783 Quotes by George MacDonald

Do you ask, “What is faith in Him?” I answer, The leaving of your way, your objects, your self, and the taking of His and Him; the leaving of your trust in men, in money, in opinion, in character, in atonement itself, and doing as He tells you. I can find no words strong enough to serve for the weight of this obedience.

I awoke one morning with the usual perplexity of mind which accompanies the return of consciousness.

It is a happy thing for us that this is really all we have to concern ourselves about – what to do next. No man can do the second thing. He can do the first.

Suddenly pressing both hands on her heart, she fell to the ground, and the mist rose from her and melted in the air. I ran to her. But she began to writhe in such torture that I stood aghast. A moment more and her legs, hurrying from her body, sped away serpents. From her shoulders fled her arms as in terror, serpents also. Then something flew up from her like a bat, and when I looked again, she was gone.

I don’t know how to thank you.? Then I will tell you. There is only one way I care for. Do better, and grow better, and be better.

If we will but let our God and Father work His will with us, there can be no limit to His enlargement of our existence.

It is like his Father, too, not to withhold good wine because men abuse it. Enforced virtue is unworthy of the name. That men may rise above temptation, it is needful that they should have temptation. It is the will of him who makes the grapes and the wine.

I was a bookworm then, but when I came to know it, I woke among the butterflies.

Nothing that could be got from the heart of the earth could have been put to better purposes than the silver the king’s miners got for him. There were people in the country who, when it came into their hands, degraded it by locking it up in a chest, and then it grew diseased and was called mammon, and bred all sorts of quarrels; but when first it left the king’s hands it never made any but friends, and the air of the world kept it clean.