Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood

“How often do we look upon God as our last and feeblest resource! Wego to Him because we have nowhere else to go. And when we learn thatthe storms of life have not driven us upon the rocks but into thedesired heaven.””

— George MacDonald

“Our minds are small because they are faithless,' I said to myself.'If we had faith in God our hearts would share in His greatness andpeace for we should not then be shut up in ourselves, but would walkabroad in him””

— George MacDonald

“Never was there a more injurous mistake than to say it was thebusiness only of the clergy to care for souls.””

— George MacDonald

“When I reached my own study, I sat down by a blazing fire...I soon fell into a dreamy state (which a few mistake for thinking, because it is the nearest approach they ever make to it) and in this reverie I kept staring about my bookshelves. I am vey fond of books. Do not mistake me. I do not mean that I love reading. I hope I do. That is no fault--a virtue rather than a fault. But, as the old meaning of the word "fond" was foolish, I use that word: I am foolishly fond of the bodies of books as distinguished from their souls. I do not say that I love their books as distinguished from their souls--I should not keep a book for which I felt no respect or had no use. But I delight in seeing books about me, books even of which there seems to be no prospect that I shall have to read a single chapter. I confess that if they are nicely bound, so as to glow and shine in a firelight, I like them ever so much the better. I suspect that by the time books (which ought to be loved for the truth that is in them) come to be loved as articles of furniture, the mind has gone through a process which the miser's mind goes through--that of passing from the respect of money because of what it can do, to the love of money because it is money. I have not yet reached the furniture stage, and I do not think I every shall. I would rather burn them all. Meantime, I think one safeguard is to encourage one's friends to borrow one's books.... That will probably take some of the shine off them, and put a few thumb-marks in them, which are very wholesome. - from "Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood, Ch. 11””

— George MacDonald

“Age is such a different thing in different natures! One man seems to grow more and more selfish as he grows older; and in another the slow fire of time seems only to consume, with fine, imperceptible gradations, the yet lingering selfishness in him, letting the light of the kingdom, which the Lord says is within, shine out more and more, as the husk grows thin and is ready to fall off, that the man, like the seed sown, may pierce the earth of this world, and rise into the pure air and wind and dew of the second life.””

— George MacDonald

“in order to feel, it is necessary that the mind should rest upon the matter, whatever it is.””

— George MacDonald

“Really he was not an interesting man: short, broad, stout, red-faced, with an immense amount of mental inertia, discharging itself in constant lingual activity about little nothings.””

— George MacDonald

“That's right, grannie! And the rich have to look down on the poor." "No, my dear. I did not say that. The rich have to be KIND to the poor.””

— George MacDonald

“You ought to have principles of your own, Mr Walton." "I hope I have. And one of them is, not to make mountains of molehills; for a molehill is not a mountain. A man ought to have too much to do in obeying his conscience and keeping his soul's garments clean, to mind whether he wears black or white when telling his flock that God loves them, and that they will never be happy till they believe it.””

— George MacDonald