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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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George MacDonald
Age: 80 †
Born: 1824
Born: December 10
Died: 1905
Died: September 18
Author
Cleric
Journalist
Minister
Novelist
Philosopher
Poet
Theologian
Writer
Believe
Christian
Teaching
People
Means
Deal
Used
Duty
Littles
Theory
Hitherto
Little
Deals
Firmly
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Practice
Doctrine
Great
Taken
Bible
Much
Word
Behavior

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Alas! this time is never the time for self-denial, it is always the next time. Abstinence is so much more pleasant to contemplate upon the other side of indulgence.
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To receive honestly is the best thanks for a good thing.
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Those are not the tears of repentance!... Self-loathing is not sorrow. Yet it is good, for it marks a step in the way home, and in the father's arms the prodigal forgets the self he abominates.
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It was foolish indeed - thus to run farther and farther from all who could help her, as if she had been seeking a fit spot for the goblin creature to eat her in at his leisure but that is the way fear serves us: it always sides with the thing we are afraid of.
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When a feeling was there, they felt as if it would never go when it was gone, they felt as if it had never been when it returned, they felt as if it had never gone.
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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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Alas! how easily things go wrong!
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To love righteousness is to make it grow, not to avenge it. Throughout his life on earth, Jesus resisted every impulse to work more rapidly for a lower good.
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Forgiveness is the giving, and so the receiving, of life.
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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.
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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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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.
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O Christ, my life, possess me utterly. Take me and make a little Christ of me. If I am anything but thy father's son, 'Tis something not yet from the darkness won. Oh, give me light to live with open eyes. Oh, give me life to hope above all skies.
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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.
George MacDonald
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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.
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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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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.
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As Christ is the blossom of humanity, so the blossom of every man is Christ perfected in him.
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You will be dead so long as you refuse to die.
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The purposes of God point to one simple end-that we should be as he is, think the same thoughts, mean the same things, possess the same blessedness.
George MacDonald