDONALD Some misapprehension, I say, some obliquity, or some slavish adherence to old prejudices, may thus c...
GEORGE MACDONALD The perfection of His relation to us swallows up all our imperfections, all our defeats, all our evi...
GEORGE MACDONALD God has not cared that we should anywhere have assurance of His very words; and that not merely, per...
GEORGE MACDONALD CHRISTMAS DAY Thou hast not made, or taught me, Lord, to care For times and seasons -- but this on...
GEORGE MACDONALD Christmas Eve A God must have a God for company. And lo! thou hast the Son-God to thy friend. Tho...
GEORGE MACDONALD No indulgence of passion destroys the spiritual nature so much as respectable selfishness.
GEORGE MACDONALD Commemoration of Samuel Seabury, First Anglican Bishop in North America, 1796 Gather my broken ...
GEORGE MACDONALD Feast of Simon & Jude, Apostles Some natures will endure an immense amount of misery before the...
GEORGE MACDONALD There are those who in their very first seeking of it are nearer the kingdom of Heaven than many who...
GEORGE MACDONALD How often we look upon God as our last and feeblest resource! We go to Him because we have nowhere e...
GEORGE MACDONALD From thine, as then, the healing virtue goes Into our hearts -- that is the Father's plan. From he...
GEORGE MACDONALD Feast of All Souls Do you think the work God gives us to do is never easy? Jesus says His yoke is...
GEORGE MACDONALD Feast of Vincent de Paul, Founder of the Congregation of the Mission (Lazarists), 1660 If I mista...
GEORGE MACDONALD I find that doing the will of God leaves me with no time for disputing about His plans.
GEORGE MACDONALD Feast of Catherine of Siena, Mystic, Teacher, 1380 No indulgence of passion destroys the spiritua...
GEORGE MACDONALD Feast of Chad, Abbot of Lastingham, Bishop of Lichfield, Missionary, 672 Do those who say, "Lo he...
GEORGE MACDONALD Where every day is not the Lord's, the Sunday is his least of all. There may be a sickening unrealit...
GEORGE MACDONALD EPIPHANY Do you think you love your children better than He who made them? Is not your love what ...
GEORGE MACDONALD There is a communion with God that asks for nothing, yet asks for everything... He who seeks the Fat...
GEORGE MACDONALD Commemoration of Bartolomè de las Casas, Apostle to the Indies, 1566 If God said, "I forgi...
GEORGE MACDONALD Feast of Commemoration of Helena, Protector of the Faith, 330 The kingdom of heaven is not come e...
GEORGE MACDONALD Commemoration of Martyrs of Papua New Guinea, 1942 It has been well said that no man ever sank und...
GEORGE MACDONALD Faith is that which, knowing the Lord's will, goes and does it; or, not knowing it, stands and waits...
GEORGE MACDONALD Feast of Matthias the Apostle There is more hid in Christ than we shall ever learn, here or there ...
GEORGE MACDONALD But we must believe that Judas, who repented even to agony, who repented so that his high-prized lif...
GEORGE MACDONALD Feast of Janani Luwum, Archbishop of Uganda, Martyr, 1977 The principal part of faith is patienc...
GEORGE MACDONALD Commemoration of Amy Carmichael, Founder of the Dohnavour Fellowship, 1951 How often we look upo...
GEORGE MACDONALD There is more hid in Christ than we shall ever learn, here or there either; but they that begin firs...
GEORGE MACDONALD Feast of Simon & Jude, Apostles Continuing a short series on prayer: Hunger may drive the runaw...
GEORGE MACDONALD Commemoration of Allen Gardiner, founder of the South American Missionary Society, 1851 Commemorati...
GEORGE MACDONALD You may fancy the Lord had His own power to fall back upon. But that would have been to Him just the...
GEORGE MACDONALD Commemoration of John & Henry Venn, Priests, Evangelical Divines, 1813, 1873 When I trouble myse...
GEORGE MACDONALD As no scripture is of private interpretation, so is there no feeling in a human heart which exists i...
GEORGE MACDONALD God is ever seeking to get down to us -- to be the divine man in us. And we are ever saying, "That b...
GEORGE MACDONALD I cannot imagine a much greater misfortune for a man (not to say a clergyman) than not to know, or k...
GEORGE MACDONALD Commemoration of Gilbert of Sempringham, Founder of the Gilbertine Order, 1189 To realize that yo...
GEORGE MACDONALD Commemoration of Amy Carmichael, Founder of the Dohnavour Fellowship, 1951 To the dim and bewilde...
GEORGE MACDONALD Christmas Eve They were all looking for a king To slay their foes, and lift them high; Thou cam'st,...
GEORGE MACDONALD The uncertainty lies always in the intellectual region, never in the practical. What Paul cares abou...
GEORGE MACDONALD Feast of Alfred the Great, King of the West Saxons, Scholar, 899 Commemoration of Cedd, Founding Abb...
