J. E. H. MacDonald Quotes

Anything large enough for a wish to light upon, is large enough to hang a prayer upon.

But I begin to think the chief difficulty in writing a book must be to keep out what does not belong to it.

There is an aching that is worse than any pain.

But when we are following the light, even its extinction is a guide.

Ah, what is it we send up thither, where our thoughts are either a dissonance or a sweetness and a grace?

And so all growth that is not towards God Is growing to decay.

The direst foe of courage is the fear itself, not the object of it; and the man who can overcome his own terror is a hero and more.

Thou art beautiful because God created thee, but thou art a slave to sin... wickedness has made you ugly.

Snow and reflections were beautiful but transient effects and other difficulties were beyond me.

Good souls many will one day be horrified at the things they now believe of God.

No story ever really ends, and I think I know why.

They will pressure you into doing things that may be unsafe, use your good judgment, and remember, 'I would rather be laughed at, than cried for.'

When a feeling was there, they felt as if it would never go; when it was gone, they felt as if it had never been; when it returned, they felt as if it had never gone.

Friends, if we be honest with ourselves, we shall be honest with each other.

Love is the opener as well as closer of eyes.

To be humbly ashamed is to be plunged in the cleansing bath of truth.

To receive honestly is the best thanks for a good thing.

Our prayer must be, "Father, I'm waiting for You because I know You are good in what You do and in when you do it.

But we believe – nay, Lord we only hope, That one day we shall thank thee perfectly For pain and hope and all that led or drove Us back into the bosom of thy love.

We have been endowed with the capacity and the power to create desirable pictures within and to find them automatically in the outer world of our environment.

I have a little bit of an out-of-body experience where I enjoy the scenario, and I really do like seeing a crowd turn into a mob, and I do nothing to stop it. People can become really dangerous.

The standard of morals is as variable as morals themselves; of which every nation has a different code, and every custom a different reading.

People cannot endure inexplicable worthlessness

I've shown people Richard Pryor who've never seen him, and most of them don't like him.

In the country Sunday is the day on which you do exactly as much work as you do on other days but feel guilty all the time you are doing it because Sunday is a day of rest.

A man's enemies are those he should endeavor first to make his friends.

By your grace, I will not despair. I believe that I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

What I'm normally associated with are darker, more brooding roles.

Conversation means being able to disagree and still continue the discussion

Some men mistake generosity for charity: these flatter themselves that they are giving gratuitously, whilst they are merely rewarding secret services offered their vanity.

I now see Norman Thomas as indeed a liberal, but as a real, old-fashioned, unreconstructed liberal who believes in freedom and justice for everybody.

Do the things you used to do, and you'll feel the feelings you used to feel.

An ugly woman with a gun is a terrible thing.

If we knew as much about heaven as God does, we would clap our hands every time a Christian dies.

No man can make haste to be rich without going against the will of God, in which case it is the one frightful thing to be successful.

Joy cannot unfold the deepest truths. Cometh white-robed Sorrow, stooping and wan, and flingeth wide the door she must not enter.

It is not the cares of today, but the cares of tomorrow, that weigh a man down.

One thing is clear to me, that no indulgence of passion destroys the spiritual nature so much as respectable selfishness.

We're all in the game. We all drive cars, and we're all hooked on oil. The question is how we can get unhooked before we drown in the stuff.

In the midst of death we are in life. Life is the only reality; what men call death is but a shadow.

Come, then, affliction, if my Father wills, and be my frowning friend. A friend that frowns is better than a smiling enemy.

The core of humanity's sin problem is not a horizontal behavior to be corrected but a Vertical relationship to be restored.

I found myself wishing that we could live like the birds and move through nature without hurting it our ourselves.

God's not afraid of a mess. He wants to do a cleaning.

God brings tests into your life because your faith in Him--your belief that He is in control and that He is good--can be proved only in times when life is hard.

I want to help you grow as beautiful as God meant you to be when he thought of you first.

I begin indeed to fear that I have undertaken an impossibility, undertaken to tell what I cannot tell because no speech at my command will fit the forms in my mind.

To try to be brave is to be brave.

In love, we are best pleased when we please others.

As a man gets older, if he knows what is good for him,, the women he likes are getting older too. The trouble is that most of them are married.