Quotes from Madeleine L'Engle

The language of logical argument, of proofs,is the language of the limited self we know and can manipulate. But the language of parable and poetry, of storytelling,moves from the imprisoned language of the provable into the free language of what I must, for lack of another word, continue to call faith.

There will no longer be so many pleasant things to look at if responsible people do not do something about the unpleasant ones

In moments of decision, we are to try to make what seems to be the most loving, the most creative decision. We are not to play safe, to draw back out of fear. Love may well lead us into danger. It may lead us to die for our friend. In a day when we are taught to look for easy solutions, it is not always easy to hold on to that most difficult one of all, love.

We'll never leave the solar system as long as we keep on thinking of time as a river flowing from one direction into the sea.

We tend, today, to want to have a road map of exactly where we are going. We want to know whether or not we have succeeded in everything we do. It's all right to want to know—we wouldn't be human if we didn't—but we also have to understand that a lot of the time we aren't going to know.

you don't have to understand things for them to be.

Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: you're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself.

I was only just beginning to realize what a horribly destructive thing hate is, how it destroys inwards as well as outwards. I

Why is it that some grown-ups just seem to go on getting dumber and dumber year by year instead of learning anything?

If I cannot see evidence of incarnation in a painting of a bridge in the rain by Hokusai, a book by Chaim Potok or Isaac Bashevis Singer, music by Bloch or Bernstein, then I will miss its significance in an Annunciation by Franciabigio, the final chorus of the St. Matthew Passion , the words of a sermon by John Donne.

I place all Heaven with its power And the sun with its brightness, And the snow with its whiteness, And the fire with all the strength it hath, And the lightning with its rapid wrath, And the winds with their swiftness along their path, And the sea with its deepness, And the rocks with their steepness, And the earth with its starkness, All these I place By God's almighty help and grace Between myself and the powers of darkness!

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