100 Best Madeleine L'Engle Quotes From The Author Of 'A Wrinkle In Time'
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Madeleine L'Engle was an American writer of non-fiction, fiction, and poetry.
Madeleine's work as an author reflects both her faith in Christianity and her interest in science. She is known for her book 'A Wrinkle In Time' and its sequels: 'Swiftly Tilting Planet' and 'Many Waters'.
L'Engle was loved by many people and she was also known for her quotes on Christianity. She was a great writer who believed in the power of art, and hence she has a plethora of inspirational sayings in her books.
You can read some Madeleine L'Engle quotes here. Diver deeper into the world of books with some 'A Wrinkle In Time' quotes and John Green quotes here as well!
Top Madeleine L'Engle Books Quotes
Here are some top Madeleine L'Engle book quotes.
1. "We know what things are like. It must be a very limiting thing, this seeing."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'A Wrinkle In Time'.
2. "A self is not something static, tied up in a pretty parcel and handed to the child, finished and complete."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'A Circle Of Quiet'.
3. "Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'A Wrinkle In Time'.
4. "We can't take any credit for our talents."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'A Wrinkle In Time'.
5. "Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'A Ring Of Endless Light'.
6. "I am still every age that I have been."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
7. "I will have nothing to do with a God who cares only occasionally."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
8. "I need a God who is with us always, everywhere, in the deepest depths as well as the highest heights."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
9. "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."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
10. "We do not need the sheltering wings when things go smoothly."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'A Ring Of Endless Light'.
11. "We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'The Rock That Is Higher'.
12. "Suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
13. "Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
14. "Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
15. "Love of music, of sunsets and sea; a liking for the same kind of people."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'Two-Part Invention: The Story Of A Marriage'.
16. "We have to be braver than we think we can be."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
17. "People are more than just the way they look."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'A Wrinkle In Time'.
18. "Nothing is hopeless; we must hope for everything."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'A Wrinkle In Time'.
19. "We do not know what things look like."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'A Wrinkle In Time'.
20. "There will no longer be so many pleasant things to look at if responsible people do not do something about the unpleasant ones."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'A Wrinkle In Time'.
21. "Maybe I don't like being different... but I don't want to be like everybody else either."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'A Wrinkle In Time'.
22. "The heart has its reasons, whereof reason knows nothing."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'A Wrinkle In Time'.
23. "You're much too straightforward to be able to pretend to be what you aren't."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'A Wrinkle In Time'.
24. "Have you ever tried to get to your feet with a sprained dignity?."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'A Wrinkle In Time'.
25. "It was the same way with silence. This was more than silence."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'A Wrinkle In Time'.
26. "Oh child, your language is so utterly simple and limited that it has the effect of extreme complication."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'A Wrinkle In Time'.
27. "We are closest to God in the darkness."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'A Wrinkle In Time'.
28. "We look at the stars and think of the marvelous strangeness of the universe."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'Two-Part Invention: The Story Of A Marriage'.
Madeleine L'Engle 'Walking On Water' Quotes
Here are some famous Madeleine L'Engle quotes from 'Walking on Water'.
29. "I am a Christian. I am a writer."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'Walking On Water'.
30. "In a very real sense, not one of us is qualified."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'Walking On Water'.
31. "If we are qualified, we tend to think that we have done the job ourselves."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'Walking On Water'.
32. "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."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'Walking On Water'.
33. "Unless we are creators we are not fully alive."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'Walking On Water'.
34. "What do I mean by creators? Not only artists, whose acts of creation are the obvious ones of working with paint of clay or words."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'Walking On Water'.
35. "Creativity is a way of living life."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'Walking On Water'.
36. "Creativity is not limited to the arts, or having some kind of important career."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'Walking On Water'.
37. "We don't want to close a book with a sense that life is totally unfair."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'Walking On Water'.
38. "We must be careful never to get set into rigid moulds."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'Walking On Water'.
39. " The minute we begin to think we know all the answers, we forget the questions."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'Walking On Water'.
40. "I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius, or something very small, comes to the artist and says, 'Here I am. Enflesh me.'"
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'Walking On Water'.
41. "As for Mary, she was little more than a child when the angel came to her."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'Walking On Water'.
42. "Our story is never written in isolation. We do not act in a one-man play."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'Walking On Water'.
43. "We can do nothing that does not affect other people."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'Walking On Water'.
44. "We are suspicious of grace."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'Walking On Water'.
