Sylvia Engdahl > Quotes

“The human mind is incredible. It can do nothing without belief, yet practically anything with it.”
― Sylvia Engdahl, Enchantress from the Stars

“People who love each other can no more keep from communicating than from breathing.”
― Sylvia Engdahl, Enchantress from the Stars

“Must a man then live as his fellows live, and never reach beyond?”
― Sylvia Engdahl, Enchantress from the Stars

“What is it, I wonder, that makes two people suddenly become important to each other? So important that everything else around them just fades away?”
― Sylvia Engdahl, Enchantress from the Stars

“There are different kinds of truth. And if our kind is more mature than theirs, it's so only because we know that.”
― Sylvia Engdahl, Enchantress from the Stars

“I know little of magic, Lady,' he said haltingly. 'I am but a woodcutter's son, and there is much that is not given to men to understand; but of this I am sure: there is more to things than we imagine. Beyond the stars are worlds without number, perhaps, and had I never sought to look beyond my own I should be the poorer for it.”
― Sylvia Engdahl, Enchantress from the Stars

“If nobody believed anything except what they understood, how limited we'd be.”
― Sylvia Engdahl

“But a light now waxed within him at the knowledge that such wonders as he had been shown could exist.”
― Sylvia Engdahl, Enchantress from the Stars

“It is the only happiness now possible to me, to know that all is well with you”
― Sylvia Engdahl, Enchantress from the Stars

“Wherever he went he would be a stranger, for there was no home in the world for such as he.”
― Sylvia Engdahl, This Star Shall Abide

“But as long as he kept on caring, nothing could touch the freedom of his inner thoughts.”
― Sylvia Engdahl, This Star Shall Abide

“It's not enough just to learn what there ISN'T; we need to know what there IS.”
― Sylvia Engdahl, This Star Shall Abide

“Fear isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's a natural result of aiming high.”
― Sylvia Engdahl, Enchantress from the Stars

“Why, if nobody believed anything except what they understood, how limited we'd be!”
― Sylvia Engdahl, Enchantress from the Stars

“I love you—oh, how terribly I love you—but I could not live in your world for more than a little time. The stars have a hold on me; I would miss them, and I—I would be torn in two, Georyn.”
― Sylvia Engdahl, Enchantress from the Stars

“If the price is high, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t worth paying. We’ve the freedom of the universe, and it’s a fascinating universe. You’ll see much that’s good, and you’ll never be faced with boredom. And there are great satisfactions. If we can save the people of this world from slavery, for instance”
― Sylvia Engdahl, Enchantress from the Stars

“The Oath concerns the future, not the past. You earn its Emblem not by your success in passing exams, but by your free acceptance of the responsibility an agent must carry, your consent to the ordeal of that responsibility.”
― Sylvia Engdahl, Enchantress from the Stars

“Awed, I asked, 'How could you possibly have known enough about Jarel to trust him?'
'I didn't. I trusted you.”
― Sylvia Engdahl, Enchantress from the Stars

“Yet if salvation of the world lay solely in old men’s caution, why would young people be born?”
― Sylvia Engdahl, Children of the Star: The Complete Trilogy

“The outcome of belief in magic can certainly surpass all hope...”
― Sylvia Engdahl, Enchantress from the Stars

“The questions you framed are unanswerable, and to be terrified by that is a sign not of weakness but of strength. A weak person wouldn’t have opened his mind to such terror.”
― Sylvia Engdahl, Children of the Star

“Technically he was right, Jarel knew. So why should it seem so important?”
― Sylvia Engdahl, Enchantress from the Stars

“Oath concerns the future, not the past. You earn its Emblem not by your success in passing exams, but by your free acceptance of the responsibility an agent must carry, your consent to the ordeal of that responsibility.” That”
― Sylvia Engdahl, Enchantress from the Stars

“Yet if they kept on, without knowing, then someday they might discover something totally new and significant just from having followed a different path, something Elana's people had missed. Thousands of years from now, the natives of this world might do the same!
If that was how it worked, then it was worth whatever sacrifice anybody had to make.”
― Sylvia Engdahl, Enchantress from the Stars

“It's like parents choosing to raise their own standard of living rather than to provide for the future of their kids. You wouldn't consider that very admirable would you?”
― Sylvia Engdahl, Journey Between Worlds

“Oh, but he thinks he can save the world by slaying a dragon! With the help of a magic spell!'
'And he must think that. If he ever stops thinking it, it will cease to be true.”
― Sylvia Engdahl, Enchantress from the Stars

“It's a lot more comfortable to live in a world where the rules still apply.”
― Sylvia Engdahl, Enchantress from the Stars