Madeleine L'Engle: Trending quotes

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Madeleine L'Engle: 446 quotes5 likes

“God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.”

Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time

Source: A Wrinkle in Time

“Almost all the joyful things of life are outside the measure of IQ tests.”

Madeleine L'Engle

Source: A Circle of Quiet

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

Madeleine L'Engle

Source: The Irrational Season

“If we don't pray according to the needs of the heart, we repress our deepest longings. Our prayers may not be rational, and we may be quite aware of that, but if we repress our needs, then those unsaid prayers will fester.”

Madeleine L'Engle

Source: Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage

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

Madeleine L'Engle A Swiftly Tilting Planet

Source: A Swiftly Tilting Planet

“If you're too happy about anything, fate usually gives you a good sock in the jaw and knocks you down.”

Madeleine L'Engle

Source: The Joys of Love

“You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you.”

Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time

Source: A Wrinkle in Time (1962)

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

Madeleine L'Engle

Source: The Joys of Love

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

Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time

Source: A Wrinkle in Time

“She began to feel the sense of wonderful elation that always came to her when beauty took hold of her and made her forget her fears.”

Madeleine L'Engle book And Both Were Young

Source: And Both Were Young

“One reason nearly half my books are for children is the glorious fact that the minds of children are still open to the living word; in the child, nightside and sunside are not yet separated; fantasy contains truths which cannot be stated in terms of proof.”

Madeleine L'Engle

The Crosswicks Journal, The Irrational Season (1977)

“It takes a lot of intellect to have faith, which is why so many people only have religiosity…. I'm against people taking the Bible absolutely literally, rather than letting some of it be real fantasy, like Jonah… Faith is best expressed in story.”

Madeleine L'Engle

Newsweek interview (2004)

“It has often struck me with awe that some of the most deeply religious people I know have been, on the surface, atheists.”

Madeleine L'Engle

Walking on Water (1980)

“I wrote, after an early rejection, "X turned down Wrinkle, turned it down with one hand while saying that he loved it, but didn't quite dare to do it, as it really isn't classifiable. I know it isn't really classifiable, and am wondering if i'll have to go through the usual hell with this that I seem to go through with everything I write. But this book I'm sure of. If I've ever written a book that says how I feel about God and the universe, this is it. This is my psalm of praise…”

Madeleine L'Engle

Section 4.10
The Crosswicks Journal, A Circle of Quiet (1972)

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

Madeleine L'Engle

Section 1.16
The Crosswicks Journal, A Circle of Quiet (1972)

“One of our children when he was two or three years old used to rush at me when he had been naughty, and beat against me, and what he wanted by this monstrous behavior was an affirmation of love. And I would put my arms around him and hold him very tight until the dragon was gone and the loving small boy had returned.”

Madeleine L'Engle

The Crosswicks Journal, The Irrational Season (1977)

“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.”

Madeleine L'Engle

The Crosswicks Journal, The Irrational Season (1977)

“A while ago there was an article in the New York Times about some women in Tennessee who wanted the middle grade text books removed from the school curriculum, not because they were inadequate educationally, but because these women were afraid that they might stimulate the childrens' imaginations.
What!?!
It was a good while later that I realized that the word, imagination, is always a bad word in the King James translation of the Bible. I checked it out in my concordance, and it is always bad.
Put them down in the imagination of their hearts. Their imagination is only to do evil.
Language changes. What meant one thing three hundred years ago means something quite different now. So the people who are afraid of the word imagination are thinking about it as it was defined three centuries ago, and not as it is understood today, a wonderful word denoting creativity and wideness of vision.
Another example of our changing language is the word, prevent. Take it apart into its Latin origin, and it is prevenire. Go before. So in the language of the King James translation if we read, "May God prevent us," we should understand the meaning to be, "God go before us," or "God lead us."
And the verb, to let, used to mean, stop. Do not let me, meant do not stop me. And now it is completely reversed into a positive, permissive word.”

Madeleine L'Engle

Acceptance Speech for the Margaret Edwards Award (1998)