Valentina

“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

“Better to sit at the waters birth,
Than a sea of waves to win;
To live in the love that floweth forth,
Than the love that cometh in.

Be thy a well of love, my child,
Flowing, and free, and sure;
For a cistern of love, though undefiled,
Keeps not the spirit pure.”
― George MacDonald

“They who believe in the influences of the stars over the fates of men, are, in feeling at least, nearer the truth than they who regard the heavenly bodies as related to them merely by a common obedience to an external law. All that man sees has to do with man. Worlds cannot be without an intermundane relationship. The community of the centre of all creation suggests an interradiating connection and dependence of the parts. Else a grander idea is conceivable than that which is already imbodied. The blank, which is only a forgotten life, lying behind the consciousness, and the misty splendour, which is an undeveloped life, lying before it, may be full of mysterious revelations of other connexions with the worlds around us, than those of science and poetry. No shining belt or gleaming moon, no red and green glory in a self-encircling twin-star, but has a relation with the hidden things of a man's soul, and, it may be, with the secret history of his body as well. They are portions of the living house wherein he abides.”
― George MacDonald, Phantastes

“A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy