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Come, then, affliction, if my Father wills, and be my frowning friend. A friend that frowns is better than a smiling enemy.
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
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Come
Frowning
Wills
Smiling
Affliction
Friend
Enemy
Father
Better
Frowns
More quotes by George MacDonald
If you care to see God, be pure. If you will not be pure, you will grow more and more impure.
George MacDonald
Doubts are the messengers of the Living One to the honest. They are the first knock at our door of things that are not yet, but have to be, understood. . . . Doubts must precede every deeper assurance for uncertainties are what we first see when we look into a region hitherto unknown, unexplored, unannexed.
George MacDonald
I am so tried by the things said about God. I understand God's patience with the wicked, but I do wonder how he can be so patient with the pious!
George MacDonald
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.
George MacDonald
Anything big enough to occupy our minds is big enough to hang a prayer on.
George MacDonald
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
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.
George MacDonald
Never was there a more injurous mistake than to say it was thebusiness only of the clergy to care for souls.
George MacDonald
I say again, if I cannot draw a horse, I will not write THIS IS A HORSE under what I foolishly meant for one.
George MacDonald
I learned that he that will be a hero will barely be a man that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work is sure of his manhood.
George MacDonald
What a man is lies as certainly upon his countenance as in his heart, though none of his acquaintances may be able to read it. The very intercourse with him may have rendered it more difficult.
George MacDonald
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.
George MacDonald
Yet I know that good is coming to meāthat good is always coming though few have at all times the simplicity and the courage to believe it. What we call evil, is the only and best shape, which, for the person and his condition at the time, could be assumed by the best good. And so, FAREWELL.
George MacDonald
Age is not all decay it is the ripening, the swelling, of the fresh life within, that withers and bursts the husk.
George MacDonald
Beauty and sadness always go together.
George MacDonald
As no scripture is of private interpretation, so is there no feeling in a human heart which exists in that heart alone - which is not, in some form or degree, in every human heart.
George MacDonald
For the bliss of the animals lies in this, that, on their lower level, they shadow the bliss of those--few at any moment on the earth--who do not 'look before and after, and pine for what is not,' but live in the holy carelessness of the eternal now.
George MacDonald
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.
George MacDonald
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.
George MacDonald
He who is faithful over a few things is a lord of cities. It does not matter whether you preach in Westminster Abbey or teach a ragged class, so you be faithful. The faithfulness is all.
George MacDonald