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A Circle of Quiet

Book by Madeleine L'Engle · 50 quotes · Children, Art, Humans

This book is a reflective and introspective journey that delves into the author's personal experiences and observations, focusing on the beauty of simplicity and the importance of spiritual reflection in daily life.

Book detail: A Circle of Quiet is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.

This book is a reflective and introspective journey that delves into the author's personal experiences and observations, focusing on the beauty of simplicity and the importance of spiritual reflection in daily life.

The quotes below use the same card format as the rest of the site, including topics, source notes, copy actions, image creation, and sharing controls.

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All Children Art Humans Real Thinking Compassion Ifs Imagination Mind Way Artist Believe Contradiction Creation Creativity Doe Enough Facts Giving Mean

A Circle of Quiet Quotes

“Give the public the 'image' of what it thinks it ought to be, or what television commercials or glossy magazine ads have convinced us we ought to be, and we will buy more of the product, become closer to the image, and further from reality.”

Thinking Giving Reality Television Products Ought Convinced Magazines Ads Consumerism Overconsumption Television Commercials

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“The medieval mystics say the true image and the true real met once and for all on the cross: once and for all: and yet they still meet daily.”

Stills Real Mets Crosses Medieval

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“The rational intellect doesn't have a great deal to do with love, and it doesn't have a great deal to do with art. I am often, in my writing, great leaps ahead of where I am in my thinking, and my thinking has to work its way slowly up to what the "superconscious" has already shown me in a story or poem.”

Thinking Way Writing Art Stories Deals Intellect Rational Leap

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“Detachment and involvement: the artist must have both. The link between them is compassion. It has taken me over fifty years to get a glimmer of what this means.”

Years Mean Artist Compassion Taken Fifty Links Involvement Detachment

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“We do live, all of us, on many different levels, and for most artists the world of imagination is more real than the world of the kitchen sink.”

World Different Real Artist Imagination Levels Kitchen Different Levels Kitchen Sinks

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“A great piece of literature does not try to coerce you to believe it or agree with it. A great piece of literature simply is . It is a vehicle of truth, but it is not a blueprint, and we tend to confuse the two.”

Trying Believe Doe Two Literature Pieces Agree Vehicle Blueprints Coerce

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“All real art is, in its true sense, religious; it is a religious impulse; there is no such thing as a non-religious subject. But much bad or downright sacrilegious art depicts so-called religious subjects.”

Art Real Religious Subjects Art Is Impulse Sacrilegious Non Religious

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“The concentration of a small child at play is analogous to the concentration of the artist of any discipline. In real play, which is real concentration, the child is not only outside time, he is outside himself.”

Children Real Play Artist Focus Discipline Concentration Small Child

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“The primary needs can be filled without language. We can eat, sleep, make love, build a house, bear children, without language. But we cannot ask questions. We cannot ask, 'Who am I? Who are you? Why?”

Needs Children Asks House Language Sleep Bears Filled Primaries Making Love

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“To refuse to respond is in itself a response.”

Silence Response Refuse

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“I can't think of one great human being in the arts, or in history generally, who conformed, who succeeded, as education experts tell us children must succeed, with his peer group.”

Thinking Humans Children Art I Can Success Human Beings Groups Succeed Experts Peers Peer Group

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“During the long drag of years before our youngest child went to school, my love for my family and my need to write were in acute conflict. The problem was really that I put two things first. My husband and children came first. So did my writing. Bump.”

Needs Writing Years Firsts Children Long Two Problem School Husband Conflict My Family Two Things My Husband Drag Bumps Youngest Child

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“Art is not a mirror but an icon. It takes the chaos in which we live and shows us structure and pattern, not the structure of conformity which imprisons but the structure which liberates, sets us free to become growing, mature human beings.”

Humans Art Shows Human Beings Growing Art Is Mirrors Structure Chaos Patterns Mature Conformity Icons

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“The deeper and richer a personality is, the more full it is of paradox and contradiction. It is only a shallow character who offers us no problems of contrast.”

Character Problem Personality Offers Deeper Contradiction Paradox Contrast Shallow No Problem

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“You've got to accept the fact that you are basically not teaching a subject, you are teaching children”

Children Facts Accepting Teaching Subjects Teaching Children

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“The creative impulse can be killed, but it cannot be taught. What a teacher can do... in working with children, is to give the flame enough oxygen so that it can burn. As far as I'm concerned, this providing of oxygen is one of the noblest of all vocations.”

Giving Children Enough Can Do Creative Teacher Taught Concerned Impulse Flames Providing Vocation Oxygen Working With Children

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“If our language is watered down, then mankind becomes less human, and less free.”

Ifs Humans Language Mankind

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“I like the fact that in ancient Chinese art the great painters always included a deliberate flaw in their work: human creation is never perfect.”

Humans Art Facts Perfect Creativity Creation Ancient Painter Chinese Flaws Deliberate Chinese Art

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“If I sit for a while, then my impatience, crossness, frustration, are indeed annihilated, and my sense of humor returns.”

