783 Quotes by George MacDonald

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

I want to help you to grow as beautiful as God meant you to be when He thought of you first.

But we believe – nay, Lord we only hope,That one day we shall thank thee perfectlyFor pain and hope and all that led or droveUs back into the bosom of thy love.

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. Cometh white-robed Sorrow, stooping and wan, and flingeth wide the doors she may not enter. Almost we linger with Sorrow for very love.

The demon has a name that is known among men, though it frightens few and draws many, alas! His name is Self, and he is the shadow of your own self. First he made you love him, which was evil, and now he has made you hate him, which is evil also. But if he be cast out and never more enter into your heart, but remain as a servant in your hall, then you will recover from this sickness, and be whole and sound, and will find the varlet serviceable.

Her heart - like every heart, if only its fallen sides were cleared away - was an inexhaustible fountain of love: she loved everything she saw.

His was a party whose distinctive and animating spirit was the love of freedom, which broke out upon occasion in the wildest vagaries of speech and doctrine. Yet it justified itself in its leaders, including Milton and Cromwell, who accorded to the consciences of others the freedom they demanded for their own - the love of liberty meaning not merely the love of enjoying freedom, but that respect for the thing itself which renders a man incapable of violating it in another.

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

By obedience, I intend no kind of obedience to man, or submission to authority claimed by man or community of men. I mean obedience to the will of the Father, however revealed in our conscience.