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A Circle of Quiet
Madeleine L'Engle
Top 10 Best Quotes
“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.”
“I'm apt to get drunk on words...Ontology: the word about the essence of things; the word about being.”
“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.”
“An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers. To define everything is to annihilate much that gives us laughter and joy.”
“The minute we begin to think we have all the answers, we forget the questions.”
“One cannot be humble and aware of oneself at the same time.”
“It is ... through the world of the imagination which takes us beyond the restrictions of provable fact, that we touch the hem of truth.”
“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 is; I wouldn't mind if, when a group of Christians meet for bread and wine, we might well be interrupted and jailed for subversive activities; I wouldn't mind if, once again, we were being thrown to the lions. I do mind, desperately, that the word "Christian" means for so many people smugness, and piosity, and holier-than-thouness. Who today can recognize a Christian because of "how those Christians love one another?”
“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.”
“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.”
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Book Keywords:
humility, dangerous, joy, words, self, questions, theory, intellect, subversive, definitions, finite, discovery, contradiction, wisdom, writing-process, mind, brain, christianity, love, laughter, imagination, parenting