Quote

We are often unable to tell people what they need to know, because they want to know something else, and would therefore only misunderstand what we said.

George MacDonald

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

George MacDonald
Age: 80 †
Born: 1824
Born: December 10
Died: 1905
Died: September 18
Author
Cleric
Journalist
Minister
Novelist
Philosopher
Poet
Theologian
Writer
Would
Unable
People
Therefore
Often
Tell
Else
Need
Needs
Something
Misunderstand

More quotes by George MacDonald

Image
Thou art beautiful because God created thee, but thou art a slave to sin... wickedness has made you ugly.
George MacDonald
Image
All that man sees has to do with man. Worlds cannot be without an intermundane relationship. The community of the centre of all creation suggests an interradiating connection and dependence of the parts. Else a grander idea is conceivable than that which is already embodied.
George MacDonald
Image
As to the pure all things are pure, so the common mind sees far more vulgarity in others than the mind developed in genuine refinement.
George MacDonald
Image
And so all growth that is not towards God Is growing to decay.
George MacDonald
Image
I firmly believe people have hitherto been a great deal too much taken up about doctrine and far too little about practice. The word doctrine, as used in the Bible, means teaching of duty, not theory.
George MacDonald
Image
All that is made seems planless to the darkened mind, because there are more plans than it looked for...There seems no plan because it is all plan: there seems no centre because it is all centre.
George MacDonald
Image
I am sometimes almost terrified at the scope of the demands made upon me, at the perfection of the self-abandonment required of me yet outside of such absoluteness can be no salvation.
George MacDonald
Image
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
Image
Better to have the poet's heart than brain, Feeling than song.
George MacDonald
Image
To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved.
George MacDonald
Image
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
Image
Which of us is other than a secret to all but God!
George MacDonald
Image
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
Image
We are all very anxious to be understood, and it is very hard not to be. But there is one thing much more necessary.' What is that, grandmother?' To understand other people.' Yes, grandmother. I must be fair - for if I'm not fair to other people, I'm not worth being understood myself. I see.
George MacDonald
Image
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.
George MacDonald
Image
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
Image
Come, then, affliction, if my Father wills, and be my frowning friend. A friend that frowns is better than a smiling enemy.
George MacDonald
Image
We can walk without fear, full of hope and courage and strength to do His will, waiting for the endless good which He is always giving as fast as He can get us able to take it in.
George MacDonald
Image
There are women who fly their falcons at any game, little birds and all.
George MacDonald
Image
If both Church and fairy-tale belong to humanity, they may occasionally cross circles, without injury to either.
George MacDonald