850 Quotes by Madeleine L'Engle

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.

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

When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable.

I’ve made myself vulnerableI’ve let myself care.I’ve opened my firmly closed heart.My safety is goneIt’s no longer thereMy protection is falling apart.Nobody promised Our hearts would be safeOr our bodies protected from harm. A moment can changeAll we think that we have,Hope will endure through the storm.Troubling a StarMadeleine L’Engle

Detachment and involvement: the artist must have both. The link between them is compassion.

And it came to me as I stood on the desert sand, looking at the Great Pyramid, that what any civilization says about God tells us more about that civilization than it does about God.

We don’t want to feel less when we have finished a book; we want to feel that new possibilities of being have been opened to us. We don’t want to close a book with a sense that life is totally unfair and that there is no light in the darkness; we want to feel that we have been given illumination.

I don't know if they're really like everybody else, or if they're able to pretend they are.

Instead of rejoicing in this glorious “impossible” which gives meaning and dignity to our lives, we try to domesticate God, to make his mighty actions comprehensible to our finite minds.