Top 500 George MacDonald Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “The word doctrine, as used in the Bible, means teaching of duty, not theory.”

— George MacDonald

352. “There are many, doubtless, who have not yet got farther in love than their own family; but there are others who have learned that for the true heart there is neither Frenchman nor Englishman, neither Jew nor Greek, neither white nor black – only the sons and daughters of God, only the brothers and sisters of the one elder brother.”

— George MacDonald

353. “I lost myself, and if I hadn’t found the beautiful lady, I should never have found myself.”

— George MacDonald

354. “He was in fact a poet without words, the more absorbed and endangered, that the springing waters were dammed back in his soul, where, finding no utterance, they grew, and swelled, and undermined.”

— George MacDonald

355. “Common people, whether lords or shop-keepers, are slow to understand that possession, whether in the shape of birth or lands or money or intellect, is a small affair in the difference between men.”

— George MacDonald

356. “What would the Living One have me do?”

— George MacDonald

357. “A condition which of declension would indicate a devil, may of growth indicate a saint.”

— George MacDonald

358. “Love makes all safe.”

— George MacDonald

359. “No one is likely to remember what is entirely uninteresting to him.”

— George MacDonald

360. “There is no forgetting of ourselves but in the finding of our deeper, our true self – God’s idea of us when he devised us – the Christ in us. Nothing but that self can displace the false, greedy, whining self, of which, most of us are so fond and proud. And that self no man can find for himself; seeing of himself he does not even know what to search for. “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God.”

— George MacDonald

361. “The sin he dwells in, the sin he will not come out of, is the sole ruin of a man. His present, his live sins, those pervading his thoughts and ruling his conduct; the sins he keeps doing, and will not give up; the sins he is called to abandon, and clings to; the same sins which are the cause of his misery, though he may not know it, these are they for which he is even now condemned.”

— George MacDonald

362. “I’ve been thinking about it a great deal, and it seems to me that although one sixpence is as good as another sixpence, not twenty lambs would do instead of one sheep whose face you knew. Somehow, when once you’ve looked into anybody’s eyes, right deep down into them, I mean, nobody will do for that one anymore. Nobody, ever so beautiful or so good, will make up for that one going out of sight.”

— George MacDonald

363. “But in the meantime you must be content, I say, to be misunderstood for a while. We are all very anxious to be understood, and it is very hard not to be.”

— George MacDonald

364. “This is in the very nature of things: obedience alone places a man in the position in which he can see so as to judge that which is above him.”

— George MacDonald

365. “Sweet sounds can go where kisses may not enter.”

— George MacDonald

366. “Is it not time I lost a few things when I care for them so unreasonably? This losing of things is of the mercy of God: It comes to teach us to let them go.”

— George MacDonald

367. “God is just like Jesus – exactly like him!”

— George MacDonald

368. “Which of us is other than a secret to all but God!”

— George MacDonald

369. “I tell you, there are more worlds, and more doors to them, than you will think of in many years!”

— George MacDonald

370. “God never gave man a thing to do concerning which it were irreverent to ponder how the Son of God would have done it.”

— George MacDonald

371. “For the greatest fool and rascal in creation there is yet a worse condition; and that is, not to know it, but to think himself a respectable man.”

— George MacDonald

372. “Religion is life essential.”

— George MacDonald

373. “Sir Galahad and Sir Percivale rencountered in the depths of a great forest. Now, Sir Galahad was dight all in harness of silver, clear and shining; the which is a delight to look upon, but full hasty to tarnish, and withouten the labour of a ready squire, uneath to be kept fair and clean. And yet withouten squire or page, Sir Galahad’s armour shone like the moon. And he rode a great white mare, whose bases and other housings were black, but all besprent with fair lilys of silver sheen.”

— George MacDonald

374. “Remember, then, that whoever does not mean good is always in danger of harm. But I try to give everybody fair play, and those that are in the wrong are in far more need of it always than those who are in the right: they can afford to do without it.”

— George MacDonald

375. “Some dreams, some poems, some musical phrases, some pictures, wake feelings such as one never had before, new in colour and form – spiritual sensations, as it were, hitherto unproved.”

— George MacDonald

376. “The boy should enclose and keep, as his life, the old child at the heart of him, and never let it go. He must still, to be a right man, be his mother’s darling, and more, his father’s pride, and more. The child is not meant to die, but to be forever fresh born.”

