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
“I know this is insane, but I somehow wish I had been in Auschwitz with my parents so I could really know what they lived through! I guess it's some kind of guilt about having had an easier life than they did.”
― Art Spiegelman, quote from The Complete Maus
“She laughed when there was no joke. She danced when there was no music.
She had no friends, yet she was the friendliest person in school.
In her answers in class, she often spoke of sea horses and stars, but she did not know what a football was...
She was elusive. She was today. She was tomorrow. She was the faintest scent of a cactus flower, the flitting shadow of an elf owl. We did not know what to make of her. In our minds we tried to pin her to a corkboard like a butterfly, but the pin merely went through and away she flew.”
― Jerry Spinelli, quote from Stargirl
“Science is no more than an investigation of a miracle we can never explain, and art is an interpretation of that miracle.”
― Ray Bradbury, quote from The Martian Chronicles
“all streams flow to the sea because it is lower than they are. humility gives it its power. if you want to govern the people, you must place yourself below them. if you want to lead the people, you must learn how to follow them.”
― Lao Tzu, quote from Tao Te Ching
“The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, quote from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
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