Madeleine L'Engle Quotes

The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.

This has been harder for my friends. I know I'm going to die.

I envy the dead.

I'm dying always.

Dying is a tough way to make a living.

Even if you live to be a ripe old age, you live long enough to see the people you love pass away.

I know what it's like to see one's mother go through the agony of death and be unable to help; there is no consolation. We all have to bear such heavy burdens, for they are unalterably linked to life.

But ah! what once has been shall be no more! The groaning earth in travail and in pain Brings forth its races, but does not restore, And the dead nations never rise again.

Sooner or later we all lose our loved ones. We all have to suffer, every last one of us.

And it was strange, I thought, that sorrow lasts and can make a man look forward to death, but the mood of victory fills a moment and then is over

Nothing begins, and nothing ends, That is not paid with moan; For we are born in others pain And perish in our own.

I was living my own future and my brother's lost one as well. I represented him here just as he represented me there, in some unguessable other place. His move from life to death might resemble my stepping into the kitchen - into its soft nowhere quality and foggy hum. I breathed the dark air. If I had at that moment a sense of calm kindly death while my heart beat and my lungs expanded, he might know a similar sense of life in the middle of his ongoing death.

When I am dead, my dearest, Sing no sad songs for me; Plant thou no roses at my head, Nor shady cypress tree: Be the green grass above me With showers and dewdrops wet: And if thou wilt, remember, And if thou wilt, forget. I shall not see the shadows, I shall not feel the rain; I shall not hear the nightingale Sing on as if in pain: And dreaming through the twilight That doth not rise nor set, Haply I may remember, And haply I may forget.

I'm here. Soon I won't be. Zoey's baby is here. Its pulse tick-ticking. Soon it won't be. And when Zoey comes out of that room, having signed on the dotted line, she'll be different. She'll understand what I already know- that death surrounds us all. And it tastes like metal between you teeth.

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?

All good things pass away.

All I kept thinking about, over and over, was 'You can't live forever; you can't live forever.

All that happens in the world of Nature or Man, - every war; every peace; every hour of prosperity; every hour of adversity; every election; every death ; every life; every success and every failure, - all change, - all permanence, - the perished leaf; the unutterable glory of stars, - all things speak truth to the thoughtful spirit.

It's easy to cry when you realize that everyone you love will reject you or die.

Death is the most sophisticated form of beauty, and the most difficult to accept.

Yes, she is." He looks at me, his face carved in pain. "She is dying, Sara. She will die, either tonight or tomorrow or maybe a year from now if we're really lucky. You heard what Dr. Chance said. Arsenic's not a cure. It just postpones what's coming." My eyes fill up with tears. "But I love her," I say, because that is reason enough.

I grieve for every death.

Look, whispered Chuck, and George lifted his eyes to heaven. (There is always a last time for everything.) Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.

In the end, living is defined by dying.