45. "The degree of talent, the size of the gift, is immaterial."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'Walking On Water'.
46. "All artists must listen, but not all hear great symphonies, see wide canvasses, conceive complex, character-filled novels."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'Walking On Water'.
47. "Picasso says that an artist paints not to ask a question but because he has found something and he wants to share."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'Walking On Water'.
48. "It will be the artists who will change the language, not the committees."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'Walking On Water'.
49. "Art is communication."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'Walking On Water'.
50. "After the death of a well-known artist, there comes a period of an eclipse of his work."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'Walking On Water'.
51. "If the artist reflects only his own culture, then his works will die with that culture."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'Walking On Water'.
52. "It is chastening to realize that those who have no physical flaw, who move through life in step with their peers, who are bright and beautiful, seldom become artists."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'Walking On Water'.
53. "Poets and saints. What an odd coupling."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'Walking On Water'.
54. "To create a work of art, great or small is work, hard work."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'Walking On Water'.
55. "Fairy tales and myths are to be discarded as soon as we are old enough to understand reality."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'Walking On Water'.
56. "We are not meant to be as separated as we have become from those who have gone before us and those who will come after."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'Walking On Water'.
57. "The artist must be open to the wider truths."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'Walking On Water'.
58. "Remembering the lovely things we have forgotten is one of the reasons for all art."
- Madeleine L'Engle, 'Walking On Water'.
Madeleine L'Engle Quotes On Writing
Here are some nice L'Engle quotes on writing and life.
59. "You have to write the book that wants to be written."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
60. "A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
61. "I have a friend, a beautiful and talented young woman, who is afraid to have a child and who is afraid to use her talent to write."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
62. "I’ve experienced the pain and joy of the birth of babies and the birth of books and there’s nothing like it."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
63. "To work on a book is for me very much the same thing as to pray."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
64. "When you are writing, you stop thinking and write what you hear."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
65. "If a writer says [she] doesn’t care whether [she] is published or not, I don’t believe [her]."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
66. "I write about what concerns me."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
67. "I want what I write to be read."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
68. "You have to sit down and start to write."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
69. "The writer whose words are going to be read by children has a heavy responsibility."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
70. "If the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
71. "You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
72. "There are mornings when I joyfully sit down at the typewriter."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
73. "Every time I sit down and start the first page of a novel, I am risking failure."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
74. "Writers will never do anything beyond the first thing unless they risk growing."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
75. "Inspiration usually comes during work"
- Madeleine L'Engle.
76. "A book comes and says, 'Write me.'"
- Madeleine L'Engle.
77. "It is the ability to choose which makes us human."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
78. "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."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
79. "To be alive is to be vulnerable."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
80. "An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
Madeleine L'Engle Quotes About Christ
Get to know some Madeleine L'Engle quotes on God.
81. "In my mind’s ear, I can hear God saying to God, 'Can I do it?'"
- Madeleine L'Engle.
82. "Can I leave my galaxies, my solar systems, can I leave the hydrogen clouds and the birthing stars?"
- Madeleine L'Engle.
83. "We do not draw people to Christ by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
84. "... by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
85. "I told her that if she is truly and deeply a Christian, what she writes is going to be Christian."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
86. "Some things have to be believed to be seen."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
87. "Faith is what makes life bearable."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
88. "God is constantly calling us to be more than we are."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
89. "We live by revelation, as Christians."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
90. "We lose our ability to see angels as we grow older."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
The Best Madeleine L'Engle Quotes
Find some of L'Engle's best quotes on children, darkness, faith, and more here.
91. "A self is always becoming."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
92. "I was once a child, I am always a child."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
93. "God is constantly calling us to be more than we are."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
94. "A deaf person can feel vibrations."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
95. "We want to feel that we have been given illumination."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
96. "She had not lost her child's creative acceptance of the realities moving on the other side of the everyday world."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
97. "We are afraid of the very lavishness of the gift."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
98. "If there is no communication it is as though the work had been stillborn."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
99. "If his works reflect the eternal and universal, they will revive."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
100. "Work requires discipline and order."
- Madeleine L'Engle.
At Kidadl, we have created lots of family-friendly quotes for everyone! If you liked these Madeleine L'Engle quotes from the author of 'A Wrinkle In Time', why not take a look at these 'A Tree Grows In Brooklyn' quotes or 'Alice In Wonderland' quotes to find more book quotes?
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