FastSaying

At the steamy train station
in New Orleans, horrifying signs
above drinking fountains
announce:
COLORED.
WHITE.

Confused, I drink out of both.
Why should it matter if a stream
of coo, refreshing water
pours
into
my
mouth
or
another?


Margarita Engle

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People are not an interruption of our business. People are our business.
A man's worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes.
It is hard to look up to a leader who keeps his ear to the ground.
The most wasted day of all is that in which we have not laughed.
The more intelligent a man is, the more originality he discovers in men. Ordinary people see no diff...
The intelligence is proved not by ease of learning, but by understanding what we learn.
Communication is something so simple and difficult that we can never put it in simple words.
Like threads of silver seen through crystal beads
Let love through good deeds show.
How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.
In everyone's heart stirs a great homesickness.
That is the supreme value of history. The study of it is the best guarantee against repeating it.
Our wisdom comes usually from our experience, and our experience comes largely from our experience.
One thing about the school of experience is that it will repeat the lesson if you flunk the first ti...
To reprove small faults within due vehemence, is as absurd as if a man should take a great hammer to...
Faith is like electricity. You can't see it, but you can see the light.
Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it by the handle of anxiety, or by the handle of...
Some families can trace their ancestors back three hundred years, but can't tell you where their chi...
A recent survey was said to prove that the people we Americans most admire are our politicians and d...
If a man defrauds you one time, he is a rascal; if he does it twice, you are a fool.
Flattery looks like friendship, just like a wolf looks like a dog.
Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
Courage is always greatest when blended with meekness; intellectual ability is most admired when it ...
Freedom also includes the right to mismanage your own affairs.
Let your friends be the friends of your deliberate choice.
The man who has strong opinions and always says what he thinks is courageous - and friendless.
Friendship is love with understanding.
So few people think. When we find one who really does, we call him a genius
Your life can't go according to plan if you have no plan.
Practicing the Golden Rule is not a sacrifice; it is an investment.
Conversation is an exercise of the mind; gossip is merely an exercise of the tongue.
An expert gossiper knows how much to leave out of a conversation
To live so that you would not be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip, is to have li...
Gossip is sometimes referred to as halitosis of the mind
If you would attain greatness, think no little thoughts.
We are born brave, trusting and greedy, and most of us remain greedy.
People are changed, not by coercion or intimidation, but by example.
Children are natural mimics; they act like their parents in spite of every effort to teach them good...
The guilty catch themselves.
Good habits are formed; bad habits we fall into.
If happiness could be brought, few of us could pay the price.
Happiness will never come to those who fail to appreciate what they already have.
Happiness is in the heart, not in the circumstances.
It's never too late to have a happy childhood.
Hatred is a boomerang which is sure to hit you harder than the one at whom you throw it.
Hate pollutes the mind.
If we miraculously became the people we hate, how lovable we would find ourselves.
To feel "fit as a fiddle" you must tone down your middle.
Our health always seems much more valuable after we lose it.
A patient going to a doctor for his first visit was asked, "And whom did you consult before coming t...
"Oh," replied his patient, with no malice aforethought, "he told me to come and see you."
It is impossible to make wisdom hereditary.
Honesty is a question of right or wrong, not a matter of policy.
It is a pleasure to give advice, humiliating to need it, normal to ignore it.
It is almost impossible to smile on the outside without feeling better on the inside.
Too many people confine their exercise to jumping to conclusions, running up bills, stretching the t...
Imagination was given man to compensate for what he is not, and a sense of humor to console him for ...
Humor - the perfect relationship of the parts to the whole.
Our five senses are incomplete without the sixth - a sense of humor.
"What made the deepest impression upon you?" inquired a friend one day of Lincoln, "when you stood i...
It isn't easy for an idea to squeeze itself into a head filled with prejudice.
Too many people run out of ideas long before they run out of words.
Imagination is the pontoon bridge making way for the timid feet of reason.
Practical observation commonly consists of collecting a few facts and loading them with guesses.
Friendship is a living thing that lasts only as long as it is nourished with kindness, empathy and u...
Having supplied them with names, omnipotence, justice, knowledge, Providence, - what are they?
