Madeleine L'Engle Quotes

Art is limited to the infinite, and beginning there cannot progress.

I want an infinitely blank book and the rest of time.

Think of the Earth as a turning point in eternity. Think of the Earth as a meeting point in infinity.

If painting is no longer needed, it seems a pity that some of us are born into the world with such a passion for line and color.

Beauty and art pervade all the business of life like a kindly genius, brightly adorning our surroundings whether interior or exterior, mitigating the seriousness of existence and the complexities of the real life, extinguishing idleness in an entertaining fashion, and, where there is nothing good to be achieved, filling the place of vice better than vice itself.

You are the artist and the art.

When I die I intend to take my music with me. I don't know what's out there, but I want to make sure it's in my key.

I want to be a work of art, at least in my soul, since I can’t be one in my body.

What a funny thing painting is. The abstract painters always insist on their connection with the visible reality, while the so called figurative artists insist that what they really care about, is the abstract qualities of life.

Art is the expression of a man's life, of his mode of being, of his relations with the universe, since it is, in fact, man's inarticulate answer to the universe's unspoken message.

It may be that until now there has been no more potent means for beautifying man himself than piety: it can turn man into so much art, surface, play of colors, graciousness that his sight no longer makes one suffer.---

The finest works of art are those in which there is the least matter. The closer expression comes to thought, the more the word clings to the idea and disappears, the more beautiful the work of art.

There was never a time when the world began, because it goes round and round like a circle, and there is no place on a circle where it begins. Look at my watch, which tells the time; it goes round, and so the world repeats itself again and again.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not. The best of beauty is a finer charm than skill in surfaces, in outlines, or rules of art can ever teach, namely, a radiation from the work of art of human character, — a wonderful expression through stone, or canvas, or musical sound, of the deepest and simplest attributes of our nature, and therefore most intelligible at last to those souls which have these attributes.

Art lifts man from his personal life into the universal life.

And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.

This beginning with Audacity, or being thrown into the middle of it, is already a very great part of the art of painting.

To me, beauty appears when one feels deeply, and art is an act of total attention.

You are both a work of art and an artist at work.

The greatest works of art speak to us without knowing us.

The virtue of art lies in detachment, in sequestering one object from the embarrassing variety. Until one thing comes out from theconnection of things, there can be enjoyment, contemplation, but no thought.

real art is religion, a search for the beauty of God deep in all things.

The personality is a work of art.

Eloquence is a painting of thought; and thus those who, after having painted it, add something more, make a picture instead of a portrait.