Madeleine L'Engle quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Madeleine L'Engle

Madeleine L'Engle Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Madeleine L'Engle on Wise Famous Quotes.

You're going to get hurt yourself, and badly, if you take everything so hard.

You learn to write by doing it.

Wild nights are my glory!

To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take.

It does not matter that we cannot fathom this mystery. The only real problem comes when we think that we have.

When a character wants to do one thing and I want him to do another, the character is usually right.

It was not an end, it was a beginning.

We are all broken, we human creatures, and to pretend we're not is to inhibit healing.

Embracing her now would have been like trying to hug a sunbeam

A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.

The written word Should be clean as bone, Clear as light, Firm as stone. Two words are not As good as one. I

We need the rock of the past under our feet in order to spring forward into the future.

Charles Wallace understands more than the rest of us, doesn't he?

When have you been most you, the very most you?

We do not know what things look like. We know what things are like. It must be a very limiting thing,this seeing. -Aunt Beast

I know writers who write only when inspiration comes. How would Isaac Stern play if he played the violin only when he felt like it? He would be lousy.

Love is the one surprise.

On a planet that has given in... you must prepare to be very strong.

As paredes tem ouvidos. (Portuguese: The walls have ears.)

I would like to travel light on this journey of life, to get rid of the encumbrances I acquire each day.

People are afraid of knowledge that is not yet theirs.

Speaking of ways, pet, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract.

If someone knows who he is, really knows, then he doesn't need to hate.

O God,
here, as so often, I cannot help.
Let me not forget she is your child
and your concern makes mine as nothing.

You are given the form, but you must write the sonnet for yourself.

I do not believe that true optimism can come about except through tragedy.

Friends do everything they can to protect each other.
Polly

In the act of creativity, the artist lets go the self-control which he normally clings to and is open to riding the wind.

Come t'e' picciol fallo amaro morso! Dante. What grievous pain a little fault doth give thee!

She seems to have had the ability to stand firmly on the rock of her past while living completely and unregretfully in the present.

Some things have to be believed to be seen.

Poets are born knowing the language of angels.

Vitam impendre vero. (To stake one's life for the truth.)

We want nothing from you that you do without grace or [ ... ] understanding.

Your intuition and your intellect should be working together ... making love. That's how it works best.

To share poetry is one of the most intimate acts of friendship possible ...

Their love was a bright flower, youthful and radiantly beautiful.

There's nothing more physically exhausting than a sense of failure.

If you want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you.

The discipline of creation, be it to paint, compose, write, is an effort towards wholeness.

Ridicule is a terrible witherer of the flower of the imagination. It binds us where we should be free.

God understands that part of us which is more than what we think we are.

Women must be very gentle with men as they, as well as women, seek to regain the lost wholeness for which they were destined.

When the bright angel dominates, out comes a great work of art, a Michelangelo David or a Beethoven symphony.

Unlearning is the choice, conscious or unconscious, of any real artist. And it is the true sign of maturity.

A straight line is not the shortest distance between two points.

People are more than just the way they look.

But if I knew everything, there would be no wonder, because what I believe in is far more than I know.

I do not think that I will ever reach a stage when I will say, "This is what I believe. Finished." What I believe is alive ... and open to growth

I hate it!" Charles Wallace cried passionately. "I hate the Dark Thing!

When the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere. When the work takes over, then the artist listens.

We do not love each other without changing each other.

In reading we must become creators.

The minute we begin to think we have all the answers, we forget the questions.

Great art always transcends its culture, while lesser art merely reflects it.

Many waters cannot quench the thirst for love,nor can the floods drown it.

Have you ever tried to get to your feet with a sprained dignity?

Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.

Man has a viewpoint, but God has the view.

The artist is not separate from the work and therefore cannot judge it.

I like the fact that in ancient Chinese art the great painters always included a deliberate flaw in their work: human creation is never perfect.

Hate is like cancer, separate from the normal cells, devouring and not being nourished, annihilating itself along with everything it attacks.

Only Christ can free us from the prison of legalism, and then only if we are willing to be freed.

The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has obtained liberation from self.

The shadows are deepening all around us. Now is the time when we must begin to see our world and ourselves in a different way.

I knew that the moment I started worrying about whether or not I was good enough for the job, I wouldn't be able to do it.

Meg's eyes were too bright. I wish human beings couldn't have feelings. I am having feelings. They hurt.

A community to be truly community, must have a quality of unselfconsciousness about it.

Part of doing something is listening. We are listening. To the sun. To the stars. To the wind.

Artistic temperament sometimes seems a battleground, a dark angel of destruction and a bright angel of creativity wrestling.

Ach,' she heard someone saying, 'I left mein ceinture dans le shower ce morgen. Quelle dope ich bin!

Don't try to comprehend with your mind. Your minds are very limited. Use your intuition.

Active happiness is not a common state. Active unhappiness is better than dull days. Katherine was seldom in an intermediate stage.

That's quite something, to be loved by someone like Mrs Whatsit.

It is possible to suffer and despair an entire lifetime and still not give up the art of laughter.

Prayer is whenever we consciously try to get in contact with the numinous, the ineffable, the marvelous.

There is in God, some say, a deep but dazzling darkness.

We think because we have words, not the other way around. The more words we have, the better able we are to think conceptually.

For the things that are seen are temporal, but things that are unseen are eternal.

If she could give love to IT perhaps it would shrivel up and die, for she was sure that IT could not withstand love.

Art is communication.

Love isn't how you feel. It's what you do. I've never had a feeling in my life. As a matter of fact, I matter only with earth people.

Be aware that rigidity imprisons.

If our love for each other really is participatory, then all other human relationships nourish it; it is inclusive, never exclusive.

Anything that's natural can't be sinful-it may be inconvenient, but it's not sinful.

Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving.

I'm apt to get drunk on words ... Ontology: the word about the essence of things; the word about being.

It is the nature of love to create. It is the nature of hate to destroy.

Being alive hurts. I have found it best not to rush for the aspirin bottle. - A Severed Wasp

Scar tissue was the strongest tissue in the human body.

If you aren't unhappy sometimes you don't know how to be happy.

Mr Jenkins. Unique, as every star in the sky is unique, every leaf on every tree, every snowflake, every farandola, every cherubim, unique: Named.

You cannot see the past that did not happen any more than you can foresee the future.

The unending paradox is that we do learn through pain.

An old ass knows more than a young colt

Fewmets is my new swear word. I'm tired of all the old ones.

Artists ... all have a need that cannot be met by another human being.

Probably the worst thing that has happened to our understanding of reality has been the acceptance of ourselves as consumers.

He's not good for you," Omio said. "He wants too much. He is someone who takes. He does not give.

But my memories are like a fire in winter - whenever I'm cold I can warm my hands at them.
- Ditta