"Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God."
— Madeleine L'Engle

"Then the Old Man of the Earth stooped over the floor of the cave, raised a huge stone from it, and left it leaning. It disclosed a great hole that went plumb-down.
"That is the way," he said.
"But there are no stairs."
"You must throw yourself in. There is no other way.""
— George MacDonald (The Golden Key)

"A room without books is like a body without a soul."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero

"It is not possible to be 'incidentally a Christian.' The fact of Christianity must be overwhelmingly first or nothing. This suggests a reason for the dislike of Christians by nominal or non-Christians: their lives contain no overwhelming first but many balances."
— Sheldon Vanauken

"Life, with it's 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 (A Wrinkle in Time)

"So many books, so little time."
— Frank Zappa

"I will have nothing to do with a God who cares only occasionally. I need a God who is with us always, everywhere, in the deepest depths as well as the highest heights. It is when things go wrong, when good things do not happen, when our prayers seem to have been lost, that God is most present. We do not need the sheltering wings when things go smoothly. We are closest to God in the darkness, stumbling along blindly."
— Madeleine L'Engle

"Oh, comfortable cocoa!"
— Dodie Smith (I Capture the Castle)

"I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal."
— Jane Austen

"It's a good thing to have all the props pulled out from under us occasionally. It gives us some sense of what is rock under our feet, and what is sand."
— Madeleine L'Engle

"Man's nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols."
— John Calvin

"You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough"
— Mae West

"In a very real sense not one of us is qualified, but it seems that God continually chooses the most unqualified to do his work, to bear his glory. If we are qualified, we tend to think that we have done the job ourselves. If we are forced to accept our evident lack of qualification, then there's no danger that we will confuse God's work with our own, or God's glory with our own."
— Madeleine L'Engle

"It is perhaps a more fortunate destiny to have a taste for collecting shells than to be born a millionaire."
— Robert Louis Stevenson

"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one."
— C.S. Lewis

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference."
— Elie Wiesel

"When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable."
— Madeleine L'Engle

"From The White Witch by
Elizabeth Goudge:

"....she had long accepted the fact
that happiness is like swallows in
Spring. It may come and nest under
your eaves or it may not. You cannot
command it. When you expect to be
happy you are not, when you don't
expect to be happy there's suddenly
Easter in your soul, though it be
midwinter."
"
— Elizabeth Goudge

"Truth is what is true, and it's not necessarily factual. Truth and fact are not the same thing. Truth does not contradict or deny facts, but it goes through and beyond facts. This is something that it is very difficult for some people to understand. Truth can be dangerous."
— Madeleine L'Engle

"Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability."
— Sam Keen

"Women are like teabags; you never know how strong they are until they're put in hot water."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

"To understand reality is not the same as to know about outward events. It is to perceive the essential nature of things. The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential. But on the other hand, knowledge of an apparently trivial detail quite often makes it possible to see into the depths of things. And so the wise man will seek to acquire the best possible knowledge about events, but always without becoming dependent upon this knowledge. To recognize the significant in the factual is wisdom."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"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

"All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by frost."
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring)

"Don't try to comprehend with your mind. Your minds are very limited. Use your intuition."
— Madeleine L'Engle (A Wrinkle in Time)

"Night-time train travel is wonderful again! No standing in the corridors for hours, no being shunted off for a troop train to pass, and above all, no black-out curtains. All the windows we passed were lighted, and I could snoop once more. I missed it so terribly during the war. I felt as if we had all turned into moles scuttling along in our separate tunnels. I don't consider myself a real peeper-they go in for bedrooms, but it's families in sitting rooms or kitchens that thrill me. I can imagine their entire lives from a glimpse of bookshelves, or desks, or lit candles, or bright sofa cushions."
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you."
— Elbert Hubbard

"In reading we must become creators."
— Madeleine L'Engle

"The journey homewards. Coming home. That's what it's all about. The journey to the coming of the Kingdom. That's probably the chief difference between the Christian and the secular artist--the purpose of the work, be it story or music or painting, is to further the coming of the kingdom, to make us aware of our status as children of God, and to turn our feet toward home."
— Madeleine L'Engle (Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art)

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."
— Mark Twain

"The unending paradox is that we do learn through pain."
— Madeleine L'Engle

"Lena was suspicious of many things. But she had earned her suspicions about boys. Lena knew boys. They never looked beyond your looks. They pretended to be your friend to get you to trust them, and as soon as you trusted them, they went in for the grope. They pretended to want to work on a history project or volunteer on your blood drive committee to get your attention. But as soon as they got it through their skulls that you didn't want to go out with them, they suddenly weren't interested in time lines or dire blood shortages. Worst of all, on occasion they even went out with one of your best friends to get close to you, and broke that same best friend's heart when the truth came out. Lean preferred plain guys to cute ones, but even the plain ones disappointed her."
— Ann Brashares (The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants)

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."
— Oscar Wilde

"We can't take any credit for our talents. It's how we use them that counts."
— Madeleine L'Engle (A Wrinkle in Time)

"I am quite likely to re-act to the opposite extreme - to feel rapturously that the world is beautiful and mere existence something to thank God for. I suppose our 'blues' are the price we have to pay for our temperament. 'The gods don't allow us to be in their debt.' They give us sensitiveness to beauty in all its forms but the shadow of the gift goes with it."
— L.M. Montgomery (My Dear Mr. M: Letters to G.B. Macmillan from L.M. Montgomery)

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye."
— Miss Piggy

"If it can be verified, we don't need faith... Faith is for that which lies on the other side of reason. Faith is what makes life bearable, with all its tragedies and ambiguities and sudden, startling joys."
— Madeleine L'Engle

"If it's IN you to climb you must -- there are those who MUST lift their eyes to the hills -- they can't breathe properly in the valleys."
— L.M. Montgomery (Emily of New Moon)

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
— Albert Einstein

"“…grace is not so poor a thing that it cannot present itself in any number of ways.”"
— Marilynn Robinson

"God understands that part of us which is more than what we think we are."
— Madeleine L'Engle

"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."
— Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)

"I love, therefore I am vulnerable."
— Madeleine L'Engle (Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art)

"I still don't understand anything- exept that somehow I know that You are love. And that in my heart has been so great a love for Christy as I did not know could exist on this earth. You, God, must be responsible. You must have put it there. So what do I do with it now? "
— Catherine Marshall (Christy)

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."
— Theodore Roosevelt

"Our need for worth is so powerful that whatever we base our identity and value on we essentially 'deify.' We will look to it with all the passion and intensity of worship and devotion, even if we think ourselves as highly irreligious. "
— Timothy Keller

"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends. To appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."
— Bessie Anderson Stanley

"If you judge people, you have no time to love them."
— Mother Teresa

"She thought of the library, so shining white and new; the rows and rows of unread books; the bliss of unhurried sojourns there and of going out to a restaurant, alone, to eat."
— Maud Hart Lovelace (Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown)

"Reason can get you to probability, but only commitment can get you to certainty."
— Tim Keller