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d321689
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The breaking of the harmony was pain, was brutal anguish, but the harmony kept rising above the pain, and the joy would pulse with light, and light and dark once more knew each other, and were part of the joy.
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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e843fd5
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Questions, questions."Gaudior stomped one silver hoof. "I am not some kind of computer. Only machines have glib answers for everything."
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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78136d9
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Like everything else"--Meg spoke to the few remaining cauliflower heads--" it's falling apart. It's not right in the United States of America that a little kid shouldn't be safe in school."
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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c4900c6
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There was yesterday, which was gone, which was only a dream. There was tomorrow, which was a vision not unlike today. When was always Now, for there was little looking either backward or forward in this young world. If Now was good, yesterday, though a pleasurable dream, was not necessary. If Now was good, tomorrow would likely continue to be so.
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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1554ea3
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Time isn't any more important than size. All that is required of you is to be in the Now, in this moment which has been given us.
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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b14b629
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Love. That's what makes persons know who they are. You're full of love, Meg, but you don't know how to stay within it when it's not easy.
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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790c98d
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La experiencia es la madre de la ciencia.
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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08a73e9
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None of us likes to see himself as he must appear to others.
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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b0a4ded
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I like here to think of another Fred, the eminent British scientist Fred Hoyle, and his theory of the universe, in which matter is continuously being created, with the universe expanding but not dissipating. As island galaxies rush away from each other into eternity, new clouds of gas are condensing into new galaxies. As old stars die, new stars are being born. Mr. Melcher lived in this universe of continuous creation and expansion.
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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bbc361a
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Neither sadist nor masochist, I still Must turn to violence: break, be broken. False image of myself I beg you: kill. Help me destroy the one of you I've spoken Within my wilful heart. It is no more you Than I am all that I would wish to be. I cannot really love you till I hew All these projections of an unreal me, An imaged you, to shards. Then death Will have a chance to free me for creation. God! All this dying has me out of breath. How ..
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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2770f96
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Trust easily come by can vanish as easily.
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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6e69f5e
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Que la terre est petite a qui la voit des cieux!
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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df8e7cc
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is not an easy thing to refuse to be worshipped.
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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dc8eb82
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The written word Should be clean as bone, Clear as light, Firm as stone. Two words are not As good as one. I
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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2b48f2a
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Oh, girl, not woman, more than child, Which of us two is the more wild? So
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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2133a52
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Death is the most ordinary thing in the world, and so is birth. Someone is being born at this very moment. Someone is dying. Ordinary, and yet completely extraordinary. The marvel of having my babies is something I will never forget. The feeling of staggering uniqueness I had at the death of my father, the death of several close friends, was very different, but equally acute. Death may be an ordinary, everyday affair, but it is not a statis..
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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9385c9c
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All my life the people I have loved--Ilsa, Cousin Anna, Silver, Myra Turnbull, Joshua Tisbury--have accepted me as a friend, have confided in me--but, somehow, there has been no actual contact made. It has been almost as though they could talk to me because I didn't exist. I think that's because there has been no give and take. I have a pitcher into which the people I love have poured themselves. I have accepted everything and been allowed ..
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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5f4c609
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Alan, the first winter we knew him, stood at my desk in the Cathedral library and remarked, "I think you and Hugh live more existentially than most people." I felt we'd made it: we, like Sartre and Camus and Kierkegaard, were existential; we were really with it. It doesn't matter that I'm still not quite sure what living existentially means, though I have a suspicion that it's not far from living ontologically, because it's one of those wor..
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life
importance
existentialism
mystery
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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e8fedba
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In this way I have sat in many rooms and walked in many gardens, and it has been as though I were a stick of furniture or a branch of a tree. I seem to have caused no sense of restraint or embarrassment. People have been able to talk freely in front of me, almost as freely as though I weren't there. I suppose some might think this a great compliment; it has given me a curious feeling of nonexistence. Now
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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778208c
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Children are less easily frightened than we are.... they all understand princesses, of course. Haven't they all been badly bruised by peas?
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understanding
fear
imagination
princesses
creativity
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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ece8362
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It's a stage we all go through; it takes a certain amount of living to strike the strange balance between the two errors either of regarding ourselves as unforgivable or as not needing forgiveness.
