783 Quotes by George MacDonald

Alas, how easily things go wrong! A sigh too much, a kiss too long And there follows a mist and a weeping rain And life is never the same again.

Only a pure heart can understand, and a pure heart is one that sends out ready hands.

Ye’re a scholar – that’s easy to see, for a’ ye’re sae plain spoken. It dis a body’s hert guid to hear a man ‘at un’erstan’s things say them plain oot i’ the tongue his mither taucht him. Sic a ane ‘ill gang straucht till’s makker, an’ fin’ a’thing there hame-like. Lord, I wuss minnisters wad speyk like ither fowk!

We are all very anxious to be understood, and it is very hard not to be. But there is one thing much more necessary.? What is that, grandmother?? To understand other people.? Yes, grandmother. I must be fair – for if I’m not fair to other people, I’m not worth being understood myself. I see.

I will be glad!” he said, “even in the midst of a world of rain! – Yet again, why should the mere look of a rainy night make it needful for me to assert joy and resist sadness? – After all, what is there to be merry about, in this best of possible worlds? I like going to the theatre; but if I don’t like the play, am I to be pleased all the same, sit it out with smiles, and applaud at the end? – I don’t see what there is to make me miserable, and I don’t see what there is to make me glad!

The very fact that anything can die, implies the existence of something that cannot die; which must either take to itself another form, as when the seed that is sown dies, and arises again; or, in conscious existence, may, perhaps, continue to lead a purely spiritual life.

God is just!′ said a carping theologian to me the other day. ‘Yes,’ I answered, ’and he cannot be pleased that you should call that justice which is injustice, and attribute it to him!

A man might flatter, or bribe, or coax a tyrant; but there is no refuge from the love of God; that love will, for very love, insist upon the uttermost farthing.

He was in fact a poet without words, the more absorbed and endangered, that the springing waters were dammed back in his soul, where, finding no utterance, they grew, and swelled, and undermined.