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

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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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The region of the senses is the unbelieving part of the human soul.
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Age is not all decay it is the ripening, the swelling, of the fresh life within, that withers and bursts the husk.
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One thing is clear to me, that no indulgence of passion destroys the spiritual nature so much as respectable selfishness.
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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.
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If both Church and fairy-tale belong to humanity, they may occasionally cross circles, without injury to either.
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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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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.
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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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All haste implies weakness.
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A man is in bondage to whatever he cannot part with that is less than himself.
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Afflictions are but the shadows of God's wings.
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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.
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There is little hope of the repentance and redemption of certain some until they have committed one or another of the many wrong things of which they are daily, through a course of unrestrained selfishness, becoming more and more capable.
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In the hearts of witches, love and hate lie close together and often tumble over each other.
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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.
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Were I asked, what is a fairytale? I should reply, Read Undine: that is a fairytale.
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All love will, one day, meet with its return. All true love will, one day, behold its own image in the eyes of the beloved, and be humbly glad.
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The more I work with the body, keeping my assumptions in a temporary state of reservation, the more I appreciate and sympathize with a given disease. The body no longer appears as a sick or irrational demon, but as a process with its own inner logic and wisdom.
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Two people may be at the same spot in manners and behaviour, and yet one may be getting better, and the other worse, which is the greatest of differences that could possibly exist between them.
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