A Dish of Orts: Chiefly Papers on the Imagination, and on Shakespeare
1590
A Dish of Orts: Chiefly Papers on the Imagination, and on Shakespeare
1590
George MacDonald was the Victorian writer who dared to defend fantasy when his contemporaries dismissed it as escapist nonsense. In these luminous essays, he mounts an impassioned case for imagination as essential to human flourishing, not a weakness to be suppressed. Written with poetic fervor and philosophical rigor, the collection explores how imagination operates as a way of seeing truth that cold logic cannot access. The Shakespeare essays reveal MacDonald as a critic of extraordinary sensitivity, reading the plays not as mere entertainment but as windows into deepest human experience. These fragments (the title "orts" means scraps or morsels) cohere into something greater than their parts: a vision of literature as vital, dangerous, necessary work. For readers who believe stories matter, who have felt the charge of encountering a world made anew through words.
Editions
X-Ray
“The best thing you can do for your fellow, next to rousing his conscience, is”
— George MacDonald
“In very truth, a wise imagination, which is the presence of the spirit of God, is the best guide that man or woman can have; for it is not the things we see the most clearly that influence us the most powerfully; undefined, yet vivid visions of something beyond, something which eye has not seen nor ear heard, have far more influence than any logical sequences whereby the same things may be demonstrated to the intellect. It is the nature of the thing, not the clearness of its outline, that determines its operation. We live by faith, and not by sight.””
— George MacDonald
“The greatest forces lie in the region of the uncomprehended.””
— George MacDonald
“Seek not that your sons and your daughters should not see visions, should not dream dreams; seek that they should see true visions, that they should dream noble dreams. Such out-going of the imagination is one with aspiration, and will do more to elevate above what is low and vile than all possible inculcations of morality.””
— George MacDonald
“All words, then, belonging to the inner world of the mind, are of the imagination, are originally poetic words.””
— George MacDonald
“To inquire into what God has made is the main function of the imagination. It is aroused by facts, is nourished by facts; seeks for higher and yet higher laws in those facts; but refuses to regard science as the sole interpreter of nature, or the laws of science as the only region of discovery.””
— George MacDonald
“Indeed, a man is rather being thought than thinking, when a new thought arises in his mind.””
— George MacDonald
“The necessary unlikeness between the creator and the created holds within it the equally necessary likeness of the thing made to him who makes it, and so of the work of the made to the work of the maker... The imagination of man is made in the image of the imagination of God.””
— George MacDonald
“If we speak of direct means for the culture of the imagination, the whole is comprised in two words--food and exercise.””
— George MacDonald
Link to this book
Add a free, dofollow link to Lex on your blog, forum, syllabus, or reading list.
<a href="https://lex-books.com/book/a-dish-of-orts-chiefly-papers-on-the-imagination-and-on-shakespeare-66181896-0764-4d92-bdc9-96fd966f8bd0"><img src="https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg" alt="Read A Dish of Orts: Chiefly Papers on the Imagination, and on Shakespeare by George MacDonald free on Lex" width="160" height="40"></a>[](https://lex-books.com/book/a-dish-of-orts-chiefly-papers-on-the-imagination-and-on-shakespeare-66181896-0764-4d92-bdc9-96fd966f8bd0)[url=https://lex-books.com/book/a-dish-of-orts-chiefly-papers-on-the-imagination-and-on-shakespeare-66181896-0764-4d92-bdc9-96fd966f8bd0][img]https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg[/img][/url]Read A Dish of Orts: Chiefly Papers on the Imagination, and on Shakespeare by George MacDonald free on Lex: https://lex-books.com/book/a-dish-of-orts-chiefly-papers-on-the-imagination-and-on-shakespeare-66181896-0764-4d92-bdc9-96fd966f8bd0Cite this book
Reading this edition for a paper or guide? Copy a citation.
MacDonald, George. A Dish of Orts: Chiefly Papers on the Imagination, and on Shakespeare. Lex, lex-books.com/book/a-dish-of-orts-chiefly-papers-on-the-imagination-and-on-shakespeare-66181896-0764-4d92-bdc9-96fd966f8bd0.MacDonald, G. (1590). A Dish of Orts: Chiefly Papers on the Imagination, and on Shakespeare. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/a-dish-of-orts-chiefly-papers-on-the-imagination-and-on-shakespeare-66181896-0764-4d92-bdc9-96fd966f8bd0MacDonald, George. A Dish of Orts: Chiefly Papers on the Imagination, and on Shakespeare. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/a-dish-of-orts-chiefly-papers-on-the-imagination-and-on-shakespeare-66181896-0764-4d92-bdc9-96fd966f8bd0.
