George MacDonald · 241 pages
Rating: (25K votes)
“Seeing is not believing - it is only seeing.”
― George MacDonald, quote from The Princess and the Goblin
“We are all very anxious to be understood, and it is very hard not to be. But there is one thing much more necessary.'
What is that, grandmother?'
To understand other people.'
Yes, grandmother. I must be fair - for if I'm not fair to other people, I'm not worth being understood myself. I see.”
― George MacDonald, quote from The Princess and the Goblin
“Here I should like to remark, for the sake of princes and princesses in general, that it is a low and contemptible thing to refuse to confess a fault, or even an error. If a true princess has done wrong, she is always uneasy until she has had an opportunity of throwing the wrongness away from her by saying: 'I did it; and I wish I had not; and I am sorry for having done it.”
― George MacDonald, quote from The Princess and the Goblin
“People must believe what they can, and those who believe more must not be hard upon those who believe less. I doubt if you would have believed it all yourself if you hadn't seen some of it.”
― George MacDonald, quote from The Princess and the Goblin
“It is when people do wrong things wilfully that they are the more likely to do them again.”
― George MacDonald, quote from The Princess and the Goblin
“...it is so silly of people to fancy that old age means crookedness and witheredness and feebleness and sticks and spectacles and rheumatism and forgetfulness! It is so silly! Old age has nothing whatever to do with all that. The right old age means strength and beauty and mirth and courage and clear eyes and strong painless limbs.”
― George MacDonald, quote from The Princess and the Goblin
“Her face was fair and pretty, with eyes like two bits of night sky, each with a star dissolved in the blue.”
― George MacDonald, quote from The Princess and the Goblin
“It was foolish indeed - thus to run farther and farther from all who could help her, as if she had been seeking a fit spot for the goblin creature to eat her in at his leisure; but that is the way fear serves us: it always sides with the thing we are afraid of.”
― George MacDonald, quote from The Princess and the Goblin
“But in the meantime, you must be content, I say, to be misunderstood for a while. We are all very anxious to be understood, and it is very hard not to be. But there is one thing much more necessary."
"What is that, grandmother?"
"To understand other people.”
― George MacDonald, quote from The Princess and the Goblin
“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?”
― George MacDonald, quote from The Princess and the Goblin
“"Then what do you see?" asked Irene, who perceived at once that for her not to believe him was at least as bad as for him not to believe her.”
― George MacDonald, quote from The Princess and the Goblin
“I should like to remark, for the sake of princes and princesses in general, that it is a low and contemptible thing to refuse to confess a fault, or even an error. If a true princess has done wrong, she is always uneasy until she has had an opportunity of throwing the wrongness away from her by saying: 'I did it; and I wish I had not; and I am sorry for having done it.' So you see there is some ground for supposing that Curdie was not a miner only, but a prince as well. Many such instances have been known in the world's history.”
― George MacDonald, quote from The Princess and the Goblin
“Seeing is not believing—it is only seeing.”
― George MacDonald, quote from The Princess and the Goblin
“but that is the way fear serves us: it always sides with the thing we are afraid of.”
― George MacDonald, quote from The Princess and the Goblin
“People must believe what they can, and those who believe more must not be hard upon those who believe less. I doubt if you would have believed it all yourself if you hadn't seen some of it.”
― George MacDonald, quote from The Princess and the Goblin
“We are all very anxious to be understood, and it is very hard not to be. But there is one thing much more necessary.' 'What is that, grandmother?' 'To understand other people.”
― George MacDonald, quote from The Princess and the Goblin
“But in the meantime you must be content, I say, to be misunderstood for a while. We are all very anxious to be understood, and it is very hard not to be.”
― George MacDonald, quote from The Princess and the Goblin
“Seeing is not believing, it is only seeing,”
George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblin”
― George MacDonald, quote from The Princess and the Goblin
“it is so silly of people to fancy that old age means crookedness and witheredness and feebleness and sticks and spectacles and rheumatism and forgetfulness! It is so silly! Old age has nothing whatever to do with all that. The right old age means strength and beauty and mirth and courage and clear eyes and strong painless limbs.”
