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

However strange it may well seem, to do one's duty will make anyone conceited who only does it sometimes. Those who do it always would as soon think of being conceited of eating their dinner as of doing their duty. What honest boy would pride himself on not picking pockets? A thief who was trying to reform would. To be conceited of doing one's duty is then a sign of how little one does it, and how little one sees what a contemptible thing it is not to do it. Could any but a low creature be conceited of not being contemptible? Until our duty becomes to us common as breathing, we are poor creatures.

— George MacDonald

How kind you are, North Wind!'' I am only just. All kindness is but justice. We owe it.

— George MacDonald

How much time is wasted in what is called thought, but is merely care--an anxious idling over the fancied probabilities of result

— George MacDonald

How old are you?"" Ten," answered Tangle." You don't look like it," said the lady." How old are you, please?" returned Tangle." Thousands of years old," answered the lady." You don't look like it," said Tangle." Don't I? I think I do. Don't you see how beautiful I am!

— George MacDonald

How strange this fear of death is! We are never frightened at a sunset.

— George MacDonald

I am a beast until I love as God doth love.

— George MacDonald

I am always hearing. . . The sound of a far off song. I do not exactly know where it is, or what it means; and I don't hear much of it, only the odor of its music, as it were, flitting across the great billows of the ocean outside this air in which I make such a storm; but what I do hear, is quite enough to make me able to bear the cry from the drowning ship. So it would you if you could hear it.'' No it wouldn't,' returned Diamond stoutly. 'For they wouldn't hear the music of the far-away song; and if they did, it wouldn't do them any good. You see you and I are not going to be drowned, and so we might enjoy it.'' But you have never heard the psalm, and you don't know what it is like. Somehow, I can't say how, it tells me that all is right; that it is coming to swallow up all the cries. . . . It wouldn't be the song it seems if it did not swallow up all their fear and pain too, and set them singing it themselves with all the rest.

— George MacDonald

... I am still librarian in your house, for I was never 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

I can but pray the Father o' a' to had his e'e upon her, an' his areas about her, an' keep AFF the hardenin' o' the her 'at despises counsel!

— George MacDonald