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2762ae2 I do not believe that true optimism can come about except through tragedy. tragedy Madeleine L'Engle
e83b65a There're a lot of things you don't understand." Zachary smoldered his gaze at me. "I came looking for you, and then when I found out where you were, suddenly it didn't seem worth it. It wasn't you. It was everything and nothing. Life. Ma's death. Talking to anybody. Not worth it" lost-love sad Madeleine L'Engle
dc4a0b9 One foggy night I was walking the dogs down the lane and heard the geese, very close overhead, calling, calling, their marvellous strange cry, as they flew by. I think that is what our own best prayer must sound like when we send it up to heaven. Madeleine L'Engle
c78d431 Lords of space and Lords of time, Lords of blessing, Lords of grace, Who is in the warmer clime? Who will follow Madoc's rhyme? Blue will alter time and space. grade rhyme space time Madeleine L'Engle
df56a58 You must understand with your hearts. With the whole of yourselves, not just a fragment. Madeleine L'Engle
b94eeaf There's no such thing as an unbreakable scientific rule, because, sooner or later, they all seem to get broken. Or to change. science scientific Madeleine L'Engle
9f38547 All real art is, in its true sense, is a religious impulse; there is no such thing as a non-religious subject. But much bad or downright sacrilegious art depicts so-called religious subjects...Conversely, much great religious art has been written or painted or composed by people who thought they were atheists. Madeleine L'Engle
2801e97 Well, then, someone just tell me how we got here!" Calvin's voice was still angry and his freckles seemed to stand out on his face. "Even traveling at the speed of light, it would take us years and years to get here." "Oh we don't travel by the speed of anything," Mrs. Whatsit explained earnestly. "We teaser. Or you might say, we wrinkle." tesseract Madeleine L'Engle
8c60b65 It may be that we have lost our ability to hold a blazing coal, to move unfettered through time, to walk on water, because we have been taught that such things have to be earned; we should deserve them; we must be qualified. We are suspicious of grace. We are afraid of the very lavishness of the gift. But a child rejoices in presents! grace Madeleine L'Engle
cada041 And this feeling of moving with the earth was somewhat like the feeling of being in the ocean, out in the ocean beyond this rising and falling of the breakers, lying on the moving water, pulsing gently with the swells, and feeling the gentle, inexorable tug of the moon. ocean Madeleine L'Engle
725f0e0 Ah," she said, "that's ever so much better," and took both boots and shook them out over the sink. "My stomach is full and I'm warm inside and out and it's time I went home." Madeleine L'Engle
c842a50 The temptation for farandola or for man or for star is to stay an immature pleasure-seeker. When we seek our own pleasure as the ultimate good we place ourselves as the center of the universe. A fara or a man or a star has his place in the universe, but nothing created is the center. Madeleine L'Engle
bffa181 I think we're supposed to ask too much of each other; otherwise, nothing would ever get done. Madeleine L'Engle
f82ccd2 It's idiotic, it's crazy. If you die and then you're just nothing, there isn't any point to anything. Why do we live at all if we die and stop being? Father wasn't ready to be stopped. No one's ready to be stopped. We don't have *time* to be ready to be stopped. It's all crazy. . . . Look at my glasses. I can't even see that there are any stars in the sky without them, but it's not the glasses that are doing the seeing, it's me, Madeleine... Madeleine L'Engle
b5409b2 matter and energy are the same thing, that size is an illusion, and that time is a material substance. Madeleine L'Engle
9f863a3 Look at my glasses. I can't even see that there are any stars in the sky without them, but it's not the glasses that are doing the seeing, it's me, Madeleine. I don't think Father's eyes are seeing now, but he is. And maybe his brain isn't thinking, but a brain's just something to think through, the way my glasses are something to see through. Madeleine L'Engle
ba726f5 I heard a doctor say that the living tend to withdraw emotionally from the dying, thereby driving them deeper into isolation. Not to withdraw takes tremendous strength. To pull back is a temptation; it doesn't hurt nearly as much as remaining open. emotions isolation openness strength withdrawal Madeleine L'Engle
f47c58e William Wordsworth was said to have walked 180,000 miles in his lifetime. Charles Dickens captured the ecstasy of near-madness and insomnia in the essay "Night Walks" and once said, "The sum of the whole is this: Walk and be happy; Walk and be healthy." Robert Louis Stevenson wrote of "the great fellowship of the Open Road" and the "brief but priceless meetings which only trampers know." Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche said, "Only those thought.. Ben Montgomery
bfe0d63 The German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, who had syphilis, said that only a person of deep faith could afford the luxury of religious skepticism. Humanists, by and large educated, comfortably middle-class persons with rewarding lives like mine, find rapture enough in secular knowledge and hope. Most people can't. religion Kurt Vonnegut
