Daily Inspiration Quote by George MacDonald

Love doesn’t just make you see; it decides what you refuse to see. MacDonald’s line turns a romantic cliche inside out by giving “love” two apparently contradictory jobs: it opens the eyes and it closes them. The trick is the order. Love is “the opener as well as closer,” suggesting a cycle rather than a flaw. First it wakes perception up. You notice the person, the world, the stakes. Ordinary life sharpens into significance. Then, once attachment forms, the same force becomes a filter: you avert your gaze from what would break the bond, soften hard edges, forgive too quickly, pretend a pattern isn’t there.

MacDonald, a Victorian novelist steeped in Christian moral imagination and fairy-tale symbolism, isn’t merely dunking on infatuation. He’s pointing to love as an active, shaping power - closer to a spiritual discipline than a feeling. In that context, “closing” can be mercy as much as self-deception. Love can blind you to petty grievances, to the ego’s itch to keep score; it can also blind you to harm. The ambiguity is the point, and it’s why the sentence lands with quiet menace.

The phrasing is deliberately physical: eyes opening and closing, like waking and sleep. That bodily simplicity lets the line carry psychological complexity without sounding preachy. MacDonald compresses an entire relationship arc into a single blink: revelation, devotion, denial. The subtext is a warning wrapped in a blessing: if love is what lets you see, it’s also what can make you look away - and you’re responsible for which kind you practice.