Phantastes Quotes

“I knew now, that it is by loving, and not by being loved, that one can come nearest the soul of another; yea, that, where two love, it is the loving of each other, and not the being loved by each other, that originates and perfects and assures their blessedness. I knew that love gives to him that loveth, power over any soul beloved...”
― George MacDonald, Phantastes

“Ere long, I learned that it was not myself, but only my shadow, that I had lost. 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.”
― George MacDonald, Phantastes

“My soul was like a summer evening, after a heavy fall of rain, when the drops are yet glistening on the trees in the last rays of the down-going sun, and the wind of the twilight has begun to blow.”
― George MacDonald, Phantastes

“Hundreds of hopeless waves rushed constantly shorewards, falling exhausted upon a beach of great loose stones, that seemed to stretch miles and miles in both directions. There was nothing for the eye but mingling shades of gray; nothing for the ear but the rush of the coming, the roar of the breaking, and the moan of the retreating wave.”
― George MacDonald, Phantastes

“The more he withdrew from the world around him, the more wonderful became his dreams.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories

“Ah, let a man beware, when his wishes, fulfilled, rain down upon him, and his happiness is unbounded.”
― George MacDonald, Phantastes

“Then I remembered that night is the fairies’ day, and the moon their sun; and I thought—Everything sleeps and dreams now: when the night comes, it will be different.”
― George MacDonald, Phantastes

“...[T]wo of you can be no match for the three giants, I will find you, if I can, a third brother, who will take on himself the third share of the fight, and the preparation...I will show him to you in a glass, and, when he comes, you will know him at once. If he will share your endeavors, you must teach him all you know, and he will repay you well, in present song, and in future deeds.'

She opened the door of a curious old cabinet that stood in the room. On the inside of this door was an oval convex mirror...we at length saw reflected the place where we stood, and the old dame seated in her chair...at the feet of the dame lay a young man...weeping.

'Surely this youth will not serve our ends,' said I, 'for he weeps.'

The old woman smiled. 'Past tears are present strength,'said she.”
― George MacDonald, Phantastes

“And Summer, dear Summer, hath years of June,
With large white clouds, and cool showers at noon;
And a beauty that grows to a weight like grief,
Till a burst of tears is the heart’s relief.”
― George MacDonald, Phantastes

“Sweet sounds can go where kisses may not enter.”
― George MacDonald, Phantastes

“A ghost grew out of the shadowy air,
And sat in the midst of her moony hair.

In her gleamy hair she sat and wept;
In the dreamful moon they lay and slept;

The shadows above, and the bodies below,
Lay and slept in the moonbeams slow.

And she sang, like the moan of an autumn wind
Over the stubble left behind.”
― George MacDonald, Phantastes

“Twilight-kind, oppressing the heart as with a condensed atmosphere of dreamy undefined love and longing.”
― George MacDonald, Phantastes

“It was evening. The sun was below the horizon; but his rosy beams yet illuminated a feathery cloud, that floated high above the world. I arose, I reached the cloud; and, throwing myself upon it, floated with it in sight of the sinking sun. He sank, and the cloud grew gray; but the grayness touched not my heart. It carried its rose-hue within; for now I could love without needing to be loved again.”
― George MacDonald, Phantastes

“This wretched Inn, where we scarce stay to bait,
We call our Dwelling-Place:
We call one Step a Race:
But angels in their full enlightened state,
Angels, who Live, and know what ‘tis to Be,
Who all the nonsense of our language see
Who speak things, and our words, their ill-drawn pictures, scorn,
When we, by a foolish figure, say,
Behold an old man dead! then they
Speak properly, and cry, Behold a man-child born!”
― Abraham Cowley, Selected Poems of Abraham Cowley, Edmund Waller, and John Oldham

“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.”
― George MacDonald, Phantastes

“Thy beauty filleth the very air,
Never saw I a woman so fair.”
― George MacDonald, Phantastes

“Or, if needing years to wake thee
From thy slumbrous solitudes,
Come, sleep-walking, and betake thee
To the friendly, sleeping woods.

Sweeter dreams are in the forest,
Round thee storms would never rave;
And when need of rest is sorest,
Glide thou then into thy cave.”
― George MacDonald, Phantastes

“From Eden’s bowers the full-fed rivers flow,
To guide the outcasts to the land of woe:
Our Earth one little toiling streamlet yields.
To guide the wanderers to the happy fields.”
― George MacDonald, Phantastes

“And we had met at last in this same cave of greenery, while the summer night hung round us heavy with love, and the odours that crept through the silence from the sleeping woods were the only signs of an outer world that invaded our solitude.”
― George MacDonald

“I might here find the magic word of power to banish the demon and set me free, so that I should no longer be a man beside myself.”
― George MacDonald, Phantastes

“I forced my way to the brink, stepped into the boat, pushed it, with the help of the tree-branches, out into the stream, lay down in the bottom, and let my boat and me float whither the stream would carry us.”
― George MacDonald, Phantastes