Madeleine L'Engle · 332 pages
Rating: (17.2K votes)
“Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Ring of Endless Light
“It's hard to let go anything we love. We live in a world which teaches us to clutch. But when we clutch we're left with a fistful of ashes.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Ring of Endless Light
“The earth will never be the same again
Rock, water, tree, iron, share this greif
As distant stars participate in the pain.
A candle snuffed, a falling star or leaf,
A dolphin death, O this particular loss
A Heaven-mourned; for if no angel cried
If this small one was tossed away as dross,
The very galaxies would have lied.
How shall we sing our love's song now
In this strange land where all are born to die?
Each tree and leaf and star show how
The universe is part of this one cry,
Every life is noted and is cherished,
and nothing loved is ever lost or perished.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Ring of Endless Light
“A good laugh heals a lot of hurts.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Ring of Endless Light
“I saw Eternity the other night,
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright,
And round beneath it, Time, in hours, days, years,
Driven by the spheres,
Like a vast shadow moved, in which the world
And all her train were hurled.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Ring of Endless Light
“It is possible to suffer and despair an entire lifetime and still not give up the art of laughter.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Ring of Endless Light
“A great ring of pure & endless light
Dazzles the darkness in my heart
And breaks apart the dusky clouds of night.
The end of all is hinted in the start.
When we are born we bear the seeds of blight;
Around us life & death are torn apart,
Yet a great ring of pure and endless light
Dazzles the darkness in my heart.
It lights the world to my delight.
Infinity is present in each part.
A loving smile contains all art.
The motes of starlight spark & dart.
A grain of sand holds power & might.
Infinity is present in each part,
And a great ring of pure and endless light
Dazzles the darkness in my heart.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Ring of Endless Light
“There is in God, some say, a deep but dazzling darkness.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Ring of Endless Light
“And there's no getting around the fact that all life lives at the expense of another life.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Ring of Endless Light
“Poets are born knowing the language of angels.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Ring of Endless Light
“Wherever there's laughter, there is heaven.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Ring of Endless Light
“If thou could'st empty all thyself of self
Like to a shell dishabited
Then might He find thee on the ocean shelf
And say This is not dead and fill thee with Himself instead.
But thou art all replete with very thou
And hast such shrewd activity
That when He comes He says This is enow Unto itself - 'twere better let it be
It is so small and full there is no room for me.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Ring of Endless Light
“the discoveries don't come when you're looking for them. They come when for some reason you've let go conscious control.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Ring of Endless Light
“Nothing loved is ever lost or perished.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Ring of Endless Light
“I simply take him into my heart, and then put him into God's hand.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Ring of Endless Light
“Grandfather looked away from me and out to sea, and when he spoke, it was as though he spoke to himself. “The obligations of normal human kindness – chesed, as the Hebrew has it – that we all owe. But there’s a kind of vanity in thinking you can nurse the world. There’s a kind of vanity in goodness.”
I could hardly believe my ears. “But aren’t we supposed to be good?”
“I’m not sure.” Grandfather’s voice was heavy. “I do know that we’re not good, and there’s a lot of truth to the saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Ring of Endless Light
“If I'm confused, or upset, or angry, if I can go out and look at the stars I'll almost always get back a sense of proportion. It's not that they make me feel insignificant; it's the very opposite; they make me feel that everything matters, be it ever so small, and that there's meaning to life even when it seems most meaningless.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Ring of Endless Light
“If we knew each morning that there was going to be another morning, and on and on and on, we'd tend not to notice the sunrise,or hear the birds, or the waves rolling into shore. We'd tend not to treasure our time with the people we love.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Ring of Endless Light
“We're not peculiar."
"Oh, yes, you are. Don't you realize that in my world my parents are peculiar because they'd never been divorced? Basically because it would have been too much trouble. But you live in a world where not only are your parents not divorced, they appear to love each other”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Ring of Endless Light
“People like me spend years learning the techniques of meditation. But you're a poet, and poets are born knowing the language of angels.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Ring of Endless Light
“Adam thus bequeathed us his death, not his sin … We do not inherit the sins of our fathers, even though we may be made to endure their punishment. Guilt cannot be transmitted. We are linked to Adam only by his memory, which becomes our own, and by his death, which foreshadows our own. Not by his sin.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Ring of Endless Light
Madeleine L'Engle
Born place: in New York City, New York, The United States
Born date November 29, 1918
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“New York is a nice place."
"If you like concrete, crowds, and that claustrophobic, closed-in feeling.”
― Janette Rallison, quote from My Unfair Godmother
“Jesus," Kerensky said, looking around. "You people. I have one of the most incredible experiences I'll ever have, talking with the one person who really gets me - who really understands me - and you're all down here thinking I'm performing some sort of time-travelling incestuous masturbation thing.”
― John Scalzi, quote from Redshirts
“Talvin Singh, Thievery Corporation, A.R. Rahman, AmarBaaba Maal, Asian Dub Foundation, Autechre, Badmarsh and Sri, Bjork, Black Star Liner, The Blue Nile, Boards of Canada, The Chemical Brothers, Dead Can Dance, The Fake Portishead, Future Sound of London, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Goldfrapp, Jamyang, Joi, Jeff Buckley, Kabhi Kushi Kabhie Gham: original movie soundtrack, Nitin Sawhney, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Rakesh Chaurasia, Sigur Rós, State of Bengal.”
― Ian McDonald, quote from River of Gods
“When you’re young you prefer the vulgar months, the fullness of the seasons. As you grow older you learn to like the in-between times, the months that can’t make up their minds. Perhaps it’s a way of admitting that things can’t ever bear the same certainty again.”
― Julian Barnes, quote from Flaubert's Parrot
“See, I focus my efforts against the terror and violence of my own state for really two main reasons. First of all, in my case the actions of my state happen to make up the main component of international violence in the world. But much more importantly than that, it's because American actions are the things that I can do something about. So even if the United States were causing only a tiny fraction of the repression and violence in the world-which obviously is very far from the truth-that tiny fraction would still be what I'm responsible for, and what I should focus my efforts against. And that's based on a very simple ethical principle-namely, that the ethical value of one's actions depends on their anticipated consequences for human beings: I think that's kind of like a fundamental moral truism... Again, it's a very simple ethical point: you are responsible for the predictable consequences of your actions, you're not responsible for the predictable consequences of somebody else's actions.”
― Noam Chomsky, quote from Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky
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