Quotes from Lilith

“A man is as free as he chooses to make himself, never an atom freer.”
― George MacDonald, quote from Lilith

“Whose work is it but your own to open your eyes? But indeed the business of the universe is to make such a fool out of you that you will know yourself for one, and begin to be wise.”
― George MacDonald, quote from Lilith

“You doubt because you love truth.”
― George MacDonald, quote from Lilith

“Doubt may be a poor encouragement to do anything, but it is a bad reason for doing nothing.”
― George MacDonald, quote from Lilith

“there is no harm in being afraid. The only harm is in doing what Fear tells you. Fear is not your master! Laugh in his face and he will run away.”
― George MacDonald, quote from Lilith

“I tell you, there are more worlds, and more doors to them, than you will think of in many years!”
― George MacDonald, quote from Lilith

“There is no slave but the creature that wills against its Creator.”
― George MacDonald, quote from Lilith

“The part of the philanthropist is indeed a dangerous one; and the man who would do his neighbour good must first study how not to do him evil, and must begin by pulling the beam out of his own eye.”
― George MacDonald, quote from Lilith

“But there is a light that goes deeper than the will, a light that lights up the darkness behind it: that light can change your will, can make it truly yours and not another's - not the Shadow's. Into the created can pour itself the creating will, and so redeem it!”
― George MacDonald, quote from Lilith

“The only way to come to know where you are is to begin to make yourself at home.”
― George MacDonald, quote from Lilith

“Those are not the tears of repentance!... Self-loathing is not sorrow. Yet it is good, for it marks a step in the way home, and in the father's arms the prodigal forgets the self he abominates.”
― George MacDonald, quote from Lilith

“I am ready,' I replied.
'How do you know you can do it?'
'Because you require it,' I answered.”
― George MacDonald, quote from Lilith

“Thou art beautiful because God created thee, but thou art a slave to sin... wickedness has made you ugly.”
― George MacDonald, quote from Lilith

“I looked, and saw: before her, cast from an unseen heavenly mirror, stood the reflection of herself, and beside it a form of splendent beauty. She trembled, and sank again on the floor helpless. She knew the one that God had intended her to be, the other that she had made herself.”
― George MacDonald, quote from Lilith

“Books are but dead bodies to you, and a library nothing but a catacomb!”
― George MacDonald, quote from Lilith

“When a man dreams his own dream, he is the sport of his dream; when Another gives it him, that Other is able to fulfill it.”
― George MacDonald, quote from Lilith

“...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!”
― George MacDonald, quote from Lilith

“I had chosen the dead rather than the living, the thing thought rather than the thing thinking.”
― George MacDonald, quote from Lilith

“Yes,' he answered; 'and you will be dead, so long as you refuse to die.”
― George MacDonald, quote from Lilith

“No one can say he is himself, until first he knows that he is, and then what himself is. In fact, nobody is himself, and himself is nobody.”
― George MacDonald, quote from Lilith

“All the days of my appointed time will I wait till my change come.”
― George MacDonald, quote from Lilith

“The man who grounds his action on another's cowardice, is essentially a coward himself.”
― George MacDonald, quote from Lilith

“Nobody knows what anything is; a man can only learn what a thing means!”
― George MacDonald, quote from Lilith

“It opened a little way, and a face came into the opening. It was Lona's. It's eyes were closed, but the face itself was upon me, and seemed to see me. It was as white as Eve's, white as Mara's, but did not shine like their faces. She spoke, and her voice was like a sleepy night-wind in the grass.

"Are you coming, king?" it said. "I cannot rest until you are with me, gliding down the river to the great sea, and the beautiful dream-land. The sleepiness is full of lovely things: come and see them.”
― George MacDonald, quote from Lilith

“You allowed me existence, which is the sum of what one can demand of his fellow-beings”
― George MacDonald, quote from Lilith

“If you know you are yourself, you know that you are not somebody else; but do you know that you are yourself? Are”
― George MacDonald, quote from Lilith

“Strange dim memories, which will not abide identification, often, through misty windows of the past, look out upon me in the broad daylight, but I never dream now. It may be, notwithstanding, that, when most awake, I am only dreaming the more! But when I wake at last into that life which as a mother her child, carries life in its bosom, I shall know that I wake, and shall doubt no more. I wait; asleep or awake, I wait.”
― George MacDonald, quote from Lilith

“Every one, as you ought to know, has a beast-self—and a bird-self, and a stupid fish-self, ay, and a creeping serpent-self too—which it takes a deal of crushing to kill! In truth he has also a tree-self and a crystal-self, and I don’t know how many selves more—all to get into harmony. You can tell what sort a man is by his creature that comes oftenest to the front.”
― George MacDonald, quote from Lilith

“Oblige me by telling me where I am."
"That is impossible. You know nothing about whereness. The only way to come to know where you are is to begin to make yourself at home.”
― George MacDonald, quote from Lilith

“No man knows it when he is making an idiot of himself.”
― George MacDonald, quote from Lilith

About the author

Popular quotes

“I like this dirty Chase, this crude and irreverent man. I want to go where he's taking me. I need to be dragged down to where he is so we can build ourselves back up, together, stronger.”
― S.R. Grey, quote from I Stand Before You

“Antonia José Bolivar préférait ne plus penser, laissant béantes les profondeurs de sa mémoire pour les remplir de bonheur et de tourments d'amour plus éternels que le temps.”
― Luis Sepúlveda, quote from The Old Man Who Read Love Stories

“The Jedi taught you much more than simply how to fight. They taught you how to live, how to live within the Force, and upholad the bond you share with it.”
― Joe Schreiber, quote from Red Harvest

“Did that make him a bad man? Perhaps, though if so then arguably all men were bad. A proposition his wife would probably agree with, as would most of the women Holse had known, from his poor mother onwards. That was not his fault either, though. Most men – most women, too, no doubt – lived and died under the general weight of the drives and needs, expectations and demands they experienced from within and without, beaten this way and that by longings for sex, love, admiration, comfort, importance and wealth and whatever else was their particular fancy, as well as being at the same time channelled into whatever furrows were deemed appropriate for them by those on high.

In life you hoped to do what you could but mostly you did what you were told and that was the end of it.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from Matter

“I have no aspiration here to reclaim mystery and paradox from whatever territory they might inhabit, for there is, indeed, often a killing in a kiss, a mercy in the slap that heats your face . . . There is, nevertheless, a particular poverty in those alloplasts who, addressing tragedy, seek to subdistinguish motives beyond those we have best, because nearest, at hand, and so it is with love and hate--emotions upon whose necks, whether wrung or wreathed, may be found the oldest fingerprints of man. A simple truth intrudes: the basic instincts of every man to every man are known. But who knows when or where or how? For the answers to such questions, summon Augurello, your personal jurisconsult and theological wiseacre, to teach you about primal reality and then to dispel those complexities and cabals you crouch behind in this sad, psychiatric century you call your own. It is the anti-labyrinths of the world that scare. Here is a story for you. Your chair.”
― Alexander Theroux, quote from Darconville’s Cat

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.