The Young Unicorns Quotes

“They're a good family...One can tell a great deal around a dinner table...I think the closest we ever come in this naughty world to realizing unity in diversity is around a family table. I felt it at their table, the wholeness of the family unit, freely able to expand to include friends, to include me even through Austin's and my suspicions of each other, and yet each person in that unit complete, individual, unique, valued.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, The Young Unicorns

“—What would I be singing, Vicky wondered,—if I sang out my moods?”
― Madeleine L'Engle, The Young Unicorns: Book Three of The Austin Family Chronicles

“Tallis? He’s all mind.’ The Canon heard the Bishop’s clear and beautiful voice, the voice that could carry through the great Cathedral without amplification. ‘He’s the coldest human being I’ve ever run across. I think he positively enjoys watching people suffer just to see what they’ll do next when he could so easily help them. He has no idea what love is about. Perhaps it’s his work. He’s so busy being a sleuth he’s forgotten he’s a priest.’
--No, Tallis thought, --that is something I never forget.
But would the words have hurt so, had there not been a grain of truth in them?
Had his own fear of showing how deeply he cared (and therefore how deeply he could be hurt) kept him from giving the word of reassurance, the touch of tenderness the moment’s need demanded? Dr. Hyde had gone to great pains to help Emily and yet given nothing of himself. Why is it so difficult to reach out and take a hand to say, ‘Yes, I love you. I care. You matter to me’?”
― Madeleine L'Engle, The Young Unicorns

“Only obedience,’ he said aloud to the room, as though to convince himself, ‘is perfect freedom.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, The Young Unicorns

“If no demand is put on you, then you are in a sense excluded.’
‘From what?’
‘Life itself. To be demanded of gives us dignity [...] If someone expects, demands something of you, it means he takes you seriously.’ [...]
The Rabbi found that he had the stale taste of anger in his mouth. ‘Don’t you see?’ he asked, knowing that he was failing to make sense of any kind to Dave, ‘that the demand is that you take part in the huge cosmic struggle that is going on? Apathy is the gravest of sins.’ He turned from Dave to the fair little boy he had come to love. ‘Even the tiniest creature can shake the universe…”
― Madeleine L'Engle, The Young Unicorns

“he put the tray down on a long marble table in front of the fire. The Dean seated himself and lifted an enormous chintz tea cozy from a chipped earthenware teapot, incongruous in the midst of a handsome silver tea service,. There were eggs in china cups, a plate of muffins dripping with butter, and a raisin cake.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, The Young Unicorns: Book Three of The Austin Family Chronicles