A good laugh is sunshine in a house.
When you laugh, be sure to laugh at what people do and not at what people are.
One look around us ought to show that all our arbitrary measures and bounds have been clamped on us ...
No punishment of the unrighteous has ever been too severe in the eyes of the righteous.
Why keep on enacting laws when we already have more than we can break.
The best leader is the one who has the sense to surround himself with outstanding people and self-re...
Advice is the only commodity on the market where the supply always exceeds the demand.
Successful men follow the same advice they prescribe for others.
You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in contact with a new idea
Old age may seem a long way off. But on the day it doesn't, it will be too late to do anything about...
Age withers only the outside.
Where ambition ends happiness begins.
The best answer to answer to anger is silence.
The size of a man is measured by the size of the thing that makes him angry.
A lot of good arguments are spoiled by some fool who knows what he is talking about.
People who know the least always argue the most.
If you look for the positive things in life; you will find them.
What we are doing at the moment is more that just one thing added to the rest; it is a memoir.
Behavior is what a man does, not what he thinks, feels, or believes
The human mind must believe in something, so why not let it believe what it does believe.
He that boasts of his own knowledge proclaims his ignorance
It is better to live richly than to die rich.
On his examination paper a boy wrote, "A natural death is where you die by yourself without a doctor...
Many things are worse than defeat,and compromise with evil is one of them.
Desire for security keeps littleness little and threatens the great with smallness.
We cannot be too earnest, too persistent, too determined, about living superior to the herd-instinct...
A college education never hurt anybody who was willing to learn after he got it.
Shortchange your education now and you may be short of change the rest of your life.
Mistakes are a great educator when one is honest enough to admit them and willing to learn from them
Catch your people doing something right and let them know you appreciate it.
Create the kind of climate in your organization where personal growth is expected, recognized and re...
Enthusiasm is very good lubrication for the mind.
Enthusiasm is that kindling spark which marks the difference between the leaders in every activity a...
There are many roads to hate, but envy is the shortest of them all.
The only person worth envying is he person who doesn't envy.

More Margarita Engle

It's a sight I plan to remember, this spontaneous unity when faced with disaster.
MARGARITA ENGLE Seventh grade. Eleven years old. A bookworm-misfit with long black braids, childish white socks, poi...
MARGARITA ENGLE The whole world's safety depends on the words of two men who are enemies.
MARGARITA ENGLE Books are enchanted. Books help me travel. Books help me breathe.
MARGARITA ENGLE Is there any way that two people from faraway places can ever really understand each other's daydrem...
MARGARITA ENGLE Slavery all day,
and then, suddenly, by nightfall- freedom!
MARGARITA ENGLE I can't understand
why dark northern soldiers
and light ones
are seperated into di...
MARGARITA ENGLE Kyle is a good athlete with good speed and he has worked hard in the off-season. Pat has excellent s...
JOHN MARGARITA I'm not an insecure person, per se, but I just never saw myself as the girl who walks into a pla...
MARGARITA LEVIEVA We were afraid a fight was going to start. She was flirting with him.
MARGARITA CHAVES Over 90 percent of embezzlement is not found by internal auditors, but found by whistleblowers. The ...
MARGARITA LENK We do not want terrorists or drug dealers crossing the frontier, either. We have to look for a way t...
MARGARITA ROMO To embellish reality with makeup, with silk and royal purple, isn’t that what we all should be doi...
MARGARITA KARAPANOU a great advocate for social justice . . . she fights for affordable housing, civil rights and econom...
MARGARITA LOPEZ 'The room service is what saved us,' I remember him really going on about that. We were kind of shoc...
MARGARITA CHAVES They don't want for food, clothes or shoes.
MARGARITA CARRILLO You have to have money to bus your kids for high school. It would be like going to Cedar Rapids for ...
MARGARITA CARRILLO The Irish veterinary service has confirmed the beef is around 20 years old.
MARGARITA KOZHUHAROVA They're like the internal police or support group. They're consultants before the external auditors ...
MARGARITA LENK A failure in the pump's electricity circuit support system caused the switch-off of the major coolan...
