Inspirational Quotes by Madeleine L'Engle — Words of Wisdom for Daily Success

“But there is something about Time. The sun rises and sets. The stars swing slowly across the sky and fade. Clouds fill with rain and snow, empty themselves, and fill again. The moon is born, and dies, and is reborn. Around millions of clocks swing hour hands, and minute hands, and second hands. Around goes the continual circle of the notes of the scale. Around goes the circle of night and day, the circle of weeks forever revolving, and of months, and of years.”

“Our souls do not grow if we insulate ourselves from pain.”

“It is only recently that fairy tale, fantasy, myth, have been thought of as being exclusively for children... These so-called children's stories are aware of what many adults have forgotten- that the daily, time-bound world of provable fact is the secondary world, the shadow world, and it is story, painting, song, which give us our glimpses of reality.”

“I get glimmers of the bad nineteenth-century teaching which has made Mother remove God from the realm of mystery and beauty and glory, but why do people half my age think that they don't have faith unless their faith is small and comprehensible and like a good old plastic Jesus?”

“Reading about the response of people in stories, plays, poems, helps us to respond more courageously and openly at our own moments of turning.”

“As Emmanuel, Cardinal Suhard says, "To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda, nor even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery. It means to live in such a way that one's life would not make sense if God did not exist.”

“If it can be verified, we don't need faith... Faith is for that which lies on the other side of reason. Faith is what makes life bearable, with all its tragedies and ambiguities and sudden, startling joys.”

“George MacDonald gives me renewed strength during times of trouble--times when I have seen people tempted to deny God--when he says, "The Son of God suffered unto death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like his.”

“Faith is what makes life bearable, with all its tragedies and ambiguities and sudden, startling joys.”

“Some things have to be believed to be seen.”

“Euripedes. Nothing is hopeless; we must hope for everything.”

“Our country in general assumes that "the pursuit of happiness" really means "the pursuit of pleasure" and that therefore pleasure is the greatest good.”

“Death is contagious; it is contracted the moment we are conceived.”

“How long your closet held a whiff of you,”

“We cannot always cry at the right time”

“But my memories are like a fire in winter—whenever I'm cold I can warm my hands at them.”

“Truth is what is true, and it's not necessarily factual. Truth and fact are not the same thing. Truth does not contradict or deny facts, but it goes through and beyond facts. This is something that it is very difficult for some people to understand. Truth can be dangerous.”

“Aeschylus writes, "In our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

“When I start a new seminar I tell my students that I will undoubtedly contradict myself, and that I will mean both things. But an acceptance of contradiction is no excuse for fuzzy thinking. We do have to use our minds as far as they will take us, yet acknowledge that they cannot take us all the way.”

“We do learn and develop when we are exposed to those who are greater than we are. Perhaps this is the chief way we mature.”

“Love of music, of sunsets and sea; a liking for the same kind of people; political opinions that are not radically divergent; a similar stance as we look at the stars and think of the marvelous strangeness of the universe - these are what build a marriage. And it is never to be taken for granted.”

“I do not know everything; still many things I understand.”

“We live by revelation, as Christians, as artists, which means we must be careful never to get set into rigid molds. The minute we begin to think we know all the answers, we forget the questions, and we become smug like the Pharisee who listed all his considerable virtues, and thanked God that he was not like other men.”

“I will have nothing to do with a God who cares only occasionally. I need a God who is with us always, everywhere, in the deepest depths as well as the highest heights. It is when things go wrong, when good things do not happen, when our prayers seem to have been lost, that God is most present. We do not need the sheltering wings when things go smoothly. We are closest to God in the darkness, stumbling along blindly.”

“It might be a good idea if, like the White Queen, we practiced believing six impossible things every morning before breakfast, for we are called on to believe what to many people is impossible. Instead of rejoicing in this glorious "impossible" which gives meaning and dignity to our lives, we try to domesticate God, to make his might actions comprehensible to our finite minds.”

“In a very real sense not one of us is qualified, but it seems that God continually chooses the most unqualified to do his work, to bear his glory. If we are qualified, we tend to think that we have done the job ourselves. If we are forced to accept our evident lack of qualification, then there's no danger that we will confuse God's work with our own, or God's glory with our own.”

“It takes too much energy to be against something unless it's really important.”

“Meg, don't you think you'd make a better adjustment to life if you faced facts?”

“Thinking I'm a moron gives people something to feel smug about," Charles Wallace said. "Why should I disillusion them?”

“Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving.”