George MacDonald
George MacDonald
George MacDonaldwas a Scottish author, poet, and Christian minister. He was a pioneering figure in the field of fantasy literature and the mentor of fellow writer Lewis Carroll. His writings have been cited as a major literary influence by many notable authors including W. H. Auden, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Walter de la Mare, E. Nesbit and Madeleine L'Engle. C. S. Lewis wrote that he regarded MacDonald as his "master": "Picking up a copy of Phantastes one...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth10 December 1824
Now and then, when I look round on my books, they seem to waver as if a wind rippled their solid mass, and another world were about to break through.
For the greatest fool and rascal in creation there is yet a worse condition; and that is, not to know it, but to think himself a respectable man.
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.
I am an optimistic fatalist. This world and all its beginnings will pass on into something better.
As Christ is the blossom of humanity, so the blossom of every man is Christ perfected in him.
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.
It needs brains to be a real fool.
A voice is in the wind I do not know A meaning on the face of the high hills Whose utterance I cannot comprehend. A something is behind them: that is God.
If we knew as much about heaven as God does, we would clap our hands every time a Christian dies.
Joy cannot unfold the deepest truths. Cometh white-robed Sorrow, stooping and wan, and flingeth wide the door she must not enter.
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.
The holy spirit of the Spring Is working silently.
They are not the best students who are most dependent on books. What can be got out of them is at best only material; a man must build his house for himself.
The region belonging to the pure intellect is straitened: the imagination labours to extend its territories, to give it room. She sweeps across the boarders, searching out new lands into which she may guide her plodding brother. The imagination is the light which redeems from the darkness for the eyes of the understanding. Novalis says, 'The imagination is the stuff of the intellect' -affords, that is, the material upon which the intellect works.