MARGARITA KOZHUHAROVA To produce this kind of candy is sickening. This is targeted to children.
MARGARITA LOPEZ How could we go into market and create a product for children that encourages them to taste the tast...
MARGARITA LOPEZ We talk about affordable housing in this campaign year, ... but we don't act.
MARGARITA LOPEZ I think there's a lot of stuff going out there that isn't really real. I think what happened is peop...
MARGARITA ROMO Who's going to decide that they know enough to get their kids back? There's no way that you can tran...
MARGARITA ROMO We are leaving that up to the individual. This is a national movement, and each organization has dif...
MARGARITA SOLORZANO There is nothing locally that we have issues with. There is a mobilization going on all over the nat...
MARGARITA SOLORZANO Even the shy kids who aren't very open can listen to the other kids and learn.
MARGARITA SOLORZANO We will mainly have Russian news, but we will also show international events and express them from o...
MARGARITA SIMONYAN Today, we're beginning the technical broadcast, but we don't want to give a definite date for the fu...
MARGARITA SIMONYAN We're going to do international news and are trying to do a Russian angle on them, trying to show wh...
MARGARITA SIMONYAN I don't think it would make much sense if they did. It is pretty obvious when you censor it.
MARGARITA SIMONYAN I can still remember the feel in my hand of that most wonderful American coin ever minted, a nickel ...
PAUL ENGLE Our small ears never had such a workout as on the Fourth of July, hearing not only our own bursting ...
PAUL ENGLE Verse is not written, it is bled; Out of the poet's abstract head. Words drip the poem on the pa...
PAUL ENGLE Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tou...
PAUL ENGLE I have lectured at Town Hall N.Y., The Library of Congress, Harvard, Yale, Amherst, Wellesley, Colum...
PAUL ENGLE The sharpest memory of our old-fashioned Christmas eve is my mother's hand making sure I was set...
PAUL ENGLE Contrary to slanderous Eastern opinion, much of Iowa is not flat, but rolling hills country with a l...
PAUL ENGLE I began to write poetry in high school, and would ride miles over sandy roads in the fine hills arou...
PAUL ENGLE Every Christmas should begin with the sound of bells, and when I was a child mine always did. But th...
PAUL ENGLE A barn with cattle and horses is the place to begin Christmas; after all, that's where the origi...
PAUL ENGLE Verse is not written, it is bled; Out of the poet's abstract head. Words drip the poem on the page; ...
PAUL ENGLE Soldiers of the American Revolution fought that 18th century war with heavy muskets. In the early 20...
PAUL ENGLE We just wanted to say thank you very much. Above all else, we had so much fun. I'm glad (so many peo...
BRITTANY ENGLE I know going into the locker room I was so frustrated. I struggled shooting against Walpole and I co...
BRITTANY ENGLE This is our last chance. There's a sense of urgency.
BRITTANY ENGLE Our chemistry is definitely the key. It seems we're on the same page. We pass well because we've pla...
BRITTANY ENGLE But maybe it's up in the hills under the leaves or in a ditch somewhere. Maybe it's never fo...
PAUL ENGLE All families had their special Christmas food. Ours was called Dutch Bread, made from a dough halfwa...
PAUL ENGLE The years rolled their brutal course down the hill of time. Still poor, my clothes still smelling of...
PAUL ENGLE Without vision you don't see, and without practicality the bills don't get paid.
PAUL ENGLE Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded ...
PAUL ENGLE Touch was important. The evening of the Third of July we would go around the neighborhood and look a...
PAUL ENGLE I had been warned about Jews by my gentile friends - they did terrible things with knives to boys.
PAUL ENGLE You come to know the aches and vanities and tastes and intrigues of an entire neighborhood at a drug...
PAUL ENGLE For my Oxford degree, I had to translate French and German philosophy (as it turned out, Descartes a...
PAUL ENGLE It?s kind of sad, but it is time to close the store. It?s very sad for both of us because it?s been ...
ALICE ENGLE Many jurisdictions still do not prosecute these cases without medical evidence. The evidence is not ...
BEVERLY ENGLE The corncob was the central object of my life. My father was a horse handler, first trotting and pac...
