783 Quotes by George MacDonald

Impossibilities “I thank thee, Lord, for forgiving me, but I prefer staying in the darkness: forgive me that too.” – “No; that cannot be. The one thing that cannot be forgiven is the sin of choosing to be evil, of refusing deliverance. It is impossible to forgive that. It would be to take part in it.

Light unshared is darkness. To be light indeed, it must shine out. It is of the very essence of light, that it is for others.

The holy spirit of the Spring Is working silently.

Mary was one who possessed power over her own spirit – rare gift, given to none but those who do something toward the taking of it. She was able in no small measure to order her own thoughts. Without any theory of self-rule, she yet ruled her Self. She was not one to slip about in the saddle, or let go the reins for a kick and a plunge or two. There was the thing that should be, and the thing that should not be; the thing that was reasonable, and the thing that was absurd.

A devil – “A power that lives against its life.

The best thing you can do for your fellow, next to rousing his conscience, is – not to give him things to think about, but to wake things up that are in him; or say, to make him think things for himself.

For I had long thought that the way to make indifferent things bad, was for good people not to do them.

As soon as a man begins to make excuses, the time has come when he might be doing that from which he excuses himself.

Nobody knows what anything is; a man can only learn what a thing means!