Inspirational Quotes by George MacDonald
“POLONIUS My lord, the queen would speak with you, and presently. HAMLET Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel? POLONIUS By th'mass, and 'tis like a camel indeed. HAMLET Methinks it is like a weasel. POLONIUS It is backed like a weasel. HAMLET Or like a whale? POLONIUS Very like a whale. HAMLET Then I will come to my mother by and by. - They fool me to the top of my bent. - I will come by and by.”
“One may smile, and smile, and be a villain; at least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark.”
“Beloved Beowulf, remember how you boasted, Once, that nothing in the world would ever Destroy your fame; fight to keep it, Now, be strong and brave, my noble King, protecting life and fame Together. My sword will fight at your side!”
“I am in this earthly world, where to do harm is often laudable, to do good sometime accounted dangerous folly.”
“ROSENCRANTZ My lord, you must tell us where the body is, and go with us to the king. HAMLET The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body. The king is a thing - GUILDENSTERN A thing my lord? HAMLET Of nothing. Bring me to him. Hide fox, and all after!”
“Even if there be no hereafter, I would live my time believing in a grand thing that ought to be true if it is not. And if these be not truths, then is the loftiest part of our nature a waste. Let me hold by the better than the actual, and fall into nothingness off the same precipice with Jesus and Paul and a thousand more, who were lovely in their lives, and with their death make even the nothingness into which they have passed like the garden of the Lord. I will go further, and say I would rather die forevermore believing as Jesus believed, than live forevermore believing as those that deny Him.”
“Seek not that your sons and your daughters should not see visions, should not dream dreams; seek that they should see true visions, that they should dream noble dreams. Such out-going of the imagination is one with aspiration, and will do more to elevate above what is low and vile than all possible inculcations of morality.”
― George MacDonald ,
from A Dish of Orts
“It is amazing from what a mere fraction of a fact concerning him a man will dare judge the whole of another man”
― George MacDonald ,
“but that is the way fear serves us: it always sides with the thing we are afraid of.”
“Tush! Fear not, my lord, we will not stand to prate; Talkers are no good doers: be assured We come to use our hands and not our tongues.”
“But, sir, isn't death a dreadful thing?" asked Malcolm. "That depends on whether a man regards it as his fate or as the will of a perfect God. Its obscurity is its dread. But if God be light, then death itself must be full of splendor--a splendor probably too keen for our eyes to receive." "But there's the dying itself; isn't that fearsome? It's that I would be afraid of." "I don't see why it should be. It's the lack of a God that makes it dreadful, and would be greatly to blame for that, Malcolm, if you hadn't found your God by the time you had to die.”
― George MacDonald ,
from The Fisherman's Lady
“Many a man has a treasure in his hoard that he knows not the worth of. (Sellic Spell)”
“A mountain is a strange and awful thing. In old times, without knowing so much of their strangeness and awfulness as we do, people were yet more afraid of mountains. But then somehow they had not come to see how beautiful they are as well as awful, and they hated them--and what people hate they must fear. Now that we have learned to look at them with admiration, perhaps we do not feel quite awe enough of them. To me they are beautiful terrors.”
― George MacDonald ,
“But it was little to Curdie that men who did not know what he was about should not approve of his proceedings.”
― George MacDonald ,
“I wish I had [made that song]. No, I don't That would be to take it from somebody else. But it's mine for all that.' 'What makes it yours?' 'I love it so.' 'Does loving a thing make it yours?' 'I think so, Mother -- at least more than anything else can. . . . Love makes the only myness,' said Diamond.”
“Doubt swells and surges, with swelling doubt behind! My soul in storm is but a tattered sail, Streaming its ribbons on the torrent gale; In calm, 'tis but a limp and flapping thing: Oh! swell it with thy breath; make it a wing, To sweep through thee the ocean, with thee the wind Nor rest until in thee its haven it shall find. Roses are scentless, hopeless are the morns, Rest is but weakness, laughter crackling thorns, But love is life. To die of love is then The only pass to higher life than this. All love is death to loving, living men; All deaths are leaps across clefts to the abyss. Weakness needs pity, sometimes love's rebuke; Strength only sympathy deserves and draws - And grows by every faithful loving look. Ripeness must always come with loss of might.”
― George MacDonald ,
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George MacDonald was a Scottish author, poet, and Christian minister.
Known particularly for his poignant fairy tales and fantasy novels, George MacDonald inspired many authors, such as W. H. Auden, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, E. Nesbit and Madeleine L'Engle. G. K. Chesterton cited The Princess and the Goblin as a book that had "made a difference to my whole existence."
Even Mark Twain, who initially disliked MacDonald, became friends with him, and there is some evidence that Twain was influenced by MacDonald.
MacDonald grew up influenced by his Congregational Church, with an atmosphere of Calvinism. But MacDonald never felt comfortable with some aspects of Calvinist doctrine; indeed, legend has it that when the doctrine of predestination was first explained to him, he burst into tears (although assured that he was one of the elect). Later novels, such as Robert Falconer and Lilith, show a distaste for the idea that God's electing love is limited to some and denied to others.