Ifs Return Frustration Sense Of Humor Impatience

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“Death is contagious; it is contracted the moment we are conceived.”

Moments Contagious

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“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.”

Light Evil Darkness Add Indifference Surround Candle

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“It was a dark and stormy night.”

Night Dark Intervals Stormy Wrinkle In Time Snoopy Stormy Nights

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“One cannot be humble and aware of oneself at the same time.”

Inspiring Humility Oneself Humble Be Humble

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“An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers. To define everything is to annihilate much that gives us laughter and joy.”

Giving Joy Answers Laughing Laughter Infinite Destroyed Finite Laughter And Joy

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“We turn to stories and pictures and music because they show us who and what and why we are.”

Stories Shows Turns

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“Like all great fantasists, he has taught me about life, life in eternity rather than chronology, life in that time in which we are real.”

Real Taught Eternity Chronology

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“It is ... through the world of the imagination which takes us beyond the restrictions of provable fact, that we touch the hem of truth.”

World Facts Imagination Restriction Hem

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“anything that stretches the mind is a help to the potential author.”

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“Man is; it matters to him; this is terrifying unless it matters to God, too, because this is the only possible reason we can matter to ourselves.”

Men Matter Reason

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“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 use all the way.”

Thinking Way Mind Mean Use Acceptance Students Excuse Acknowledge Contradiction No Excuses Fuzzy Seminars

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“But where, after we have made the great decision to leave the security of childhood and move on into the vastness of maturity, does anybody ever feel completely at home?”

Feels Doe Made Home Moving Decision Childhood Security Maturity Vastness

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“And joy is always a promise.”

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“I knew that the moment I started worrying about whether or not I was good enough for the job, I wouldn't be able to do it.”

Enough Moments Able Jobs Worry Good Enough

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“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.”

People Thinking Way Writing Believe Ideas Done Character Used Certain Courses I Believe Finals Behave Devices Exam Adjectives Chaucer Final Exams

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“our country in general assumes that "the pursuit of happiness" really means "the pursuit of pleasure" and that therefore pleasure is the greatest good.”

Mean Country Pleasure Assuming Pursuit Our Country Pursuit Of Happiness Really Mean

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“If it's not good enough for adults, it's not good enough for children. If a book that is going to be marketed for children does not interest me, a grownup, then I am dishonoring the children for whom the book is intended, and I am dishonoring books. And words.”

Ifs Children Doe Book Enough Interest Adults Good Enough Not Good Enough Grownups

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“Love can't be pinned down by a definition, and it certainly can't be proved, any more than anything else important in life can be proved.”

Important Definitions

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“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.”

Children Self Becoming Finished Tied Static Parcel Tied Up

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“What is self-image? Who started talking about one? I rather fancy it was Madison Avenue.”

Self Business Talking Fancy Avenues Madison Madison Avenue

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“A great painting or symphony or play, doesn't diminish us, but enlarges us, and we, too, want to make our own cry of affirmation to the power of Creation behind the Universe.”

Want Play Dream Universe Behinds Cry Creation Painting Affirmation Diminish Symphony

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“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.”

Children Has Beens Stills Age Given Mood Ecstasy

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“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?”

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“We do have to use our minds as far as they will take us, yet acknowledging that they cannot take us all the way.”

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“It is an extraordinary and beautiful thing that God, in creation. . . works with the beauty of matter; the reality of things; the discoveries of the senses, all five of them; so that we, in turn, may hear the grass growing; see a face springing to life in love and laughter. . . The offerings of creation. . . our glimpses of truth.”

May Matter Reality Beautiful Faces Turns Five Growing Awareness Creation Laughter Discovery Extraordinary Senses Grass Offering Beautiful Things Glimpse Love And Laughter Grass Growing

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“It strikes me as somewhat odd that the people who use God's name most frequently, both in life and in literature, usually don't believe in him.”

People Believe God Use Literature Names Don't Believe Strikes Odd

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“When we are self-conscious, we cannot be wholly aware; we must throw ourselves out first. This throwing ourselves away is the act of creativity.”

Firsts Self Creativity Conscious Throwing Self Conscious

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“I heard a doctor say that the living tend to withdraw emotionally from the dying, thereby driving them deeper into isolation. Not to withdraw takes tremendous strength. To pull back is a temptation; it doesn't hurt nearly as much as remaining open.”

Dying Strength Emotions Isolation Openness Withdrawal

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“Children are less easily frightened than we are.... they all understand princesses, of course. Haven't they all been badly bruised by peas?”

Children Fear Understanding Imagination Creativity Princesses

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“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.”

Mind Wisdom Imagination Brain Intellect Contradiction

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“I don’t go along with the people who say they’d never want to live their childhoods again; I treasure every bit of mine, all the pains as well as the joy of discovery. But I also love being a grownup. To be half a century plus is wonderfully exciting, because I haven’t lost any of my past, and am free to stand on the rock of all that the past has taught me as I look towards the future.”

Childhood Lessons Life And Living

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Madeleine L'EngleBrowse author quotes

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