George MacDonald: Trending quotes (page 6)

“Why are all reflections lovelier than what we call the reality? — not so grand or so strong, it may be, but always lovelier?”

“What we call evil, is the only and best shape, which, for the person and his condition at the time, could be assumed by the best good.”

“The man that feareth, Lord, to doubt,
In that fear doubteth thee.”

“What distressed me most — more even than my own folly — was the perplexing question, How can beauty and ugliness dwell so near?”

“Where did you come from baby dear?
Out of the everywhere into the here….
Where did you get your eyes so blue?
Out of the skies as I came through.”

“That is always the way with you men; you believe nothing the first time; and it is foolish enough to let mere repetition convince you of what you consider in itself unbelievable.”

“A true friend is forever a friend.”

“"But tell me how it is that she could be so beautiful without any heart at all — without any place even for a heart to live in." "I cannot quite tell," she said; "but I am sure she would not look so beautiful if she did not take means to make herself look more beautiful than she is. And then, you know, you began by being in love with her before you saw her beauty … But the chief thing that makes her beautiful is this: that, although she loves no man, she loves the love of any man; and when she finds one in her power, her desire to bewitch him and gain his love (not for the sake of his love either, but that she may be conscious anew of her own beauty, through the admiration he manifests), makes her very lovely—with a self-destructive beauty…"”

“Come, come to Him who made thy heart; Come weary and oppressed; To come to Jesus is thy part; His part, to give thee rest.”

“It is better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold up his head in his pride and fancied innocence. I learned that he that will be a hero, will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work, is sure of his manhood.”

“Endurance must conquer, where force could not reach.”

“Afflictions are but the shadow of His wings.”

“All is loss that comes between us and Christ.”

“Division has done more to hide Christ from the view of men than all the infidelity that has ever been spoken.”

“But God lets men have their playthings, like the children they are, that they may learn to distinguish them from true possessions. If they are not learning that he takes them from them, and tries the other way: for lack of them and its misery, they will perhaps seek the true!”

“Afterwards I learned, that the best way to manage some kinds of painful thoughts, is to dare them to do their worst; to let them lie and gnaw at your heart till they are tired; and you find you still have a residue of life they cannot kill.”

“Diamond, however, had not been out so late before in all his life, and things looked so strange about him! — just as if he had got into Fairyland, of which he knew quite as much as anybody; for his mother had no money to buy books to set him wrong on the subject.”

“Age is not all decay; it is the ripening,
the swelling, of the fresh life within, that withers and bursts the husks.”

“You would not think any duty small,
If you yourself were great.”