"Timely service like timely gifts is doubled in value."

"Society is neither my master nor my servant, neither my father nor my sister; and so long as she does not bar my way to the kingdom of heaven, which is the only society worth getting into, I feel no right to complain of how she treats me. I have no claim on her; I do not acknowledge her laws--hardly her existence, and she has no authority over me. Why should she, how could she, constituted as she is, receive such as me? The moment she did so, she would cease to be what she is; and, if all be true that one hears of her, she does me a kindness in excluding me. What can it matter to me, Letty, whether they call me a lady or not, so long as Jesus says "Daughter to me?"

"Seeing is not believing, it is only seeing,George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblin."

"Many a thief is a better man than many a clergyman, and miles nearer to the gate of the kingdom."

"Love me, beloved; Hades and DeathShall vanish away like a frosty breath;These hands, that now are at home in thine,Shall clasp thee again, if thou art still mine;And thou shalt be mine, my spirit's bride,In the ceaseless flow of eternity's tide,If the truest love thy heart can knowMeet the truest love that from mine can flow.Pray God, beloved, for thee and me,That our souls may be wedded eternally."

"Where did you come from baby dear? Out of the Everywhere into here."

"I would I were in the kingdom of heaven if it be as you and Mr. Graham take it for!" said Clementina."You must be in it, my lady, or you couldn't wish it to be such as it is.""Can one be in it and yet seem to himself to be out of it. Malcolm?""So many are out of it that seem to be in it, my lady, that one might well imagine it the other way around with some."

"I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God's thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest and most precious thing in all thinking."

"Obedience is the opener of eyes."

"The truth Fear tells is not much better than her lies."

"The ruin of a man's teaching comes of his followers, such as having never touched the foundation he has laid, build upon it wood, hay, and stubble, fit only to be burnt. Therefore, if only to avoid his worst foes, his admirers, a man should avoid system. The more correct a system the worse will it be misunderstood; its professed admirers will take both its errors and their misconceptions of its truths, and hold them forth as its essence."

"That's all nonsense," said Curdie. "I don't know what you mean." "Then if you don't know what I mean, what right have you to call it nonsense?"

"I find that doing of the will of God leaves me no time for disputing about His plans."

"No good ever comes of pride, for it is the meanest of mean things, and no one but he who is full of it thinks it grand."

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

"If instead of a gem, or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give."

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

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

"It matters little where a man may be at this moment; the point is whether he is growing."

"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."

"My prayers my God flow from what I am not I think Thy answers make me what I am."

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

"For essential beauty is infinite, and, as the soul of Nature needs an endless succession of varied forms to embody her loveliness, countless faces of beauty springing forth, not any two the same, at every one of her heart-throbs, so the individual form needs an infinite change of its environments, to enable it to uncover all the phases of its loveliness."

"I do not write for children, but for the childlike, whether of five, or fifty, or seventy-five."

"I learned that it is better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold up his head in his pride and fancied innocence. I learned that he that will be a hero, will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work, is sure of his manhood. In nothing was my ideal lowered, or dimmed, or grown less precious; I only saw it too plainly, to set myself for a moment beside it. Indeed, my ideal soon became my life; whereas, formerly, my life had consisted in a vain attempt to behold, if not my ideal in myself, at least myself in my ideal."

"From the neglect of a real duty, she became the slave of a false one."

"However strange it may well seem, to do one's duty will make any one 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."

"Work done is of more consequence for the future than the foresight of an angel."

"To cease to wonder is to fall plumb-down from the childlike to the commonplace-the most undivine of all moods intellectual. Our nature can never be at home among things that are not wonderful to us."

"I am still librarian in your house, for I never was 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!"

"There is little hope of the repentance and redemption of certain some until they have committed one or another of the many wrong things of which they are daily, through a course of unrestrained selfishness, becoming more and more capable."

"Never, my little one, hide anything from those that love you. Never let anything that makes itself a nest in your heart, grow into a secret, for then at once it will begin to eat a hole in it."

"When I learn the meaning of a word, I know the word; but when I say to myself, 'I know the word,' there comes a reflection of the word back from the mirror of my mind, making a second impression, and after that I am at least not so likely to forget it..."When, then, I think about the impression that the word makes upon me, how it is affecting me with the knowledge of itself, then I am what I should call self-conscious of the word-conscious not only that I know the word, but that I know the phenomena of knowing the word-conscious of what I am as regards my knowing of the word."

"The main secret of his progress, the secret of all wisdom, was, that with him action was the beginning and end of thought."

"There had been a time in Godfrey's life when, had she stood before him in all her splendor, he would have turned from her, because of her history, with a sad disgust. Was he less pure now? He was more pure, for he was humbler."

"As no one can be just without love, so no one can truly report without understanding."

"A genuine work of art must mean many things; the truer its art, the more things it will mean. If my drawing, on the other hand, is so far from being a work of art that it needs THIS IS A HORSE written under it, what can it matter that neither you nor your child should know what it means? It is there not so much to convey a meaning as to wake a meaning. If it do not even wake an interest, throw it aside. A meaning may be there, but it is not for you. If, again, you do not know a horse when you see it, the name written under it will not serve you much. At all events, the business of the painter is not to teach zoology."

"Man finds it hard to get what he wants, because he does not want the best; God finds it hard to give, because He would give the best, and man will not take it."

"Now I knew that life and truth were one; that life mere and pure is in itself bliss; that where being is not bliss, it is not life, but life-in-death. Every inspiration of the dark wind that blew where it listed went out a sigh of thanksgiving. At last I was! I lived, and nothing could touch my life! My darling walked beside me, and we were on our way home to see the Father!"

"A devil - "A power that lives against its life"."

"One of my greatest difficulties in consenting to think of religion was that I thought I should have to give up my beautiful thoughts and my love for the things God has made. But I find that the happiness springing from all things not in themselves sinful is much increased by religion. God is the God of the Beautiful-Religion is the love of the Beautiful, and Heaven is the Home of the Beautiful--Nature is tenfold brighter in the Sun of Righteousness, and my love of Nature is more intense since I became a Christian--if indeed I am one. God has not given me such thoughts and forbidden me to enjoy them."

"Trust the Oak, said she; "trust the Oak, and the Elm, and the great Beech. Take care of the Birch, for though she is honest, she is too young not to be changeable. But shun the Ash and the Alder; for the Ash is an ogre,-you will know him by his thick fingers; and the Alder will smother you with her web of hair, if you let her near you at night."

"Age is not all decay; it is the ripening, the swelling, of the fresh life within, that withers and bursts the husk."

"To be unable to bear disapproval was an unworthy weakness. But in her case it came nowise of the pride which blame stirs to resentment, but altogether of the self-depreciation which disapproval rouses to yet greater dispiriting. Praise was to her a precious thing, in part because it made her feel as if she could go on; blame, a misery, in part because it made her feel as if all was of no use, she never could do anything right. She had not yet learned that the right is the right, come of praise or blame what may. The right will produce more right and be its own reward--in the end a reward altogether infinite, for God will meet it with what is deeper than all right, namely, perfect love."

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

"She did not even trouble herself much to show Godfrey her gratitude. We may spoil gratitude as we offer it, by insisting on its recognition. To receive honestly is the best thanks for a good thing."

"Fear is faithlessness."

"You can't live on amusement. It is the froth on water - an inch deep and then the mud."

"Primarily, God is not bound to punish sin; he is bound to destroy sin.The only vengeance worth having on sinis to make the sinner himself its executioner."

"Our Lord speaks of many coming up to His door confident of admission, whom He yet sends away. Faith is obedience, not confidence."