Madeleine L'Engle Quotes

I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.

The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.

Humans may or may not have cosmic significance, and if they do, it will be by hitching a ride on the objective centrality of knowledge in the cosmic scheme of things.

Nothing proves that we are more than nothing.

I was obsessed with religious questions, the basics: Why are we here? Why is the world so beautiful?

The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you.

We need God, not in order to understand the why, but in order to feel and sustain the ultimate wherefore, to give a meaning to the universe.

It is not in the world of ideas that life is lived. Life is lived for better or worse in life, and to a man in life, his life can be no more absurd than it can be the opposite of absurd, whatever that opposite may be.

I don't know why I'm alive but I know there's a reason for it.

I believe that we are all, openly or secretly, struggling against one or another kind of nihilism.

If you want to prove that God is not dead, first prove that man is alive.

The purpose of life is life.

I just want to do something that matters. Or be something that matters. I just want to matter.

If you do not believe in a personal God, the question: 'What is the purpose of life?' is unaskable and unanswerable.

Everybody dies. What matters is what you do between now and when it happens to you.

I continue to believe that this world has no ultimate meaning. But I know that something in it has a meaning and that is man, because he is the only creature to insist on having one

Man, made in the image of God, has a purpose - to be in relationship to God, who is there. Man forgets his purpose and thus he forgets who he is and what life means.

What is the meaning of human life, or, for that matter, of the life of any creature? To know the answer to this question means to be religious. You ask: Does it make any sense, then, to pose this question? I answer: The man who regards his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unhappy but hardly fit for life.

I don't know if I was put on this Earth for a purpose or not. But I'm fairly confident that I'll be taken off of it for one.

I'm just trying to matter.

Just because you're an atheist, that doesn't mean you wouldn't love for things to have reasons for why they are.

I don't think any of us really knows why we're here. But I think we're supposed to believe we're here for a purpose.

Strange is our situation here on Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men - above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends.

It's the wanting to know that makes us matter.