― George MacDonald, quote from The Princess and the Goblin
“Now in these subterranean caverns lived a strange race of beings, called by some gnomes, by some kobolds, by some goblins. There was a legend current in the country that at one time they lived above ground, and were very like other people. But for some reason or other, concerning which there were different legendary theories, the king had laid what they thought too severe taxes upon them, or had required observances of them they did not like, or had begun to treat them with more severity, in some way or other, and impose stricter laws; and the consequence was that they had all disappeared from the face of the country. According to the legend, however, instead of going to some other country, they had all taken refuge in the subterranean caverns, whence they never came out but at night, and then seldom showed themselves in any numbers, and never to many people at once.”
― George MacDonald, quote from The Princess and the Goblin
“es tan tonta de las personas a imaginar que la vejez significa tortuosidad y witheredness y debilidad y palos y espectáculos y el reumatismo y el olvido! Es tan tonto! La vejez no tiene nada que ver con todo eso. La vejez derecho significa la fuerza y la belleza y la alegría y el coraje y los ojos claros y fuertes extremidades sin dolor.”
― George MacDonald, quote from The Princess and the Goblin
“answer when she knocked at length at the door of the workroom,”
― George MacDonald, quote from The Princess and the Goblin
“I’m a man of the world, and all that means is I understand what powers the world. The fuel mix is one part high-octane to nine parts pure bullshit.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Dead Zone
“I know, 0 Caesar, that thou art awaiting my arrival with impatience, that thy true heart of a friend is yearning day and night for me. I know that thou art ready to cover me with gifts, make me prefect of the pretorian guards, and command Tigellinus to be that which the gods made him, a mule-driver in those lands which thou didst inherit after poisoning Domitius. Pardon me, however, for I swear to thee by Hades, and by the shades of thy mother, thy wife, thy brother, and Seneca, that I cannot go to thee. Life is a great treasure. I have taken the most precious jewels from that treasure, but in life there are many things which I cannot endure any longer. Do not suppose, I pray, that I am offended because thou didst kill thy mother, thy wife, and thy brother; that thou didst burn Eome and send to Erebus all the honest men in thy dominions. No, grandson of Chronos. Death is the inheritance of man; from thee other deeds could not have been expected. But to destroy one's ear for whole years with thy poetry, to see thy belly of a Domitius on slim legs whirled about in a Pyrrhic dance; to hear thy music, thy declamation, thy doggerel verses, wretched poet of the suburbs, — is a thing surpassing my power, and it has roused in me the wish to die. Eome stuffs its ears when it hears thee; the world reviles thee. I can blush for thee no longer, and I have no wish to do so. The howls of Cerberus, though resembling thy music, will be less offensive to me, for I have never been the friend of Cerberus, and I need not be ashamed of his howling. Farewell, but make no music; commit murder, but write no verses; poison people, but dance not; be an incendiary, but play not on a cithara. This is the wish and the last friendly counsel sent thee by the — Arbiter Elegantiae.”
― Henryk Sienkiewicz, quote from Quo Vadis
“Of course the Man was wild too. He was dreadfully wild. He didn't even begin to be tame till he met the Woman, and she told him that she did not like living in his wild ways. She picked out a nice dry Cave, instead of a heap of wet leaves, to lie down in; and she strewed clean sand on the floor; and she lit a nice fire of wood at the back of the Cave; and she hung a dried wild-horse skin, tail down, across the opening of the Cave; and she said, 'Wipe your feet, dear, when you come in, and now we'll keep house.”
― Rudyard Kipling, quote from Just So Stories
“I was not really angry: I felt for him all the time, and longed to be reconciled; but I determined he should make the first advances, or at least show some signs of an humble and contrite spirit, first; for, if I began, it would only minister to his self-conceit, increase his arrogance, and quite destroy the lesson I wanted to give him.”
― Anne Brontë, quote from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
“I thought this vintage would suit you. What it lacks in subtlety . . .” He turned back, offering her a glass. “It makes up for in sensuality.” He tapped his glass against hers so the crystal sang, then watched as she sipped.
God, what a face, he thought. All those angles and expressions, all that emotion and control. Just now she was fighting off showing both surprise and pleasure as the taste of the wine settled on her tongue. He was looking forward to the moment when the taste of her settled on his.”
― J.D. Robb, quote from Naked in Death
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