Madeleine L'Engle Quotes

I don't believe anybody can really grasp everything that's even in one textbook.

Books say: she did this because. Life says: she did this. Books are where things are explained to you, life where things aren't.

I still haven’t figured it out completely.

It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things are

Just because we don't understand doesn't mean that the explanation doesn't exist.

I can explain this to you, but I cannot comprehend it for you.

I don't feel it incumbent on me to make sense of everything.

Whoever believes he knows why everything is as it is has hold of nothing.

I never am really satisfied that I understand anything; because, understand it well as I may, my comprehension can only be an infinitesimal fraction of all I want to understand about the many connections and relations which occur to me, how the matter in question was first thought of or arrived at, etc., etc.

Understanding sometimes is not enough to explain something.

The more one thinks, the more one feels the hopeless immensity of man's ignorance.

I scarcely know the meaning of your question; much less can I answer it.

Understanding that rests in what it does not understand is the finest.

Whenever we proceed from the known to the unkown we may hope to understand, but we may have to learn at the same time a new meaning of the word 'understanding'

Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't.

It's good to slowly come to the realization that you understand nothing.

I fear that if the matter is beyond humanity, it is certainly beyond me.

One of the reasons people might be fallible, why we might fail to do what we try to do isignorance, that we have a limited understanding of the laws of the world - the physical laws that govern the world and of all the particulars of the world upon which those laws work. And then there's ineptitude, meaning that the knowledge is available, but individuals fail to apply it correctly. The third source is "necessary fallibility." That is, we're never going to be omniscient, there is some knowledge that we will simply never achieve, and there are limits to what we will be able to do.

At a certain point the audience shouldn't worry about catching every word and understanding every twist and turn, because at a certain point that's pretty much impossible.

I know nothing, because I know too much, and understand not nearly enough and never will.

Answers are a perilous grip on the universe. They can appear sensible yet explain nothing.

Neither concepts nor mathematical formulae can explain the infinite.

Ignorance lies at the bottom of all human knowledge, and the deeper we penetrate, the nearer we arrive unto it.

Quid est ergo tempus? Si nemo ex me quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio. What, then, is time? I know well enough what it is, provided that nobodyasksme; but if Iamasked what it is and try to explain, I am baffled.

The fate of all explanation is to close one door only to have another fly wide open.