Jenna Dewey > Jenna's Quotes

“Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you.”
― Walt Whitman

“Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged. Missing me one place, search another. I stop somewhere waiting for you.”
― Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

“I am as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best. ”
― Walt Whitman

“Happiness, not in another place but this place...not for another hour, but this hour.”
― Walt Whitman

“I like the scientific spirit—the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine—it always keeps the way beyond open—always gives life, thought, affection, the whole man, a chance to try over again after a mistake—after a wrong guess.”
― Walt Whitman, Walt Whitman's Camden Conversations

“Do anything, but let it produce joy.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.”
― Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

“Pointing to another world will never stop vice among us; shedding light over this world can alone help us.”
― Walt Whitman

“A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God.”
― Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“If we commit ourselves to one person for life, this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather, it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession but participation.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“No long-term marriage is made easily, and there have been times when I've been so angry or so hurt that I thought my love would never recover. And then, in the midst of near despair, something has happened beneath the surface. A bright little flashing fish of hope has flicked silver fins and the water is bright and suddenly I am returned to a state of love again — till next time. I've learned that there will always be a next time, and that I will submerge in darkness and misery, but that I won't stay submerged. And each time something has been learned under the waters; something has been gained; and a new kind of love has grown. The best I can ask for is that this love, which has been built on countless failures, will continue to grow. I can say no more than that this is mystery, and gift, and that somehow or other, through grace, our failures can be redeemed and blessed.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“Some things have to be believed to be seen.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“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

“Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“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

“Just because we don't understand doesn't mean that the explanation doesn't exist.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“The unending paradox is that we do learn through pain.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“It might be a good idea if, like the White Queen, we practiced believing six impossible things every morning before breakfast, for we are called on to believe what to many people is impossible. Instead of rejoicing in this glorious "impossible" which gives meaning and dignity to our lives, we try to domesticate God, to make his might actions comprehensible to our finite minds.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“Don't try to comprehend with your mind. Your minds are very limited. Use your intuition.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wind in the Door

“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... This does not mean that I ought to be trapped or enclosed in any of these ages...the delayed adolescent, the childish adult, but that they are in me to be drawn on; to forget is a form of suicide... Far too many people misunderstand what *putting away childish things* means, and think that forgetting what it is like to think and feel and touch and smell and taste and see and hear like a three-year-old or a thirteen-year-old or a twenty-three-year-old means being grownup. When I'm with these people I, like the kids, feel that if this is what it means to be a grown-up, then I don't ever want to be one. Instead of which, if I can retain a child's awareness and joy, and *be* fifty-one, then I will really learn what it means to be grownup.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“The only way to cope with something deadly serious is to try to treat it a little lightly.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time: With Related Readings

“Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, The Summer of the Great-Grandmother

“I love, therefore I am vulnerable.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

“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, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

“Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“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

“But unless we are creators we are not fully alive. What do I mean by creators? Not only artists, whose acts of creation are the obvious ones of working with paint of clay or words. Creativity is a way of living life, no matter our vocation or how we earn our living. Creativity is not limited to the arts, or having some kind of important career.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water

“Humility is throwing oneself away in complete concentration on something or someone else.”
― Madeleine L'Engle