Top 427 Quotes & Sayings by Madeleine L'Engle - Page 6

It was a dark and stormy night.

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

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

Calvin said, "Do you know that this is the first time I've seen you without your glasses?" "I'm blind as a bat without them. I'm near-sighted, like father." "Well, you know what, you've got dream-boat eyes," Calvin said. "Listen, you go right on wearing your glasses. I don't think I want anybody else to see what gorgeous eyes you have.

I looked at this tiny, perfect creature and it was as though a light switch had been turned on. A great rush of love flooded out of me.

Compassion is nothing one feels with the intellect alone. Compassion is particular; it is never general.

We turn to stories and pictures and music because they show us who and what and why we are.

anything that stretches the mind is a help to the potential author.

Hate hurts the hater more'n the hated.

What is self-image? Who started talking about one? I rather fancy it was Madison Avenue.

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

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

I saw Eternity the other night, Like a great ring of pure and endless light, All calm, as it was bright, And round beneath it, Time, in hours, days, years, Driven by the spheres, Like a vast shadow moved, in which the world And all her train were hurled.

you've got to learn to walk through a pigpen and not get dirty.

Maybe the theatre isn't any place for a reasonable human being after all. It keeps your emotions in such a constant state of upheaval. It's really terribly wearing. I wonder if I could stand it, one emotional upset after the other just going on and on for the rest of my life.

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

And sometimes when we listen, we are led into places we do not expect, into adventures we do not always understand.

They are very young. And on their earth, as they call it, they never communicate with other planets. They revolve about all alone in space." "Oh," the thin beast said. "Aren't they lonely?

Just write a little bit every day. Even if it's for only half an hour — write, write, write.

Wild nights are my glory!

We know you have a great mind and all, Mother, but you don’t have much sense.

A great painting or symphony or play, doesn't diminish us, but enlarges us, and we, too, want to make our own cry of affirmation to the power of Creation behind the Universe.

Art is not a mirror but an icon. It takes the chaos in which we live and shows us structure and pattern, not the structure of conformity which imprisons but the structure which liberates, sets us free to become growing, mature human beings.

When we make ourselves vulnerable, we do open ourselves to pain, sometimes excruciating pain. The more people we love, the more we are liable to be hurt, and not only by the people we love, but for the people we love.

We do learn and develop when we are exposed to those who are greater than we are. Perhaps this is the chief way we mature.

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

When a promise is broken, the promise still remains. In one way or another, we are all unfaithful to each other, and physical unfaithfulness is not the worst kind there is.

That's something I've noticed about food: whenever there's a crisis if you can get people to eating normally things get better.

Thou cannot harm a butterfly, without troubling a star.

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

Like and equal are not the same thing at all. -- Meg Murray

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

You learn to write by doing it.

Art should communicate with as many people as possible.

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.

A life lived in chaos is an impossibility.

Don't be afraid..." We need this reassurance. Even for those of us who believe implicitly in angels, to be confronted by one is an awesome thing."

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.

An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers. To define everything is to annihilate much that gives us laughter and joy... If I try self-consciously to become a person, I will never be one. The most real people, those who are able to forget their selfish selves, who have true compassion, are usually the most distinct individuals

It was not an end, it was a beginging

You see, though we travel together, we travel alone.

You don’t know the meaning of moderation, do you, my darling? A happy medium is something I wonder if you’ll ever learn.

I do not know everything; still many things I understand.

Meg, I give you your faults." "My faults!" Meg cried. "Your faults." "But I'm always trying to get rid of my faults!" "Yes," Mrs. Whatsit said. "However, I think you'll find they'll come in very handy on Camazotz.

Silence fell between them, as tangible as the dark tree shadows that fell across their laps and that now seemed to rest upon them as heavily as though they possessed a measurable weight of their own.

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

I am not some kind of computer. Only machines have glib answers for everything.

That's a sure way to tell about somebody--the way they play, or don't play, make-believe.

Dare I? Of course I don't. But I'm going to anyhow because I have no choice.

Wherever she was, holy laughter was present to heal and redeem.

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

We cannot always cry at the right time and who is to say which time is right?

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

This wasn't the first time that I'd come close to death, but it was the first time I'd been involved in this part of it, this strange, terrible saying goodbye to someone you've loved.

you and I have good enough minds to know how very limited and finite they really are. The naked intellect is an extraordinarily inaccurate instrument.

Anger is not bitterness. Bitterness can go on eating at a man's heart and mind forever. Anger spends itself in its own time.

Love can't be pinned down by a definition, and it certainly can't be proved, any more than anything else important in life can be proved.

Now I am setting out into the unknown. It will take me a long while to work through the grief. There are no shortcuts; it has to be gone through.

Great art transcends its culture and touches on that which is eternal.

When I am constantly running there is no time for being. When there is no time for being there is no time for listening.