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One thing is clear to me, that no indulgence of passion destroys the spiritual nature so much as respectable selfishness.

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
Passion
Clear
Spiritual
Nature
Indulgence
Thing
Destroys
Much
Respectable
Selfishness

More quotes by George MacDonald

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Suppose you didn't know him, would that make any difference?' 'No,' said Willie, after thinking a little. 'Other people would know him if I didn't.' 'Yes, and if nobody knew him, God would know him, and anybody God has thought worth making, it's an honor to do anything for.
George MacDonald
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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
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But for money and the need of it, there would not be half the friendship in the world. It is powerful for good if divinely used. Give it plenty of air and it is sweet as the hawthorn shut it up and it cankers and breeds worms.
George MacDonald
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And her life will perhaps be the richer, for holding now within it the memory of what came, but could not stay.
George MacDonald
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A man must learn to love his children, not because they are his, but because they are children, else his love will be scarcely a better thing at last than the party-spirit of the faithful politician.
George MacDonald
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Primarily, God is not bound to punish sin he is bound to destroy sin. The only vengeance worth having on sin is to make the sinner himself its executioner.
George MacDonald
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No, there is no escape. There is no heaven with a little of hell in it--no plan to retain this or that of the devil in our hearts or our pockets. Out Satan must go, every hair and feather!
George MacDonald
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The Lord never came to deliver men from the consequences of their sins while yet those sins remained...Yet men, loving their sins and feeling nothing of their dread hatefulness, have, consistent with their low condition, constantly taken this word concerning the Lord to mean that he came to save them from the punishment of their sins.
George MacDonald
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One of the good things that come of a true marriage is, that there is one face on which changes come without your seeing them or rather there is one face which you can still see the same, through all the shadows which years have gathered upon it.
George MacDonald
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It may be an infinitely less evil to murder a man than to refuse to forgive him. The former may be the act of a moment of passion: the latter is the heart’s choice.
George MacDonald
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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.
George MacDonald
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Cleverness is cheap. It is faith that He praises.
George MacDonald
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It is when people do wrong things wilfully that they are the more likely to do them again.
George MacDonald
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A man is in bondage to whatever he cannot part with that is less than himself.
George MacDonald
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I came from God, and I'm going back to God, and I won't have any gaps of death in the middle of my life.
George MacDonald
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The whole trouble is that we won't let God help us.
George MacDonald
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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.
George MacDonald
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The Root of All Rebellion: It is because we are not near enough to Thee to partake of thy liberty that we want a liberty of our own different from thine.
George MacDonald
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I know my Easts and Tom Brown, you see, and they're never happy unless their morality is being tried in the furnace and they can feel they are doing the right Christian thing and never mind the consequences to anyone else.
George MacDonald
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To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved.
George MacDonald