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But I begin to think the chief difficulty in writing a book must be to keep out what does not belong to it.

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
Book
Must
Chief
Writing
Chiefs
Think
Belong
Thinking
Difficulty
Begin
Keep
Doe

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A man is as free as he chooses to make himself, never an atom freer.
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The boy should enclose and keep, as his life, the old child at the heart of him, and never let it go. He must still, to be a right man, be his mother's darling, and more, his father's pride, and more. The child is not meant to die, but to be forever fresh born.
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If you care to see God, be pure. If you will not be pure, you will grow more and more impure.
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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.
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There is an aching that is worse than any pain.
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Faith is that which, knowing the Lord's will, goes and does it or, not knowing it, stands and waits, content in ignorance as in knowledge, because God wills - neither pressing into the hidden future, nor careless of the knowledge which opens the path of action
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People must not choose their neighbors they must take the neighbors that God sends them. The neighbor is just the person who is next to you at the moment, the person with whom any business has brought you into contact.
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For that great Love speaks in the most wretched and dirty hearts only the tone of its voice depends on the echoes of the place in which it sounds.
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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.
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Then the Old Man of the Earth stooped over the floor of the cave, raised a huge stone from it, and left it leaning. It disclosed a great hole that went plumb-down. That is the way, he said. But there are no stairs. You must throw yourself in. There is no other way.
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The Bible is to me the most precious thing in the world, because it tells me his story and what good men thought about him who knew him and accepted him.
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It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected. The best men do not want to govern their fellowmen.
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Afflictions are but the shadows of God's wings.
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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.
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There is but one thing that can free a man from superstition, and that is belief. All history proves it. The most sceptical have ever been the most credulous.
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Affliction is but the shadow of God's wing.
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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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A fairytale is not an allegory. There may be allegory in it, but it is not an allegory.
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No one is likely to remember what is entirely uninteresting to him.
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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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