783 Quotes by George MacDonald

Nobody who has not been tried knows how difficult it is; but whoever has come out well of it - and those who do not overcome never do come out of it - always looks back with horror, not on what she has come through, but on the very idea of the possibility of having failed and being still the same miserable creature as before.

It is not at all a fit place for you," said Clementina."Gently, my lady. It is a greater than thou that sets the bounds of my habitation. Perhaps He may give me a palace one day. But the Father has decreed for His children that they shall know the thing that is neither their ideal nor His. All in His time, my lady. He has much to teach us.

Why are all reflections lovelier than what we call reality? -- not so grand or so strong, it may be, but always lovelier? Fair as is the gliding sloop on the shining sea, the wavering, trembling, unresting sail below is fairer still...All mirrors are magic mirrors. The commonest room is a room in a poem when I turn to the glass...There must be a truth involved in it, though we may but in part lay hold of the meaning.

Letty's first false step was here: she said to herself _I can not_, and did not. She lacked courage--a want in her case not much to be wondered at, but much to be deplored, for courage of the true sort is just as needful to the character of a woman as of a man.

Who can give a man this, his own name?

How much time is wasted in what is called thought, but is merely care--an anxious idling over the fancied probabilities of result

Never pupil was more humble, never pupil more obedient; thinking nothing of himself or of anything he had done or could do, his path was open to the swiftest and highest growth. It matters little where a man may be at this moment; the point is whether he is growing. The next point will be, whether he is growing at the ratio given him. The key to the whole thing is _obedience_, and nothing else.

Many men say right and many men say wrong. I might be more ready to speak my mind were it not that I greatly doubt some of those who cry loudest for liberty. I fear that once they had power, they would be the first to trample her underfoot. Liberty with some men means my liberty to do, and your liberty to suffer.

From the neglect of a real duty, she became the slave of a false one.