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 the deepest joy.

— George MacDonald

...as no one can be just without love, so no one can truly report without understanding.

— George MacDonald

As you grow ready for it, somewhere or other you will find what is needful for you in a book.

— George MacDonald

Attitudes are more important than facts.

— George MacDonald

But I never just quite liked that rhyme.'' Why not, child?'' Because it seems to say one's as good as another, or two new ones are better than one that's lost. . . . 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

But Mary had not come into the world to be sad or to help another to be sad. Sorrowful we may often have to be, but to indulge in sorrow is either not to know or to deny God our Savior. True, her heart ached for Letty; and the ache immediately laid itself as close to Letty's ache as it could lie; but that was only the advance-guard of her army of salvation, the light cavalry of sympathy: the next division was help; and behind that lay patience, and strength, and hope, and faith, and joy. This last, modern teachers, having failed to regard it as a virtue, may well decline to regard as a duty; but he is a poor Christian indeed in whom joy has not at least a growing share, and Mary was not a poor Christian--at least, for the time she had been learning, and as Christians go in the present eon of their history.

— George MacDonald

But we believe – nay, Lord we only hope, That one day we shall thank thee perfectly For pain and hope and all that led or drovers back into the bosom of thy love.

— George MacDonald

Certainly work is not always required of a man. There is such a thing as a sacred idleness, the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected.

— George MacDonald

Do you really suppose God cares whether a man comes to good or ill?"" If He did not, He could not be good himself...""... Then He can't be so hard on us as the parsons say, even in the after-life?"" He will give absolute justice, which is the only good thing. He will spare nothing to bring His children back to himself, their sole well-being, whether He achieves it here--or there.

— George MacDonald

Few delights can equal the mere presence of one whom we trust utterly.

— George MacDonald