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"It's idiotic, it's crazy. If you die and then you're just nothing, there isn't any point to anything. Why do we live at all if we die and stop being? Father wasn't ready to be stopped. No one's ready to be stopped. We don't have *time* to be ready to be stopped. It's all crazy. . . . Look at my glasses. I can't even see that there are any stars in the sky without them, but it's not the glasses that are doing the seeing, it's me, Madeleine. I don't think Father's eyes are seeing now, but *he* is. And maybe his brain isn't thinking, but a brain's just something to think through, the way my glasses are something to see through."
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Exlpore more Philosophical quotes
"When your emotions are in motion, take a break and ponder!"
"The real you is not you, the real you is what is within you. What is behind your joy or your melancholy. What gives you the reason to ponder. What moves or stops you. What makes you you is you."
"If you want to know the real character of man, intentionally and timely give him the test of 3d's; delay, denial and disappointment."
"The real trouble with reality is that there is no background music."
"Family: a foundation! Family: a 'cloth' keeps the 'body'!"
"The greatest clue to changing people is to know and understand what trigger change in people and effectively apply such things in wisdom."
"No one is absolutely free from religion and philosophy, for the life we live is always under the influence of religion and philosophy!"
Explore more quotes by Madeleine L'Engle
"If the artist reflects only his own culture, then his works will die with that culture. But if his works reflect the eternal and universal, they will revive."
"I have advice for people who want to write. I don't care whether they're 5 or 500. There are three things that are important: First, if you want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you. Where you just put down what you think about life, what you think about things, what you think is fair and what you think is unfair. And second, you need to read. You can't be a writer if you're not a reader. It's the great writers who teach us how to write. The third thing is to write. Just write a little bit every day. Even if it's for only half an hour - write, write, write."
"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."
"Human beings are the only creatures who are allowed to fail. If an ant fails, it's dead. But we're allowed to learn from our mistakes and from our failures. And that's how I learn, by falling flat on my face and picking myself up and starting all over again."
"I am encouraged as I look at some of those who have listened to their "different drum": Einstein was hopeless at school math and commented wryly on his inadequacy in human relations. Winston Churchill was an abysmal failure in his early school years. Byron, that revolutionary student, had to compensate for a club foot; Demosthenes for a stutter; and Homer was blind. Socrates couldn't manage his wife, and infuriated his countrymen. And what about Jesus, if we need an ultimate example of failure with one's peers? Or an ultimate example of love?"
"Who makes you least confused?""Calvin" There was no hesitation here. "When I'm with Calvin, I don't mind being me""You mean he makes you more you, don't you?""I guess you could put it that way."
"As long as we know what it's about, then we can have the courage to go wherever we are asked to go, even if we fear that the road may take us through danger and pain."
"A book comes and says, "Write me." My job is to try to serve it to the best of my ability, which is never good enough, but all I can do is listen to it, do what it tells me and collaborate."
"We do learn and develop when we are exposed to those who are greater than we are. Perhaps this is the chief way we mature."
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