660bcd5 They ate a late lunch in the cafeteria. When she mentioned lunch, he realized with horror that he would need money, and he didn't know how to tell her that he hadn't brought any--didn't have any to bring, for that matter. But before he had time to figure anything out, she said, "Now I'm not going to have any argument about whose paying. I'm a liberated woman, Jess Aarons. When I invite a man out, I pay." Katherine Paterson
54f8700 Everything comes in useful once in a hundred years. usefulness Katherine Paterson
641a53c Jess's feelings about Leslie's father poked up like a canker sore. You keep biting it, and it gets bigger and worse instead of better. Katherine Paterson
fe2dd64 She had tricked him. She had made him leave his old self behind and come into her world, and then before he was really at home in it too late to go back, she had left him stranded there - like an astronaut wandering about on the moon. Alone. Katherine Paterson
c99fc58 Jess drew the way some people drink whiskey. The peace would start at the top of his muddled brain and seep down through his tired and tensed-up body. Katherine Paterson
0437998 They were always nice to Jess when he went over, but then they would suddenly begin talking about French politics or string quartets (which he at first thought was a square box made out of string), or how to save the timber wolves or redwoods or singing whales, and he was scared to open his mouth and show once and for all how dumb he was. Katherine Paterson
666f994 Lord, it would be better to be born without an arm than to go through life with no guts. Katherine Paterson
903e0b8 What goes on between a man and his missus is nobody's business; especially where desert toppin's involved. relationship Tanya Huff
a96338f Lick your lips, Griet." I licked my lips. "Leave your mouth open." I was so surprised by this request that my mouth remained open of its own will. I blinked back tears. Virtuous women did not open their mouths in paintings." Tracy Chevalier
aea03ff There is a difference between Catholic and Protestant attitudes to painting," he explained as he worked, "but it is not necessarily as great as you may think. Paintings may serve a spiritual purpose for Catholics, but remember too that Protestants see God everywhere, in everything. By painting everyday things-tables and chairs, bowls and pitchers, soldiers and maids-are they not celebrating God's creation as well?" Tracy Chevalier
09158de have noticed that people do not change which feature they lead with, any more than they change in character. Tracy Chevalier
bd49ed0 Warp threads are thicker than the weft, and made of a coarser wool as well. I think of them as like wives. Their work is not obvious - all you can see are the ridges they make under the colorful weft threads. But if they weren't there, there would be no tapestry. Georges would unravel without me. tapestry weaving Tracy Chevalier
651c4e6 It is less distracting in the silence," she said. "Sustained silence allows one truly to listen to what is deep inside. We call it waiting in expectation." Tracy Chevalier
0e15a78 That's how fossil hunting is: It takes over, like a hunger, and nothing else matters but what you find. And even when you find it, you still start looking again the next minute, because there might be something even better waiting. Tracy Chevalier
bfda547 I felt as if my parents had pushed me into the street, that a deal had been made and I was being passed into the hands of a man. At least he is a good man, I thought, even if his hands are not as clean as they could be. Tracy Chevalier
d133a80 He made me feel an idiot, even when I knew he was a bigger one than I. wisdom Tracy Chevalier
59a6224 What made him most attractive was that he was attracted to her. Another's interest can be a powerful stimulant. She could feel his eyes on her as an almost physical pressure. Tracy Chevalier
c78bd67 I couldn't change the wind but perhaps I could reduce the effect of the wind on the boat. Gary Paulsen
e2dacc4 Misery is optional. Gary Paulsen
55ced97 To know things, for us to know things, is bad for them. We get to wanting and when we get to wanting it's bad for them. They thinks we want what they got . . . . That's why they don't want us reading. Gary Paulsen
6168dbd Maybe it was always that way, discoveries happened because they needed to happen. Gary Paulsen
8eceedb Daniel Defoe was an English writer, journalist and spy, who gained enduring fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest practitioners of the novel and helped popularize the genre in Britain. In some texts he is even referred to as one of the founders, if not the founder, of the English novel. A prolific and versatile writer, he wrote over five hundred books, pamphlets, and journals on various topics (i.. Daniel Defoe
1b6e48a The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond, and must be polished, or the luster of it will never appear. --Daniel Defoe Cindy Trimm
83ff44c It is true that the original of this story is put into new words, and the style of the famous lady we here speak of is a little altered; particularly she is made to tell her own tale in modester words that she told it at first, the copy which came first to hand having been written in language more like one still in Newgate than one grown penitent and humble, as she afterwards pretends to be. Daniel Defoe
4cc0a8f My body was broken - just how badly I wouldn't find out until later - but I felt healed. Healed at last. Khaled Hosseini