George MacDonald
Man finds it hard to get what he wants, because he does not want the best; God finds it hard to give, because He would give the best, and man will not take it.Collection: God
The principle part of faith is patience.Collection: Faith
How strange this fear of death is! We are never frightened at a sunset.Collection: Death
The best preparation for the future is the present well seen to, and the last duty done.Collection: Future
It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected. The best men do not want to govern their fellowmen.Collection: Nature
The more I work with the body, keeping my assumptions in a temporary state of reservation, the more I appreciate and sympathize with a given disease. The body no longer appears as a sick or irrational demon, but as a process with its own inner logic and wisdom.Collection: Work
Attitudes are more important than facts.Collection: Attitude
Few delights can equal the presence of one whom we trust utterly.Collection: Trust
Age is not all decay; it is the ripening, the swelling, of the fresh life within, that withers and bursts the husk.Collection: Age
If instead of a gem, or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give.Collection: Friendship
When we are out of sympathy with the young, then I think our work in this world is over.Collection: Sympathy
To have what we want is riches; but to be able to do without is power.Collection: Power
Forgiveness is the giving, and so the receiving, of life.Collection: Forgiveness
To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved.Collection: Trust
It is our best work that God wants, not the dregs of our exhaustion. I think he must prefer quality to quantity.
A beast does not know that he is a beast, and the nearer a man gets to being a beast, the less he knows it.
Afflictions are but the shadows of God's wings.
Friends, if we be honest with ourselves, we shall be honest with each other.
To keep a lamp burning we have to keep putting oil in it.
You can't live on amusement. It is the froth on water - an inch deep and then the mud.
Many a thief is a better man than many a clergyman, and miles nearer to the gate of the kingdom.
Anything large enough for a wish to light upon, is large enough to hang a prayer upon.
It is not the cares of today, but the cares of tomorrow, that weigh a man down.
It matters little where a man may be at this moment; the point is whether he is growing.
We die daily. Happy those who daily come to life as well.
The first thing a kindness deserves is acceptance, the second, transmission.
Where there is no choice, we do well to make no difficulty.
Love is the opener as well as closer of eyes.
There are thousands willing to do great things for one willing to do a small thing.
I find that doing of the will of God leaves me no time for disputing about His plans.
A man's real belief is that which he lives by. What a man believes is the thing he does, not the thing he thinks.Collection: Real
It is not the cares of today, but the cares of tomorrow, that weigh a man down. For the needs of today we have corresponding strength given. For the morrow we are told to trust. It is not ours yet. It is when tomorrow's burden is added to the burden of today that the weight is more than a man can bear.Collection: Men
No words can express how much the world owes to sorrow. Most of the Psalms were born in the wilderness. Most of the Epistles were written in a prison. The greatest thoughts of the greatest thinkers have all passed through fire. The greatest poets have "learned in suffering what they taught in song." In bonds Bunyan lived the allegory that he afterwards wrote, and we may thank Bedford Jail for the Pilgrim's Progress. Take comfort, afflicted Christian! When God is about to make pre-eminent use of a person, He put them in the fire.Collection: Bible
I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God's thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest and most precious thing in all thinking.Collection: Thinking
Never tell a child 'you have a soul.' Teach him, you are a soul; you have a body.Collection: Children
Any faith in Him, however small, is better than any belief about Him, however great.Collection: God
The love of our neighbor is the only door out of the dungeon of self.Collection: Love
Forgiveness unleashes joy. It brings peace. It washes the slate clean. It sets all the highest values of love in motion.Collection: Forgiveness
Past tears are present strength.Collection: Past
In whatever man does without God, he must fail miserably, or succeed more miserably.Collection: Men
Free will is not the liberty to do whatever one likes, but the power of doing whatever one sees ought to be done, even in the very face of otherwise overwhelming impulse. There lies freedom, indeed.Collection: Lying
It is by loving and not by being loved that one can come nearest to the soul of another.Collection: Love
"But if God is so good as you represent Him, and if He knows all that we need, and better far than we do ourselves, why should it be necessary to ask Him for anything?" I answer, "What if He knows prayer to be the thing we need first and most? What if the main object in God's idea of prayer be the supplying of our great, our endless need - the need of Himself?"Collection: God
Instead of asking yourself whether you believe or not, ask yourself whether you have, this day, done one thing because He said, Do it! or once abstained because He said, Do not do it! It is simply absurd to say you believe, or even want to believe, in Him, if you do not do anything He tells you.Collection: Believe
The truly wise talk little about religion and are not given to taking sides on doctrinal issues. When they hear people advocating or opposing the claims of this or that party in the church, they turn away with a smile such as men yield to the talk of children. They have no time, they would say, for that kind of thing. They have enough to do in trying to faithfully practice what is beyond dispute.Collection: Wise
God is nearer to you than any thought or feeling of yours... Do not be afraid.Collection: Jesus
Never be discouraged because good things get on so slowly here; and never fail daily to do that good which lies next to your hand.Collection: Lying
Do not measure God's mind by your own.Collection: God
People must not choose their neighbors; they must take the neighbors that God sends them. The neighbor is just the person who is next to you at the moment, the person with whom any business has brought you into contact.Collection: People
He who seeks the Father more than anything He can give, is likely to have what he asks, for he is not likely to ask amiss.Collection: Father