783 Quotes by George MacDonald

But there are victories far worse than defeats; and to overcome an angel too gentle to put out all his strength, and ride away in triumph on the back of a devil, is one of the poorest.

Books are but dead bodies to you, and a library nothing but a catacomb!

But for money and the need of it, there would not be half the friendship in the world. It is powerful for good if divinely used. Give it plenty of air and it is sweet as the hawthorn; shut it up and it cankers and breeds worms.

Man finds it hard to get what he wants, because he does not want the best; God finds it hard to give, because He would give the best, and man will not take it.

There is no water in oxygen, no water in hydrogen: it comes bubbling fresh from the imagination of the living God, rushing from under the great white throne of the glacier. The very thought of it makes one gasp with an elemental joy no metaphysician can analyse.

Philosophy is really homesickness.

The love of our neighbor is the only door out of the dungeon of self.

You can't live on amusement. It is the froth on water - an inch deep and then the mud.

But there are not a few who would be indignant at having their belief in God questioned, who yet seem greatly to fear imagining Him better than He is.