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A Circle of Quiet (Crosswicks Journals #1) QUOTES

A Circle of Quiet (Crosswicks Journals #1) QUOTES

1 " 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, yet acknowledge that they cannot take us all the way. "

― Madeleine L'Engle , A Circle of Quiet (Crosswicks Journals #1)

2 " An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers. To define everything is to annihilate much that gives us laughter and joy. "

― Madeleine L'Engle , A Circle of Quiet (Crosswicks Journals #1)

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

― Madeleine L'Engle , A Circle of Quiet (Crosswicks Journals #1)

4 " 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. And words. "

― Madeleine L'Engle , A Circle of Quiet (Crosswicks Journals #1)

5 " 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, then it would seem to many that both child and teacher have failed. Have they? If we ever, God forbid, manage to make each child succeed with his peer group, we will produce a race of bland and faceless nonentities, and all poetry and mystery will vanish from the face of the earth. "

― Madeleine L'Engle , A Circle of Quiet (Crosswicks Journals #1)

6 " 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 in order to analyze it, and ending up having destroyed the flower. "

― Madeleine L'Engle , A Circle of Quiet (Crosswicks Journals #1)

7 " 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 vocations. "

― Madeleine L'Engle , A Circle of Quiet (Crosswicks Journals #1)

8 " 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 , A Circle of Quiet (Crosswicks Journals #1)

9 " 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 , A Circle of Quiet (Crosswicks Journals #1)

10 " Gregory of Nyssa points out that Moses's vision of God began with the light, with the visible burning bush, the bush which was bright with fire and was not consumed; but afterwards, God spoke to him in a cloud. After the glory which could be seen with human eyes, he began to see the glory which is beyond and after light. The shadows are deepening all around us. "

― Madeleine L'Engle , A Circle of Quiet (Crosswicks Journals #1)

11 " 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 up. The children themselves haven't yet isolated themselves by selfishness and indifference; they do not fall easily into the error of despair; they are considerably braver than most grownups. Our responsibility to them is not to pretend that if we don't look, evil will go away, but to give them weapons against it. "

― Madeleine L'Engle , A Circle of Quiet (Crosswicks Journals #1)

12 " 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 forget their selfish selves, who have true compassion, are usually the most distinct individuals "

― Madeleine L'Engle , A Circle of Quiet (Crosswicks Journals #1)

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

― Madeleine L'Engle , A Circle of Quiet (Crosswicks Journals #1)

14 " 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 , A Circle of Quiet (Crosswicks Journals #1)

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

― Madeleine L'Engle , A Circle of Quiet (Crosswicks Journals #1)

16 " In the final exam in the Chaucer course we were asked why he used certain verbal devices, certain adjectives, why he had certain characters behave in certain ways. And I wrote, 'I don't think Chaucer had any idea why he did any of these things. That isn't the way people write.'

I believe this as strongly now as I did then. Most of what is best in writing isn't done deliberately. "

― Madeleine L'Engle , A Circle of Quiet (Crosswicks Journals #1)

17 " One night after dinner a group of us were talking about the supernatural, and one of our dinner guests said that when the electric light was invented, people began to lose the dimension of the supernatural. In the days before we could touch a switch and flood every section of the room with light, there were always shadows in the corner, shadows which moved with candlelight, with firelight; and these shadows were an outward and visible sign that things are not always what they seem; there are things which are not visible to the mortal human being; there are things beyond our ken. "

― Madeleine L'Engle , A Circle of Quiet (Crosswicks Journals #1)

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

― Madeleine L'Engle , A Circle of Quiet (Crosswicks Journals #1)

19 " I'm apt to get drunk on words...Ontology: the word about the essence of things; the word about being. "

― Madeleine L'Engle , A Circle of Quiet (Crosswicks Journals #1)

20 " The minute we begin to think we have all the answers, we forget the questions. "

― Madeleine L'Engle , A Circle of Quiet (Crosswicks Journals #1)