The Flight of the Shadow

George MacDonald

oct 2004 · 1st World Publishing

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I am old, else, I think, I should not have the courage to tell the story I am going to tell. All those concerned in it about whose feelings I am careful, are gone where, thank God, there are no secrets! If they know what I am doing, I know they do not mind. If they were alive to read as I record, they might perhaps now and again look a little paler and wish the leaf turned, but to see the things set down would not make them unhappy: they do not love secrecy. Half the misery in the world comes from trying to look, instead of trying to be, what one is not. I would that not God only but all good men and women might see me through and through. They would not be pleased with everything they saw, but then neither am I, and I would have no coals of fire in my soul's pockets! But my very nature would shudder at the thought of letting one person that loved a secret see into it. Such a one never sees things as they are - would not indeed see what was there, but something shaped and coloured after his own likeness. No one who loves and chooses a secret can be of the pure in heart that shall see God.

Acerca del autor

George MacDonald was born on December 10, 1824 in Huntley, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. He attended University in Aberdeen in 1840 and then went on to Highbury College in 1848 where he studied to be a Congregational Minister, receiving his M. A. After being a minister for several years, he became a lecturer in English literature at Kings College in London before becoming a full-time writer. He wrote fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. In 1955, he wrote his first important original work, a long religious poem entitled Within and Without. He is best known for his fantasy novels Phantastes, The Princess and the Goblin, At the Back of the North Wind, and Lilith and fairy tales including The Light Princess, The Golden Key, and The Wise Woman. In 1863, he published David Eiginbrod, the first of a dozen novels that were set in Scotland and based on the lives of rural Scots. He died on September 18. 1905.