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
To be humbly ashamed is to be plunged in the cleansing bath of truth.
Anything big enough to occupy our minds is big enough to hang a prayer on.
Only he knew that to be left alone is not always to be forsaken.
To try to be brave is to be brave.
To receive honestly is the best thanks for a good thing.
A fairytale is not an allegory. There may be allegory in it, but it is not an allegory.
This is a wise, sane Christian faith: that a man commit himself, his life, and his hopes to God; that God undertakes the special protection of that man; that therefore that man ought not to be afraid of anything.
Were I asked, what is a fairytale? I should reply, Read Undine: that is a fairytale.
Do you think you love your children better than He who made them? Is not your love what it is because He put it into your heart first? Have you not often been cross with them? Sometimes unjust to them? Whence came the returning love that rose from unknown depths in your being, and swept away the anger and the injustice? You did not create that love. Probably you were not good enough to send for it by prayer. But it came. God sent it. He makes you love your children.
One of the grandest things in having rights is, that though they are your rights you may give them up
A man may sink by such slow degrees that, long after he is a devil, he may go on being a good churchman or a good dissenter and thinking himself a good Christian.
If we knew as much about heaven as God does, we would clap our hands every time a Christian dies.
In low theologies, hell is invariably the deepest truth, and the love of God is not so deep as hell.
What distressed me most - more even than my own folly - was the perplexing question, How can beauty and ugliness dwell so near?