Malcolm

“But, sir, isn't death a dreadful thing?" asked Malcolm."That depends on whether a man regards it as his fate or as the will of a perfect God. Its obscurity is its dread. But if God be light, then death itself must be full of splendor--a splendor probably too keen for our eyes to receive.""But there's the dying itself; isn't that fearsome? It's that I would be afraid of.""I don't see why it should be. It's the lack of a God that makes it dreadful, and would be greatly to blame for that, Malcolm, if you hadn't found your God by the time you had to die.””

— George MacDonald

“I should not be surprised," said Mr. Graham, "that the day should come when men will refuse to believe in God simply on the ground of the apparent injustice of things. They would argue that there might be either an omnipotent being who did not care, or a good being who could not help, but that there could not be a being both all good and omnipotent or else he would never have suffered things to be as they are.””

— George MacDonald

“A library cannot be made all at once, any more than a house or a nation or a tree; they must all take time to grow, and so must a library. I wouldn't even know what books to go and ask for. I dare say, if I were to try, I couldn't at a moment's notice tell you the names of more than two score of books at the outside. Folk must make acquaintance among books as they would among living folk.””

— George MacDonald

“Do you really suppose God cares whether a man comes to good or ill?""If He did not, He could not be good himself...""...Then He can't be so hard on us as the parsons say, even in the after-life?""He will give absolute justice, which is the only good thing. He will spare nothing to bring His children back to himself, their sole well-being, whether He achieve it here--or there.””

— George MacDonald

“For the master believed in solitude and silence. Say rather, he believed in God. What the youth might think, feel, or judge, he could not tell; but he believed that when the Human is still, the Divine speaks to it, because it is its own.””

— George MacDonald

“The claim that hung over him haunted his very life, turning the currents of his thought into channels of speculation unknown before. One day when these questions were fighting in his heart, all at once it seemed as if a soundless voice in the depth of his soul replied, "Thy soul, however it became known to itself, is from the pure heart of God." And with the thought, the horizon of his life began to clear.””

— George MacDonald

“...he believed in God and he believed that when the human is still, the Divine speaks to it, because it is its own.””

— George MacDonald

“I think it far better for a man to go wrong upon his own honest judgment, than to go right upon anybody else's judgment, however honest also.””

— George MacDonald

“I mean, mem, 'at a blin' man, like my gran'father, canna ken himsel' richt, seein' he canna ken ither fowk richt. It's by kennin' ither fowk 'at ye come to ken yersel, mem”

— George MacDonald