GEORGE MACDONALD Feast of Mary Sumner, Founder of the Mothers' Union, 1921 I would not favour a fiction to keep a ...
GEORGE MACDONALD Instead of so knowing Christ that they have Him in them saving them, they lie wasting themselves in ...
GEORGE MACDONALD They were in a better condition, acknowledging only a terror above them flaming on that unknown moun...
GEORGE MACDONALD The one use of the Bible is to make us look at Jesus, that through Him we might know His Father and ...
GEORGE MACDONALD Commemoration of Felix, Bishop, Apostle to the East Angles, 647 He who forgives not is not forgiv...
GEORGE MACDONALD That no obedience but a perfect one will satisfy God, I hold with all my heart and strength; but tha...
GEORGE MACDONALD Feast of Hugh, Carthusian Monk, Bishop of Lincoln, 1200 [God desires] not that He may say to them...
GEORGE MACDONALD Feast of Alban, first Martyr of Britain, c.209 Continuing a short series on authenticity: There ...
GEORGE MACDONALD EPIPHANY What should I think of my child, if I found that he limited his faith in me and hope fr...
GEORGE MACDONALD Feast of Alfred the Great, King of the West Saxons, Scholar, 899 Commemoration of Cedd, Founding Ab...
GEORGE MACDONALD Commemoration of Remigius, Bishop of Rheims, Apostle of the Franks, 533 Commemoration of Thé...
GEORGE MACDONALD Feast of Benedict of Nursia, Father of Western Monasticism, c.550 Continuing a short series on topic...
GEORGE MACDONALD Commemoration of Alphege, Archbishop of Canterbury, Martyr, 1012 The Son of God suffered unto the...
GEORGE MACDONALD The pure eye for the true vision of another's claims can only go with the loving heart. The man who ...
GEORGE MACDONALD Do you think that the work God gives us to do is never easy? Jesus says that His yoke is easy, His b...
GEORGE MACDONALD The Gospels contain what the Apostles preached -- the Epistles, what they wrote after the preaching....
GEORGE MACDONALD Do you so love the truth and the right that you welcome, or at least submit willingly to, the idea o...
GEORGE MACDONALD No one is likely to remember what is entirely uninteresting to him
GEORGE MACDONALD To be trusted is a greater complement than to be loved.
GEORGE MACDONALD If, instead of a gem, or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart o...
GEORGE MACDONALD …for nothing is ever so mischievous in its own place as it is out of it;
GEORGE MACDONALD This is in the very nature of things: obedience alone places a man in the position in which he can s...
GEORGE MACDONALD Humility is essential greatness, the inside of grandeur.
GEORGE MACDONALD I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; f...
GEORGE MACDONALD However strange it may well seem, to do one's duty will make any one conceited who only does it some...
GEORGE MACDONALD The main practical difficulty, with some at least of the Peace-makers, is how to carry themselves to...
GEORGE MACDONALD Love loves unto purity. Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of that which it beholds. Ther...
GEORGE MACDONALD You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He ...
GEORGE MACDONALD No story ever really ends, and I think I know why.
GEORGE MACDONALD There is no slave but the creature that wills against its Creator.
GEORGE MACDONALD I tell you, there are more worlds, and more doors to them, than you will think of in many years!
GEORGE MACDONALD I repent me of the ignorance wherein I ever said that God made man out of nothing: there is no nothi...
GEORGE MACDONALD What a good thing, for instance, it was that one princess should sleep for a hundred years! Was she ...
GEORGE MACDONALD Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love's kind...
GEORGE MACDONALD Then came the reflection, how little at any time could a father do for the wellbeing of his children...
GEORGE MACDONALD I am always hearing. . . the sound of a far off song. I do not exactly know where it is, or what it ...
GEORGE MACDONALD All that is not God is death.
GEORGE MACDONALD The one principle of hell is – “I am my own
GEORGE MACDONALD Obedience is the opener of eyes.
GEORGE MACDONALD She could now be sad without losing a jot of hope. Nay, rather, the least approach of sadness would ...
GEORGE MACDONALD She had turned thought and feeling into life, into reality, into creation. They speak of the _creati...
GEORGE MACDONALD punishment had not been spared--with best results in patience and purification
GEORGE MACDONALD Few delights can equal the mere presence of one whom we trust utterly.
GEORGE MACDONALD Those are not the tears of repentance!... Self-loathing is not sorrow. Yet it is good, for it marks ...
GEORGE MACDONALD She would be one of those who kneel to their own shadows till feet grow on their knees; then go down...
GEORGE MACDONALD there is no harm in being afraid. The only harm is in doing what Fear tells you. Fear is not your ma...
GEORGE MACDONALD We are often unable to tell people what they need to know, because they want to know something else,...
GEORGE MACDONALD The part of the philanthropist is indeed a dangerous one; and the man who would do his neighbour goo...
GEORGE MACDONALD Until a man has love, it is well he should have fear. So long as there are wild beasts about, it is ...
