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All that is not God is death.George MacDonald
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I want to help you to grow as beautiful as God meant you to be when He thought of you first.George MacDonald
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If God were not only to hear our prayers, as he does ever and always, but to answer them as we want them answered, he would not be God our Saviour but the ministering genius of our destruction.George MacDonald
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One of my greatest difficulties in consenting to think of religion was that I thought I should have to give up my beautiful thoughts and my love for the things God has made. But I find that the happiness springing from all things not in themselves sinful is much increased by religion. God is the God of the Beautiful–Religion is the love of the Beautiful, and Heaven is the Home of the Beautiful–-Nature is tenfold brighter in the Sun of Righteousness, and my love of Nature is more intense since I became a Christian–-if indeed I am one. God has not given me such thoughts and forbidden me to enjoy them. .George MacDonald
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Love loves unto purity. Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of that which it beholds. Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love's kind, must be destroyed. And our God is a consuming fire.George MacDonald
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Seeing is not believing, it is only seeing, ” George MacDonald, The Princess and the GoblinGeorge MacDonald
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But we believe — nay, Lord we only hope, That one day we shall thank thee perfectly For pain and hope and all that led or drove Us back into the bosom of thy love.George MacDonald
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She could now be sad without losing a jot of hope. Nay, rather, the least approach of sadness would begin at once to wake her hope. She regretted nothing that had come, nothing that had gone. She believed more and more that not anything worth having is ever lost; that even the most evanescent shades of feeling are safe for those who grow after their true nature, toward that for which they were made–in other and higher words, after the will of God. .George MacDonald
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You have tasted of death now, ” said the old man. “Is it good?” “It is good, ” said Mossy. “It is better than life.”“ No, ” said the old man: “it is only more life.George MacDonald
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The back door of every tomb opens on a hilltop.George MacDonald
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I do not write for children, but for the childlike, whether of five, or fifty, or seventy-five.George MacDonald
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Anybody with leisure can do that who is willing to begin where everything ought to be begun--that is, at the beginning. Nothing worth calling good can or ever will be started full grown. The essential of any good is life, and the very body of created life, and essential to it, being its self operant, is growth. The larger start you make, the less room you leave for life to extend itself. You fill with the dead matter of your construction the places where assimilation ought to have its perfect work, building by a life-process, self-extending, and subserving the whole. Small beginnings with slow growings have time to root themselves thoroughly-- I do not mean in place nor yet in social regard, but in wisdom. Such even prosper by failures, for their failures are not too great to be rectified without injury to the original idea. .George MacDonald
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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.George MacDonald
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The ruin of a man's teaching comes of his followers, such as having never touched the foundation he has laid, build upon it wood, hay, and stubble, fit only to be burnt. Therefore, if only to avoid his worst foes, his admirers, a man should avoid system. The more correct a system the worse will it be misunderstood; its professed admirers will take both its errors and their misconceptions of its truths, and hold them forth as its essence.George MacDonald
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His mother, who had never been able to manage him, sent him to school to get rid of him, lamented his absence till he returned, then writhed and fretted under his presence until again he went.George MacDonald
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As you grow ready for it, somewhere or other you will find what is needful for you in a book.George MacDonald
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...I am still librarian in your house, for I never was dismissed, and never gave up the office. Now I am librarian here as well.'' But you have just told me you were sexton here! '' So I am. It is much the same profession. Except you are a true sexton, books are but dead bodies to you, and a library nothing but a catacomb!George MacDonald
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The truth Fear tells is not much better than her lies.George MacDonald
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She had no stay, no root in herself yet. Well do I know not one human being ought, even were it possible, to be enough for himself; each of us needs God and every human soul he has made, before he has enough; but we ought each to be able, in the hope of what is one day to come, to endure for a time, not having enough. Letty was unblamable that she desired the comfort of humanity around her soul, but I am not sure that she was quite unblamable in not being fit to walk a few steps alone, or even to sit still and expect. […] and now her heart was like a child left alone in a great room. She had not yet learned that we must each bear his own burden, and so become able to bear each the burden of the other. Poor friends we are, if we are capable only of leaning, and able never to support.George MacDonald
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Some dreams, some poems, some musical phrases, some pictures, wake feelings such as one never had before, new in colour and form–spiritual sensations, as it were, hitherto unprovedGeorge MacDonald