We tend to defend vigorously things that in our deepest hearts we are not quite certain about. If we are certain of something we know, it doesn't need defending. Madeleine L'Engle More Quotes by Madeleine L'Engle More Quotes From Madeleine L'Engle We are suspicious of grace. We are afraid of the very lavishness of the gift. Madeleine L'Engle suspicious grace The best way to guide children without coercion is to be ourselves. Madeleine L'Engle coercion children way Oh child, your language is so utterly simple and limited that it has the affect of extreme complication. -Aunt Beast Madeleine L'Engle aunt simple children A burst of harmony so brilliant that it almost overwhelmed them surrounded Meg, the cherubim, Calvin, and Mr. Jenkins. But after a moment of breathlessness, Meg was able to open herself to the song of the farae, these strange creatures who were Deepened, rooted, yet never seperated from each other, no matter how great the distance. We are the song of the universe. We sing with the angelic host. We are musicians. The farae and the stars are the singers. Our song orders the rhythm of creation. Madeleine L'Engle distance stars song Love isn't how you feel. It's what you do. Madeleine L'Engle how-you-feel feels life You cannot see the past that did not happen any more than you can foresee the future. Madeleine L'Engle future regret past In reading we must become creators. Once the child has learned to read alone, and can pick up a book without illustrations, he must become a creator, imagining the setting of the story, visualizing the characters, seeing facial expressions, hearing the inflection of voices. The author and the reader "know" each other; they meet on the bridge of words. Madeleine L'Engle reading book children We cannot always cry at the right time and who is to say which time is right? Madeleine L'Engle cry right-time 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. Madeleine L'Engle definitions important The part of us that has to be burned away is something like the deadwood on the bush; it has to go, to be burned in the terrible fire of reality, until there is nothing left but . . . what we are meant to be. Madeleine L'Engle terrible fire reality Accepting that we are angry is a healthy and appropriate response as long as we don't get stuck in it. Acknowledging it is one way of going through it. Madeleine L'Engle healthy long way Give the public the 'image' of what it thinks it ought to be, or what television commercials or glossy magazine ads have convinced us we ought to be, and we will buy more of the product, become closer to the image, and further from reality. Madeleine L'Engle television-commercials reality thinking We do not know and cannot tell when the spirit is with us. Great talent or small, it makes no difference. We are caught within our own skins, our own sensibilities; we never know if our technique has been adequate to the vision. Madeleine L'Engle vision differences artist We do live, all of us, on many different levels, and for most artists the world of imagination is more real than the world of the kitchen sink. Madeleine L'Engle artist real imagination The rational intellect doesn't have a great deal to do with love, and it doesn't have a great deal to do with art. I am often, in my writing, great leaps ahead of where I am in my thinking, and my thinking has to work its way slowly up to what the "superconscious" has already shown me in a story or poem. Madeleine L'Engle writing art thinking When a child who has been conceived in love is born to a man and a woman, the joy of that birth sings throughout the universe. The joy of writing or painting is much the same, and the insemination comes not from the artist himself but from his relationship with those he loves, with the whole world. All real art is, in its true sense, religious; it is a religious impulse; there is not such thing as a non-religious subject. Madeleine L'Engle religious children art Only Christ can free us from the prison of legalism, and then only if we are willing to be freed. Madeleine L'Engle legalism prison christ the artist is not separate from the work and therefore cannot judge it. Madeleine L'Engle artist judging To share poetry is one of the most intimate acts of friendship possible. Madeleine L'Engle intimate poetry-is share The medieval mystics say the true image and the true real met once and for all on the cross: once and for all: and yet they still meet daily. Madeleine L'Engle medieval real crosses