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self-doubt
living
life
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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a0ba5e8
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Hold me in peace while sleeping. Wake me with the sun's smiling. With pure water slake my thirst. Let me be merry in your love.
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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4d9639d
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I don't underestimate knowledge. But we get into trouble when we confuse it with truth.
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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83a0fc2
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kilt
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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6cec6e2
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You're going to have to do something about yourself. Nobody can do it tor you.
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Madeleine L'Engle (Author) |
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f7e2aa7
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I was just laughing because I felt good. You act as though you keep expecting people to laugh at you. You ought to just laugh at them. I'll bet they're funnier than you are.
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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6b141f9
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Silence is dangerous We never permit it. Our vocabulary may not be large But there is no question that we put it to constant use. That's what things are for: to be used. And used. And used. Who knows? If we didn't talk and chatter from morning till night (it doesn't matter whether or not anybody listens; that's not the point), Words might start using us. We never allow silence. If sometimes it catches us unaware, I am the first to screech a..
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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2210907
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The answer has something to do with love. Love that has to go through darkness and pain and endurance and a stark acceptance before it can come out into the far light of the sun.
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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b57abf6
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But she was one of those people who change very little between twenty and sixty. Instead of growing and developing into whatever kind of creatures they are, slowly and consistently, they have three periods of their lives, with sharp lines of demarcation between them: they are children, then grownups, then old men and women. Suddenly
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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de6784f
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It seemed strange that with so much softness in her actual construction Mamma gave such a feeling of hardness. When
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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952e1d1
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And another lovely paradox: we can be humble only when we know that we are God's children, of infinite value, and eternally loved.
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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dbb4b20
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I was only just beginning to realize what a horribly destructive thing hate is, how it destroys inwards as well as outwards. I
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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de014ff
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Immediately he opened a large number of eyes very wide. "What a strange idea. Love isn't feeling. If it were, I wouldn't be able to love. Cherubim don't have feelings."
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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cc26a24
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Your planet does not deal gently with lovers of peace.
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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a81032b
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I have been wondering this summer why our love has seemed deeper, tenderer than ever before. It's taken us twenty-five years, almost, but perhaps at last we are willing to let each other be; as we are; two diametrically opposite human beings in many ways, which has often led to storminess. But I think we are both learning not to chafe at the other's particular ness.
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love
romantic-love
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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d3cb8da
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IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT. In her attic bedroom Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind. Behind the trees clouds scudded frantically across the sky. Every few moments the moon ripped through them, creating wraithlike shadows that raced along the ground. The house shook. Wrapped in her quilt, Meg shook.
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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481e920
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One of my young married students has suffered all her life because she was taught in her Church that she was born so sinful that the only way the wrath of God the Father could be appeased enough for him to forgive all her horrible sinfulness was for God the Son to die in agony on the cross. Without his suffering, the Father would remain angry forever with all his Creation. Many of us have had a least part of that horror thrust on us at one..
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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eb53f69
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The Greeks had a word for ultimate self-consciousness which I find illuminating: hubris: pride: pride in the sense of putting oneself in the center of the universe. The strange and terrible thing is that this kind of total self-consciousness invariably ends in self-annihilation. The great tragedians have always understood this, from Sophocles to Shakespeare. We witness it in history in such people as Tiberius, Eva Peron, Hider. I
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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0e43329
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My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' For our sakes Jesus went through all the suffering we may ever have to endure, and because he cried out those words we may cry them out, too.
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faith
jesus-christ
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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77240e1
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Freedom is a terrible gift, and the theory behind all dictatorships is that "the people" do no want freedom."
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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41873b3
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The reaper lacks the eyes to hold him back;
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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b0e4d4a
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When a character wants to do one thing and I want him to do another, the character is usually right.
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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3fe200d
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The child is aware of unlimited potential, and this munificence is one of the joys of creativity. Those of use who struggle in our own ways, small or great, trickles or rivers, to create, are constantly having to unlearn what the world would teach us...
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potential
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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c888729
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Maybe the job of the artist is to see through all of this strangeness to what really is, and that takes a lot of courage and a strong faith in the validity of the artistic vision even if there is not a conscious faith in God.
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Madeleine L'Engle |