Creative scientists and saints expect revelation and do not fear it. Neither do children. But as we grow up and we are hurt, we learned not to trust.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of maintaining an open and trusting perspective towards inspiration and revelation, regardless of past experiences.
Madeleine L'Engle suggests that creative individuals, along with children, remain open to revelations and insights, which contrasts with adults who, often due to past hurts, develop a tendency to distrust such experiences. This reflection highlights how life experiences can hinder our ability to embrace new ideas and thoughts, advocating for a return to the openness of childhood.
In practice
During a motivational speech about overcoming past failures.
Truth is what is true, and it's not necessarily factual. Truth and fact are not the same thing. Truth does not contradict or deny facts, but it goes through and beyond facts. This is something that it is very difficult for some people to understand. Truth can be dangerous.
George MacDonald gives me renewed strength during times of trouble--times when I have seen people tempted to deny God--when he says, "The Son of God suffered unto death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like his.
If you don't recount your family history, it will be lost. Honor your own stories and tell them too. The tales may not seem very important, but they are what binds families and makes each of us who we are.
I never want to lose the story-loving child within me, or the adolescent, or the young woman, or the middle-aged one, because all together they help me to be fully alive on this journey, and show me that I must be willing to go where it takes me, even through the valley of the shadow.
The minute we begin to think we have all the answers, we forget the questions.
When we believe in the impossible, it becomes possible, and we can do all kinds of extraordinary things.
What you are as a person is far more important than what you are as a basketball player.
Do not follow vain desires; for verily he who prospers is preserved from lust, greed and anger.
Others may try to feed our ego, but it is up to us to constrain it.
Life is short, and the Art long; the occasion fleeting; experience fallacious, and judgment difficult. The physician must not only be prepared to do what is right himself, but also to make the patient, the attendants, and externals cooperate.
But there isn't any second half of myself waiting to plug in and make me whole. It's there. I'm already whole.
I compare myself with my former self, not with others. Not only that, I tend to compare my current self with the best I have been, which is when I have been midly manic. When I am my present "normal" self, I am far removed from when I have been my liveliest, most productive, most intense, most outgoing and effervescent. In sort, for myself, I am a hard act to follow.
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