Quotes by Madeleine L'Engle

About Madeleine L'Engle:

Madeleine L'Engle was an American writer best known for young-adult fiction, particularly the Newbery Medal-winning A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels: A Wind in the Door, National Book Award-winning A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time. Her works reflect both her Christian faith and her strong interest in modern science.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Very few of us understand Honorable Bird, except to acknowledge that without his power and grace nothing would be written, painted, or composed at all. To say anything beyond this about the creative process is like pulling all the petals off a flower...

Madeleine L'Engle

The very young woman can be charming and delightful and pretty but only a mature woman can be beautiful; and only a mature man can be strong enough to be tender.

Madeleine L'Engle

When I start a new seminar I tell my students that I will undoubtedly contradict myself, and that I will mean both things. But an acceptance of contradiction is no excuse for fuzzy thinking. We do have to use our minds as far as they will take us, ye...

Madeleine L'Engle

The best way to guide children without coercion is to be ourselves.

Madeleine L'Engle

If it's not good enough for adults, it's not good enough for children. If a book that is going to be marketed for children does not interest me, a grownup, then I am dishonoring the children for whom the book is intended, and I am dishonoring books. ...

Madeleine L'Engle

I am encouraged as I look at some of those who have listened to their "different drum": Einstein was hopeless at school math and commented wryly on his inadequacy in human relations. Winston Churchill was an abysmal failure in his early school years....

Madeleine L'Engle

I can't think of one great human being in the arts, or in history generally, who conformed, who succeeded, as educational experts tell us children must succeed, with his peer group...If a child in their classrooms does not succeed with his peer group...

Madeleine L'Engle

I am slowly coming to understand with all my heart as well as my head that love is not a feeling. It is a person.

Madeleine L'Engle

Two people whose opinion I respect told me that the word "Christian" would turn people off. This certainly says something about the state of Christianity today. I wouldn't mind if to be a Christian were accepted as being the dangerous thing which it ...

Madeleine L'Engle

Compassion is nothing one feels with the intellect alone. Compassion is particular; it is never general.

Madeleine L'Engle

There is nothing that makes me happier than sitting around the dinner table and talking until the candles are burned down.

Madeleine L'Engle

The creative impulse can be killed, but it cannot be taught...What a teacher can do...in working with children, is to give the flame enough oxygen so that it can burn. As far as I'm concerned, this providing of oxygen is one of the noblest of all voc...

Madeleine L'Engle

It is ... through the world of the imagination which takes us beyond the restrictions of provable fact, that we touch the hem of truth.

Madeleine L'Engle

We are a generation which is crying loudly to tear down all structure in order to find freedom, and discovering, when order is demolished, that instead of freedom we have death.

Madeleine L'Engle

Our country in general assumes that "the pursuit of happiness" really means "the pursuit of pleasure" and that therefore pleasure is the greatest good.

Madeleine L'Engle

One cannot be humble and aware of oneself at the same time.

Madeleine L'Engle

An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers...To define everything is to annihilate much that gives us laughter and joy...If I try self consciously to become a person, I will never be one. The most real people, those who are able to for...

Madeleine L'Engle

A truly great work of art breaks beyond the bounds of the period and culture in which it is created, so final judgement on a current book has to be deferred until it can be seen outside this present moment.

Madeleine L'Engle

We can surely no longer pretend that our children are growing up into a peaceful, secure, and civilized world. We've come to the point where it's irresponsible to try to protect them from the irrational world they will have to live in when they grow ...

Madeleine L'Engle

I would, quite often, like to be grownup, wise, and sophisticated. But these gifts are not mine.

Madeleine L'Engle

A self is not something static, tied up in a pretty parcel and handed to the child, finished and complete. A self is always becoming.

Madeleine L'Engle

Author Bio

  • NameMadeleine L'Engle
  • DescriptionAmerican writer
  • BornNovember 29, 1918
  • DiedSeptember 6, 2007
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Poet; Novelist; Children's Writer
  • AwardsMargaret Edwards Award; National Humanities Medal; Newbery Medal