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Many a thief is a better man than many a clergyman, and miles nearer to the gate of the kingdom.

George MacDonald

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George MacDonald
Age: 80 †
Born: 1824
Born: December 10
Died: 1905
Died: September 18
Author
Cleric
Journalist
Minister
Novelist
Philosopher
Poet
Theologian
Writer
Kingdom
Kingdoms
Clergyman
Miles
Clergymen
Literature
Thief
Better
Gate
Many
Nearer
Men
Thieves
Gates

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A true friend is forever a friend.
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Better to have the poet's heart than brain, Feeling than song.
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The mind of the many is not the mind of God.
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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.
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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.
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I am perplexed at the stupidity of the ordinary religious being. In the most practical of all matters he will talk and speculate and try to feel, but he will not set himself to do.
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Never was there a more injurous mistake than to say it was thebusiness only of the clergy to care for souls.
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When I can no more stir my soul to move, and life is but the ashes of a fire when I can but remember that my heart once used to live and love, long and aspire- O, be thou then the first, the one thou art be thou the calling, before all answering love, and in me wake hope, fear, boundless desire.
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All love will, one day, meet with its return. All true love will, one day, behold its own image in the eyes of the beloved, and be humbly glad.
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Some thinkers would feel sorely hampered if at liberty to use no forms but such as existed in nature, or to invent nothing save in accordance with the laws of the world of the senses but it must not therefore be imagined that they desire escape from the region of law.
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The ideal is the only absolute real and it must become the real in the individual life as well, however impossible they may count it who never tried it.
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Why should my love be powerless to help another?
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But it is not the rich man only who is under the dominion of things they too are slaves who, having no money, are unhappy from the lack of it.
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There is this difference between the growth of some human beings and that of others: in the one case it is a continuous dying, in the other a continuous resurrection.
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I do not myself believe there is any misfortune. What men call such is merely the shadowside of a good.
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Division has done more to hide Christ from the view of men than all the infidelity that has ever been spoken.
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People must believe what they can, and those who believe more must not be hard upon those who believe less. I doubt if you would have believed it all yourself if you hadn't seen some of it.
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Afflictions are but the shadows of God's wings.
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And in thy own sermon, thou That the sparrow falls dost allow, It shall not cause me any alarm For neither so comes the bird to harm, Seeing our Father, thou hast said, Is by the sparrow's dying bed Therefore it is a blessed place, And the sparrow in high grace.
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