— George MacDonald

377. “One day it had rained before sunrise, and a soft spring wind had been blowing ever since, a soothing and persuading wind, that seemed to draw out the buds from the secret places of the dry twigs, and whisper to the roots of the rose-trees that their flowers would be wanted by and by.”

— George MacDonald

378. “For the absence of human companionship in bestial forms; the loss of green fields, free to her as to the winds of heaven, and of country sounds and odours; and an almost constant sense of oppression from the propinquity of one or another whom she had cause to fear, were speedily working sad effects upon her.”

— George MacDonald

379. “There can hardly be a plainer proof of the lowness of our nature, until we have laid hold of the higher nature that belongs to us by birthright, than this, that even a just anger tends to make us unjust and unkind.”

— George MacDonald

380. “Life and religion are one, or neither is any thing.”

— George MacDonald

381. “He had fallen in love with her almost, already; for her anger made her more charming than any one else had ever beheld her; and, as far as he could see, which certainly was not far, she had not a single fault about her, except, of course, that she had not any gravity. No prince, however, would judge of a princess by weight.”

— George MacDonald

382. “But then to every lover of the truth, a true thing is dearer because it is old-fashioned, and dearer because it is new-fashioned: and true music, like true love, like all truth, laughs at the god Fashion, because it knows him to be but an ape.”

— George MacDonald

383. “What is called a good conscience is often but a dull one that gives no trouble when it ought to bark loudest;.”

— George MacDonald

384. “Ah, what is it we send up thither, where our thoughts are either a dissonance or a sweetness and a grace?”

— George MacDonald

385. “Those that hope little cannot grow much.”

— George MacDonald

386. “Could you not give me some sign, or tell me something about you that never changes, or some other way to know you, or thing to know you by?” – “No, Curdie: that would be to keep you from knowing me. You must know me in quite another way from that. It would not be the least use to you or me either if I were to make you know me in that way. It would be but to know the sign of me – not to know me myself.”

— George MacDonald

387. “Many feelings are simply too good to last – using the phrase not in the unbelieving sense in which it is generally used, but to express the fact that intensity and endurance cannot coexist in the human frame. But the virtue of a mood depends by no means on its immediate presence. Like any other experience, it may be believed in, and, in its absence, which leaves the mind free to contemplate it, works even more good than its presence.”

— George MacDonald

388. “That which is within a man, not that which lies beyond his vision, is the main factor in what is about to befall him:.”

— George MacDonald

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

— George MacDonald

390. “At length she gently pushed me away, and with the words, “Go, my son, and do something worth doing,” turned back, and, entering the cottage, closed the door behind her. I felt very desolate as I went. CHAPTER.”

— George MacDonald

391. “If you will not determine to be pure, you will grow more and more impure.”

— George MacDonald

392. “In short, a man must be set free from the sin he is, which makes him do the sin he does .”

— George MacDonald

393. “There is but one thing that can free a man from superstition, and that is belief. All history proves it. The most sceptical have ever been the most credulous.”

— George MacDonald

394. “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.”

— George MacDonald

395. “Of all teachings that which presents a far distant God is the nearest to absurdity. Either there is none, or he is nearer to every one of us than our nearest consciousness of self. An unapproachable divinity is the veriest of monsters, the most horrible of human imaginations.”

— George MacDonald

396. “Thou art beautiful because God created thee, but thou art a slave to sin... wickedness has made you ugly.”

— George MacDonald

397. “The very fact that anything can die, implies the existence of something that cannot die; which must either take to itself another form, as when the seed that is sown dies, and arises again; or, in conscious existence, may, perhaps, continue to lead a purely spiritual life.”

— George MacDonald

398. “Verily the God that knows how not to reveal himself, must also know how best to reveal himself! If there be a calling child, there must be an answering Father!”

— George MacDonald

399. “She could now be sad without losing a jot of hope. Nay, rather, the least approach of sadness would begin at once to wake her hope. She regretted nothing that had come, nothing that had gone. She believed more and more that not anything worth having is ever lost; that even the most evanescent shades of feeling are safe for those who grow after their true nature, toward that for which they were made – in other and higher words, after the will of God.”

— George MacDonald

400. “Show me the person ready to step from any, let it be the narrowest, sect of Christian Pharisees into a freer and holier air, and I shall look to find in that person the one of that sect who, in the midst of its darkness and selfish worldliness, mistaken for holiness, has been living a life more obedient than the rest.”

— George MacDonald