Quotes by George MacDonald

  ​ All is loss that comes between us and Christ.

— George MacDonald

Learn these two things: never be discouraged because good things get on so slowly here, and never fail daily to do that good which lies next to your hand. Do not be in a hurry, but be diligent. Enter into the sublime patience of the Lord. Be charitable in view of it. God can afford to wait; why cannot we, since we have Him to fall back upon? Let patience have her perfect work, and bring forth her celestial fruits. Trust to God to weave your little thread into a web, though the patterns show it not yet.

— George MacDonald

Division has done more to hide Christ from the view of men than all the infidelity that has ever been spoken.

— George MacDonald

Come, come to Him who made thy heart; Come weary and oppressed; To come to Jesus is thy part; His part, to give thee rest.

— George MacDonald

  ​ The doing of things from duty is but a stage on the road to the kingdom of truth and love.

— George MacDonald

God never gave a man a thing to do concerning which it were irreverent to ponder how the Son of God would have done it.

— George MacDonald

God Himself—His thoughts, His will, His love, His judgments are men's home. To think His thoughts, to choose His will, to judge His judgments, and thus to know that He is in us, with us, is to be at home. And to pass through the valley of the shadow of death is the way home, but only thus, that as all changes have hitherto led us nearer to this home, the knowledge of God, so this greatest of all outward changes—for it is but an outward change—will surely usher us into a region where there will be fresh possibilities of drawing nigh in heart, soul, and mind to the Father of us all.

— George MacDonald

God hides nothing. His very work from the beginning is revelation ,—a casting aside of veil after veil, a showing unto men of truth after truth. On and on from fact Divine He advances, until at length in His Son Jesus He unveils His very face.

— George MacDonald

How many people would like to be good, if only they might be good without taking trouble about it! They do not like goodness well enough to hunger and thirst after it, or to sell all that they have that they may buy it; they will not batter at the gate of the kingdom of heaven; but they look with pleasure on this or that aerial castle of righteousness, and think it would be rather nice to live in it.

— George MacDonald

How rich this earth seems when we regard it—crowded with the loves of home! Yet I am now getting ready to go home —to leave this world of homes and go home. When I reach that home, shall I even then seek yet to go home? Even then, I believe, I shall seek a yet warmer, deeper, truer home in the deeper knowledge of God—in the truer love of my fellow men. Eternity will be—my heart and my faith tell me—a traveling homeward, but in jubilation and confidence and the vision of the beloved.

— George MacDonald

Then I said in my heart, "Come home with me, beloved—there is but one home for us all. When we find—in proportion as each of us finds that home, shall we be gardens of delight to each other—little chambers of rest—galleries of pictures—wells of water."

— George MacDonald

A man's labors must pass like the sunrises and sunsets of the world. The next thing, not the last, must be his care.

— George MacDonald

Life and religion are one, or neither is any thing.

— George MacDonald

Oh, I believe that there is no away; that no love, no life, goes ever from us; it goes as He went, that it may come again, deeper and closer and surer, and be with us always, even to the end of the world.

— George MacDonald