Top 500 Madeleine L'Engle Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “We do not draw people to Christ by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

Featured in: Faith Quotes

2. “You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

Featured in: Quotes About Writing, Storytelling Quotes, Quotes About Children

3. “Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

4. “Nothing, no one, is too small to matter. What you do is going to make a difference.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

5. “For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a horse the rider was lost; for want of a rider the message was lost; for want of the message the battle was lost; for want of the battle the war was lost; for want of the war the kingdom was lost; and all for the want of a horseshoe nail.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

6. “We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

7. “We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

8. “If you don’t recount your family history, it will be lost. Honor your own stories and tell them too. The tales may not seem very important, but they are what binds families and makes each of us who we are.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

9. “Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

10. “Believing takes practice.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

11. “A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

Featured in: Reading Quotes

12. “A good laugh heals a lot of hurts.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

13. “When we believe in the impossible, it becomes possible, and we can do all kinds of extraordinary things.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

14. “I am still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child, I am always a child. Because I was once a searching adolescent, given to moods and ecstasies, these are still part of me, and always will be.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

15. “The minute we begin to think we have all the answers, we forget the questions.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

16. “Some things have to be believed to be seen.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

17. “A straight line is not the shortest distance between two points.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

18. “Stay angry, little Meg,” Mrs Whatsit whispered. “You will need all your anger now.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

19. “Deepest communion with God is beyond words, on the other side of silence.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

20. “Just write a little bit every day. Even if it’s for only half an hour – write, write, write.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

21. “I love, therefore I am vulnerable.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

22. “Time exists so that everything doesn’t happen at once.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

23. “People become trustworthy when they are trusted.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

24. “Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

25. “Maybe that’s the best part of going away for a vacation-coming home again.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

26. “Don’t try to comprehend with your mind. Your minds are very limited. Use your intuition.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

Featured in: Intuition Quotes

27. “To grow up is to accept vulnerability. To be alive is to be vulnerable.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

28. “Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point. French. Pascal. The heart has its reasons, whereof reason knows nothing.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

29. “The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

30. “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

31. “Like it or not, we either add to the darkness of indifference and out-and-out evil which surrounds us or we light a candle to see by.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

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

— Madeleine L'Engle

33. “When we celebrate Christmas, we are celebrating that amazing time when the Word that shouted all the galaxies into being limited all power and, for love of us, came to us in the powerless body of a human baby.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

34. “A long-term marriage has to move beyond chemistry to compatibility, to friendship, to companionship. It is certainly not that passion disappears, but that it is conjoined with other ways of love.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

35. “It is the ability to choose which makes us human.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

36. “We look not at the things which are what you would call seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal. But the things that are not seen are eternal.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

37. “When we lose our myths we lose our place in the universe.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

38. “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

39. “On the other side of pain, there is still love.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

40. “I don’t understand it any more than you do, but one thing I’ve learned is that you don’t have to understand things for them to be.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

41. “Truth is eternal. Knowledge is changeable. It is disastrous to confuse them.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

42. “If you’re going to care about the fall of the sparrow you can’t pick and choose who’s going to be the sparrow. It’s everybody.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

43. “That’s the way things come clear. All of a sudden. And then you realize how obvious they’ve been all along.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

44. “Art is communication.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

45. “We need the rock of the past under our feet in order to spring forward into the future.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

46. “If I’m not free to fail, I’m not free to take risks and everything in life that’s worth doing involves a willingness to take a risk.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

47. “Remember the root word of humble and human is the same: humus: earth. We are dust. We are created; it is God who made us and not we ourselves. But we were made to be co-creators with our maker.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

48. “Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: You’re given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. – Mrs. Whatsit.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

49. “Because to take away a man’s freedom of choice, even his freedom to make the wrong choice, is to manipulate him as though he were a puppet and not a person.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

50. “Hate hurts the hater more’n the hated.”

— Madeleine L'Engle