783 Quotes by George MacDonald

That's a poet.''I thought you said it was a bo-at.''Stupid pet! Don't you know what a poet it?''Why, a thing to sail on the water in.''Well, perhaps you're not so far wrong. Some poets do carry people over the sea....'...'A poet is a man who is glad of something, and tries to make other people glad of it too.

To confess uprightness in one of the opposite party seemed to most men to involve treachery to their own.

It is not where one is, but in what direction he is going.

When some pray, they lift heavy thoughts from the ground, only to drop them on it again; others send up their prayers in living shapes, this or that, the nearest likeness to each. All live things were thoughts to begin with, and are fit therefore to be used by those that think. When one says to the great Thinker:—‘Here is one of thy thoughts: I am thinking it now!’ that is a prayer—a word to the big heart from one of its own little hearts.

Not every man that thinks the other way is a rogue or a fool.

What honest boy would pride himself on not picking pockets ? A thief who was trying to reform would. To be conceited of doing one's duty is then a sign of how little one does it, and how little one sees what a contemptible thing it is not to do it. Could any but a low creature be conceited of not being contemptible? Until our duty becomes to us common as breathing, we are poor creatures.

...The road to the next duty is the only straight one.

Duty cannot bring his men to hand-to-hand conflict with the same power as Queen Love.

To be conceited of doing one's duty is, then, a sign of how little one does it, and how little one sees what a contemptible thing it is not to do it.