Wherever Macdonald sits, there is the head of the table

Self-reliance, the height and perfection of man, is reliance on God.

I fancy I need more than another to speak (rather than write), with such a formidable tendency to the lapidary style. I build my house of boulders.

Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition.

Yet a man may love a paradox, without losing either his wit or his honesty.

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.

Slowly, slowly the Avenger comes, but comes surely.