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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“Very well, Practical Vitari, if you really can’t resist me. You’ll have to go on top, though, if you don’t mind.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from Before They Are Hanged
“... and through it all and afterwards they would be together, making their own world where nothing mattered but the things they could give to one another, the loveliness, the silence, and the peace.”
― Daphne du Maurier, quote from Frenchman's Creek
“Damn it. I don't know how to be a husband, or father. But since your standards in both areas seem to be relatively low, I may have half a chance at pleasing you.”
― Lisa Kleypas, quote from Devil in Winter
“After a moment or two a man in brown crimplene looked in at us, did not at all like the look of us and asked us if we were transit passengers. We said we were. He shook his head with infinite weariness and told us that if we were transit passengers then we were supposed to be in the other of the two rooms. We were obviously very crazy and stupid not to have realized this. He stayed there slumped against the door jamb, raising his eyebrows pointedly at us until we eventually gathered our gear together and dragged it off down the
corridor to the other room. He watched us go past him shaking his head in wonder and sorrow at the stupid futility of the human condition in general and ours in particular, and then closed the door behind us.
The second room was identical to the first. Identical in all respects other than one, which was that it had a hatchway let into one wall. A large vacant-looking girl was leaning through it with her elbows on the counter and her fists jammed up into her cheekbones. She was watching some flies crawling up the wall, not with any great interest because they were not doing anything unexpected, but at least they were doing something. Behind her was a table stacked with biscuits, chocolate bars, cola, and a pot of coffee, and we headed straight towards this like a pack of stoats.
Just before we reached it, however, we were suddenly headed off by a man in blue crimplene, who asked us what we thought we were doing in there. We explained that we were transit passengers on our way to Zaire, and he looked at us as if we had completely taken leave of our senses.
'Transit passengers? he said. 'It is not allowed for transit passengers to be in here.'
He waved us magnificently away from the snack counter, made us pick up all our gear again, and herded us back through the door and away into the first room where, a minute later, the man in the brown crimplene found us again.
He looked at us. Slow incomprehension engulfed him, followed by sadness, anger, deep frustration and a sense that the world had been created specifically to cause him vexation. He leaned back against the wall, frowned, closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.
'You are in the wrong room,' he said simply. `You are transit passengers. Please go to the other room.'
There is a wonderful calm that comes over you in such situations, particularly when there is a refreshment kiosk involved. We nodded, picked up our gear in a Zen-like manner and made our way back down the corridor to the second room. Here the man in blue crimplene accosted us once more but we patiently explained to him that he could fuck off.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from Last Chance to See
“I see it in your beautiful eyes, like a spot on the sun. The things you want to hide, buried deep inside you. Blinded by your light. It almost hurts to look at, almost hurts to breathe. Never can you look at the things no one ever sees Shaded by your light. Please take me inside you, please take me in. Never will I whisper, never will I give in. Even when I’m dying, your heart will always win. Shielded to the sightless, isolated from the naïve. Breaking you in pieces, that can only ever grieve. Veiled by your light. Passionate for the world, yet overlooked by most. Your soul flickers in you, desperate to shine for the world But blinded by your darkness. Please take me inside you, please take me in. Never will I whisper, never will I give in. Even when I’m dying, your heart will always win.”
― Jessica Sorensen, quote from The Secret of Ella and Micha
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