Quotes from The Arm of the Starfish

Madeleine L'Engle ·  288 pages

Rating: (8.5K votes)


“You cannot see the past that did not happen any more than you can foresee the future.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from The Arm of the Starfish


“If you’re going to care about the fall of the sparrow you can’t pick and choose who’s going to be the sparrow. It’s everybody, and you’re stuck with it.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from The Arm of the Starfish


“Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future’s sakes.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from The Arm of the Starfish


“Rules are made for people, not people for rules,”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from The Arm of the Starfish


“If you accept any position of authority you have to know when to break or circumvent a rule. It’s the knowing when that’s important.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from The Arm of the Starfish



“There always have been and there always will be people who have been corrupted into enjoying any excuse for cruelty.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from The Arm of the Starfish


“if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from The Arm of the Starfish


“I can’t do it for love of God, like Tom Tallis, or for heaven’s sake, as Mr. Frost said. But because I love people I have to act according to it—to the fact that I love them.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from The Arm of the Starfish


“There’s something wrong about trying to heal with a surgeon’s knife.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from The Arm of the Starfish


About the author

Madeleine L'Engle
Born place: in New York City, New York, The United States
Born date November 29, 1918
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“One of the gifts our planet gave us is to love completely. Without jealousy or insecurity or fear. Without pettiness. Without anger.”
― Pittacus Lore, quote from I Am Number Four


“She is, above all else, tired; she wants more than anything to return to her bed and her book. The world, this world, feels suddenly stunned and stunted, far from everything.”
― Michael Cunningham, quote from The Hours


“Some are born great, others achieve greatness.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from Twelfth Night


“Why is summer mist romantic and autumn mist just sad?”
― Dodie Smith, quote from I Capture the Castle


“He knew that the very memory of the piano falsified still further the perspective in which he saw the elements of music, that the field open to the musician is not a miserable stave of seven notes, but an immeasurable keyboard (still almost entirely unknown) on which, here and there only, separated by the thick darkness of its unexplored tracts, some few among the millions of keys of tenderness, of passion, of courage, of serenity, which compose it, each one differing from all the rest as one universe differs from another, have been discovered by a few great artists who do us the service, when they awaken in us the emotion corresponding to the theme they have discovered, of showing us what richness, what variety lies hidden, unknown to us, in that vast, unfathomed and forbidding night of our soul which we take to be an impenetrable void.”
― Marcel Proust, quote from Swann's Way


Interesting books

City of Bohane
(2.6K)
City of Bohane
by Kevin Barry
The Post-Office Girl
(3.5K)
The Post-Office Girl
by Stefan Zweig
Of Beast and Beauty
(9.1K)
Of Beast and Beauty
by Stacey Jay
Magonia
(15K)
Magonia
by Maria Dahvana Headley
Made You Up
(16.7K)
Made You Up
by Francesca Zappia
The Rule of Four
(29.8K)
The Rule of Four
by Ian Caldwell

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.