Quotes from Madeleine L'Engle

The obligations of normal human kindness—chesed, as the Hebrew has it—that we all owe. But there's a kind of vanity in thinking you can nurse the world. There's a kind of vanity in goodness.

When Sporos Deepens," Proginoskes told Mr. Jenkins, "it means that he comes of age. It means that he grows up. The temptation for farandola or for man or for star is to stay an immature pleasure-seeker. When we seek our own pleasure as the ultimate good we place ourselves as the center of the universe. A fara or a man or a star has his place in the universe, but nothing created is the center.

We must not take from our children—or ourselves—the truth that is in the world of the imagination.

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. Love is people, is a person. A friend of ours, Hugh Bishop of Mirfield, says in one of his books: Love is not an emotion. It is a policy. Those words have often helped me when all my feelings were unlovely.

See? So is 0.428571.

The only thing I know about the Second Coming is that it is going to happen because of God's love. God made the universe out of love; the Word shouted all things joyfully into being because of love. The Second Coming, whenever it happens and whatever it means, will also be because of love.

Now we leave our tears for mirth. Now we sing, not death, but birth.

Cecily moved her lips slowly, "Now I lay me," and "Our Father," and "God bless." And then, defiantly, "Dear balloon man, please dear balloon man, Father says you know God personally, and maybe he wouldn't hear me because I'm not very big or important, so would you please make Mother get well and come home and sing me the song about the king of the cannibal islands?

I think this is one of the situations where there is no right choice. We have to pray that we make the choice that is the least wrong.

The temptation for farandola or for man or for star is to stay an immature pleasure-seeker. When we seek our own pleasure as the ultimate good we place ourselves as the center of the universe

Power is what Satan offers us, whereas God keeps pointing out that we serve el best in our weakness, so that we can acknowledge that it is the Creator choosing to work through us, his fragile creatures. It is God who has made us, and not we ourselves. But because we enjoy feeling powerful, we accept Satan's offers.

In this fateful hour, it was herself she placed between us and the powers of darkness.