Madeleine L'Engle Quotes

270 Sourced Quotes

Language is often changed by writers. We speak English today because Chaucer chose to write in the language of the common people, rather than the Latin or French used by those who were educated. James Joyce had an almost equally profound effect on language when he wrote about the inner self, rather than the outer self.

Madeleine L'Engle
It is all right to wallow in one's journal; it is a way of getting rid of self-pity and self-indulgence and self-centeredness. What we work out in our journals we don't take out on family and friends.

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

Madeleine L'Engle
The primary needs can be filled without language. We can eat, sleep, make love, build a house, bear children, without language. But we cannot ask questions. We cannot ask, 'Who am I? Who are you? Why?'

Madeleine L'Engle
What should happen to us is that we should grow to whatever is our peak, and then blow up in a blast of fireworks.

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

Madeleine L'Engle
But unless we are creators we are not fully alive. What do I mean by creators? Not only artists, whose acts of creation are the obvious ones of working with paint of clay or words. Creativity is a way of living life, no matter our vocation or how we earn our living. Creativity is not limited to the arts, or having some kind of important career.

Madeleine L'Engle
If our language is watered down, then mankind becomes less human, and less free...

Madeleine L'Engle
An artist is someone who cannot rest, who can never rest as long as there is one suffering creature in the world.

Madeleine L'Engle
It strikes me as somewhat odd that the people who use God's name most frequently, both in life and in literature, usually don't believe in him.

Madeleine L'Engle
The virgin birth has never been a major stumbling block in my struggle with Christianity; it's far less mind boggling than the Power of all Creation stooping so low as to become one of us.

Madeleine L'Engle
Deepest communion with God is beyond words, on the other side of silence.

Madeleine L'Engle
Infinity is present in each part. A loving smile contains all art. The motes of starlight spark and dart. A grain of sand holds power and might.

Madeleine L'Engle
If we aren't capable of being hurt we aren't capable of feeling joy.

Madeleine L'Engle
We have not wondered enough at the delights God has given us to appreciate them, and be good stewards. We have overworked the land, poured pollutants into river and stream, fouled the air we breathe with gas fumes and chemical smoke spiraling up from industrial chimneys. We have sown the wind. We are reaping the whirlwind.

Madeleine L'Engle
We do not have to understand in order to believe that behind the mystery and the fascination there is love.

Madeleine L'Engle
The deeper and richer a personality is, the more full it is of paradox and contradiction. It is only a shallow character who offers us no problems of contrast.

Madeleine L'Engle
You've got to accept the fact that you are basically not teaching a subject, you are teaching children

Madeleine L'Engle
It is an extraordinary and beautiful thing that God, in creation... works with the beauty of matter; the reality of things; the discoveries of the senses, all five of them; so that we, in turn, may hear the grass growing; see a face springing to life in love and laughter... The offerings of creation... our glimpses of truth.

Madeleine L'Engle
The degree of talent, the size of the gift, is immaterial. All artists must listen, but not all hear great symphonies, see wide canvasses, conceive complex, character-filled novels. No
matter, the creative act is the same, and it is an act of faith.

Madeleine L'Engle
I hope that I will never forget the salvific power of joyful laughter.

Madeleine L'Engle
God is over all things, under all things; outside all; within, but not enclosed; without, but not excluded; above, but not raised up; below; but not depressed; wholly above, presiding; wholly without, embracing; wholly within, filling.

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

Madeleine L'Engle
A straight line is not the shortest distance between two points.

Madeleine L'Engle
Give the public the 'image' of what it thinks it ought to be, or what television commercials or glossy magazine ads have convinced us we ought to be, and we will buy more of the product, become closer to the image, and further from reality.

Madeleine L'Engle
I am also four, and twelve, and fifteen, and twenty-three, and thirty-one, and forty-five and... and... and...

Madeleine L'Engle
Well, the fifth dimension's a tesseract. You add that to the other four dimensions and you can travel through space without having to go the long way round.

Madeleine L'Engle
Sometimes when we have to speak suddenly we come closer to the truth than when we have time to think.

Madeleine L'Engle
Like and equal are two entirely different things

Madeleine L'Engle
There is little character or loveliness in the face of someone who has shunned risk, avoided suffering and rejected life

Madeleine L'Engle