Quotes by George MacDonald

Heed not thy feeling. Do thy work.

To cease to wonder is to fall plumb-down from the childlike to the commonplace—the most undivine of all moods intellectual. Our nature can never be at home among things that are not wonderful to us.

The church grew very lonely about him, and he began to feel like a child whose mother has forsaken it. Only he knew that to be left alone is not always to be forsaken.

As in all sweetest music, a tinge of sadness was in every note. Nor do we know how much of the pleasures even of life we owe to the intermingled sorrows. Joy cannot unfold the deepest truths, although deepest truth must be deepest joy.

Seek not that your sons and your daughters should not see visions, should not dream dreams; seek that they should see true visions, that they should dream noble dreams. Such out-going of the imagination is one with aspiration, and will do more to elevate above what is low and vile than all possible inculcations of morality.

It is not where one is, but in what direction he is going.

Never, my little one, hide anything from those that love you. Never let anything that makes itself a nest in your heart, grow into a secret, for then at once it will begin to eat a hole in it.

You had better not open that door.

I am always hearing. . . the sound of a far off song. I do not exactly know where it is, or what it means; and I dont hear much of it, only the odour of its music, as it were, flitting across the great billows of the ocean outside this air in which I make such a storm; but what I do hear, is quite enough to make me able to bear the cry from the drowning ship. So it would you if you could hear it.No it wouldnt, returned Diamond stoutly. For they wouldnt hear the music of the far-away song; and if they did, it wouldnt do them any good. You see you and I are not going to be drowned, and so we might enjoy it.But you have never heard the psalm, and you dont know what it is like. Somehow, I cant say how, it tells me that all is right; that it is coming to swallow up all the cries. . . . It wouldnt be the song it seems if it did not swallow up all their fear and pain too, and set them singing it themselves with all the rest.

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.

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

She who is even once unjust can not complain if the like is expected of her again.

A devil - A power that lives against its life

It is not the hysterical alone for whom the great dash of cold water is good.All who dream life, instead of living it,require some similar shock.

There is no water in oxygen, no water in hydrogen: it comes bubbling fresh from the imagination of the living God, rushing from under the great white throne of the glacier. The very thought of it makes one gasp with an elemental joy no metaphysician can analyse. The water itself, that dances, and sings, and slakes the wonderful thirst--symbol and picture of that draught for which the woman of Samaria made her prayer to Jesus--this lovely thing itself, whose very wetness is a delight to every inch of the human body in its embrace--this live thing which, if I might, I would have running through my room, yea, babbling along my table--this water is its own self its own truth, and is therein a truth of God.

It is the heart that is unsure of its God that is afraid to laugh.

Thats a poet.I thought you said it was a bo-at.Stupid pet! Dont you know what a poet it?Why, a thing to sail on the water in.Well, perhaps youre not so far wrong. Some poets do carry people over the sea.......A poet is a man who is glad of something, and tries to make other people glad of it too.

The love of our neighbor is the only door out of the dungeon of self, where we mope and mow, striking sparks, and rubbing phosphorescences out of the walls, and blowing our own breath in our own nostrils, instead of issuing to the fair sunlight of God, the sweet winds of the universe.

I am a beast until I love as God doth love.

A library cannot be made all at once, any more than a house or a nation or a tree; they must all take time to grow, and so must a library. I wouldnt even know what books to go and ask for. I dare say, if I were to try, I couldnt at a moments notice tell you the names of more than two score of books at the outside. Folk must make acquaintance among books as they would among living folk.