GEORGE MACDONALD The boy should enclose and keep, as his life, the old child at the heart of him, and never let it go...
GEORGE MACDONALD What distressed me most - more even than my own folly - was the perplexing question - How can beauty...
GEORGE MACDONALD As in all sweetest music, a tinge of sadness was in every note. Nor do we know how much of the pleas...
GEORGE MACDONALD Past tears are present strength.
GEORGE MACDONALD My spirits rose as I went deeper; into the forest; but I could not regain my former elasticity of mi...
GEORGE MACDONALD One of my greatest difficulties in consenting to think of religion was that I thought I should have ...
GEORGE MACDONALD Doubt may be a poor encouragement to do anything, but it is a bad reason for doing nothing.
GEORGE MACDONALD If both Church and fairy-tale belong to humanity, they may occasionally cross circles, without injur...
GEORGE MACDONALD It is by loving and not by being loved, that one can come nearest to the soul of another.
GEORGE MACDONALD I learned that it is better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold u...
GEORGE MACDONALD My prayers, my God, flow from what I am not;
I think thy answers make me what I am.
GEORGE MACDONALD We are and remain such creeping Christians, because we look at ourselves and not at Christ; because ...
GEORGE MACDONALD It may be an infinitely less evil to murder a man than to refuse to forgive him. The former may be t...
GEORGE MACDONALD And her life will perhaps be the richer, for holding now within it the memory of what came, but coul...
GEORGE MACDONALD Only he knew that to be left alone is not always to be forsaken.
GEORGE MACDONALD Love me, beloved; Hades and Death
Shall vanish away like a frosty breath;
These hands, tha...
GEORGE MACDONALD I write, not for children,but for the child-like, whether they be of five, or fifty, or seventy-five...
GEORGE MACDONALD Her heart - like every heart, if only its fallen sides were cleared away - was an inexhaustible foun...
GEORGE MACDONALD To try to be brave is to be brave.
GEORGE MACDONALD It is by loving, and not by being loved, that one can come nearest the soul of another; yea, that, w...
GEORGE MACDONALD The nearer persons come to each other, the greater is the room and the more are the occasions for co...
GEORGE MACDONALD In moments of doubt I cry, ‘Could God Himself create such lovely things as I dreamed?’
GEORGE MACDONALD It was foolish indeed - thus to run farther and farther from all who could help her, as if she had b...
GEORGE MACDONALD ...it is so silly of people to fancy that old age means crookedness and witheredness and feebleness ...
GEORGE MACDONALD It is when people do wrong things wilfully that they are the more likely to do them again.
GEORGE MACDONALD You had better not open that door.
GEORGE MACDONALD Godfrey and Hesper made a glorious pair to look at--but would theirs be a happy union?--Happy, I dar...
GEORGE MACDONALD Trust is like a vase.. once it's broken, though you can fix it the vase will never be same again.
GEORGE MACDONALD Doubts are the messengers of the Living One to the honest. They are the first knock at our door of t...
GEORGE MACDONALD We're looking into conserving landfill space. We're looking to generate energy without relying on fo...
GEORGE MACDONALD Certainly work is not always required of a man. There is such a thing as a sacred idleness - the cul...
GEORGE MACDONALD Where there is no choice, we do well to make no difficulty
GEORGE MACDONALD God’s finger can touch nothing but to mold it into loveliness.
GEORGE MACDONALD The first thing a kindness deserves is acceptance, the second, transmission
GEORGE MACDONALD It matters little where a man may be at this moment; the point is whether he is growing
GEORGE MACDONALD Where did you get your eyes so blue? / Out of the sky as I came through.
GEORGE MACDONALD The two pillars of political correctness is willful ignorance and the steadfast refusal to face the ...
GEORGE MACDONALD It has been well said that no man ever sank under the burden of the day. It is when to-morrow’s bu...
GEORGE MACDONALD We've done a better job at getting more complete representation.
GEORGE MACDONALD Where did you come from, baby dear? / Out of the everywhere into here.
GEORGE MACDONALD The Root of All Rebellion: It is because we are not near enough to Thee to partake of thy liberty th...
GEORGE MACDONALD To be trusted is a greater complement than to be loved
GEORGE MACDONALD Existence was given us for action. Our worth is determined by the good deed we do, rather than by th...
GEORGE MACDONALD Seeing is not believing, it is only seeing,”
George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblin
GEORGE MACDONALD The only way to come to know where you are is to begin to make yourself at home.
GEORGE MACDONALD Love and marriage are of the Father's most powerful means for the making of his foolish little ones ...
GEORGE MACDONALD It is not at all a fit place for you," said Clementina.

"Gently, my lady. It is a ...
GEORGE MACDONALD Mary was one who possessed power over her own spirit--rare gift, given to none but those who do some...
GEORGE MACDONALD Love is the opener as well as closer of eyes
GEORGE MACDONALD Beauty and sadness always go together. Nature thought beauty too rich to go forth Upon the earth wit...
GEORGE MACDONALD