Madeleine L'Engle Quotes

Holding onto something that's gone only makes a sickness inside.

How well we have learned to let go

Hold on to the love, not the loss.

Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.

Everything we love goes. So to be able to grieve that loss, to let go, to have that grief be absolutely full, is the only way to have our heart be full and open.

There ain't no way you can hold onto something that wants to go, you understand? You can only love what you got while you got it.

No need to be sentimental to mourn the loss of Paradise.

Come not, when I am dead, To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave, To trample round my fallen head, And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save. There let the wind sweep and the plover cry; But thou, go by. Child, if it were thine error or thy crime I care no longer, being all unblest; Wed whom thou wilt, but I am sick of Time, And I desire to rest. Pass on, weak heart, and leave me where I lie: Go by, go by.

He cried that night for all that he had lost, but he would say it taught him a valuable lesson: that holding on to things "will only break your heart.

I can only hold on to the things I want to lose.

Until you can let go of everything, you will find it hard to hold onto anything.

The more you cling to things, The more you love them, The more the pain you suffer, When they're taken from you.

Never say of anything I have lost it, only say that I have given it back.

Who has choices need not choose. We must, who have none. We can love but what we lose-- What is gone is gone.

I knew it in my bones. That this time was it. I had finally made my choice, and so had he. He let me go. I was relieved, which I expected. What I didn't expect was to feel so much grief.

holding tight, denying the fact that eventually we all had to let go.

The art is not one of forgetting but letting go. And when everything else is gone, you can be rich in loss.

Forgiveness has its comforts, but it can never give you back what you've lost.

Since grief only aggravates your loss, grieve not for what is past.

If our hearts are ready for anything, we can open to our inevitable losses, and to the depths of our sorrow. We can grieve our lost loves, our lost youth, our lost health, our lost capacities. This is part of our humanness, part of the expression of our love for life.

If you try to hold on to something you don't have anymore, you can't be happy in the moment.

So how can you lose what you've never owned?

Never love something so much that you can't let go of it.

My choices are rejections, since there is no other way, but what I reject is more numerous, denser, more demanding than before. A little poem, a sigh, at the cost of indescribable losses.

If I learned anything in this life, I've learned that you can't cling on.