PAUL ENGLE It amazes me all the people with different expertise, what it takes to make things happen.
BEVERLY ENGLE The minute people walk in the door, it's amazing to watch the expression on their faces. They're put...
BEVERLY ENGLE The rate at which this technology has been adopted is remarkable, the fastest I have ever seen in th...
BARRY ENGLE I have never seen an automotive technology with that fast an adoption rate.
BARRY ENGLE Everyone talks about alternative fuels, but we're doing it.
BARRY ENGLE Everything from roofs to hurricane panels and hurricane shutters and windows to generators and scree...
TODD ENGLE The wind actually caused the vehicle to twist and I lost it. I turned around and ended up in the dit...
MIKE ENGLE I have published in 'The New Yorker,' 'Holiday,' 'Life,' 'Mademoiselle,&...
PAUL ENGLE Before Elijah could raise a nation from the dead, he raised just one dead child.
LOU ENGLE We knew we were going to have to play well to win. At our drawing, I thought about going in the uppe...
TODD ENGLE It was very big to get that win and something we kind of played off. I felt no matter what happened ...
TODD ENGLE I think this is a team that we match up with pretty well when it comes to height. I think Abby (Nola...
TODD ENGLE If you fumble the ball on the 15-yard line (sic), the other team's going to score. It's just that si...
PAT ENGLE You can't give up 28 points in the first five minutes (sic). Ultimately with a lot of teams, speed i...
PAT ENGLE I would spend entire days there as a kid.
GUS ENGLE Wisdom is knowing when you can't be wise.
PAUL ENGLE We've had killer courses the last couple of weeks; I thought it was kind of nice when I walked it.
MARGIE ENGLE He's got a lot of scope and he's got a lot of heart.
MARGIE ENGLE That I can learn to trust You,
And every way to love You;
Strip away all that remains,
F...
JOEL ENGLE It's a hardship for people who have to take a day off from work and aren't compensated.
SEN. MARGARITA PRENTICE Sure, it's essential I believe because it is one of these economic stimulants. There are so many are...
SEN. MARGARITA PRENTICE We'll have to shave down some requests. But we're really not too far from wrapping it up.
SEN. MARGARITA PRENTICE Why not put a tax on carbon emissions. It would raise a lot of money, it would reduce the environmen...
ROBERT F. ENGLE If the Chinese economy can be opened so that currencies are convertible, Chinese tourists can take m...
ROBERT F. ENGLE My mother says that my father truly enjoyed having a son. My two-years-younger twin sisters felt tha...
ROBERT F. ENGLE When I am skating, economics is far away. I always return refreshed and ready to carry on.
ROBERT F. ENGLE I was convinced that the trading frequency measured a fundamental heartbeat of financial markets. Cl...
ROBERT F. ENGLE There are some risks we choose to take because the benefits from taking them exceed the possible cos...
ROBERT F. ENGLE It's like a slurpee for yuppies.
A NON-ALCHOHOLIC MARGARITA Oh child, your language is so utterly simple and limited that it has the affect of extreme complicat...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding un...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE Some things have to be believed to be seen.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE Because to take away a man's freedom of choice, even his freedom to make the wrong choice, is to man...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE Part of doing something is listening. We are listening. To the sun. To the stars. To the wind.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE I don't know if they're really like everybody else, or if they're able to pretend they are.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: You're given the form, bu...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE A great ring of pure & endless light
Dazzles the darkness in my heart
And breaks apart...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE If we commit ourselves to one person for life, this is not, as many people think, a rejection of fre...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE In a very real sense not one of us is qualified, but it seems that God continually chooses the most ...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE The unending paradox is that we do learn through pain.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE A truly great work of art breaks beyond the bounds of the period and culture in which it is created,...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE In the literary world today, Christianity has pretty well replaced sex as the present pet taboo, not...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE We look not at the things which are what you would call seen, but at the things which are not seen. ...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE Just because we don't understand doesn't mean that the explanation doesn't exist.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE A self is not something static, tied up in a pretty parcel and handed to the child, finished and com...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE Creative scientists and saints expect revelation and do not fear it. Neither do children. But as we ...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable....
MADELEINE L'ENGLE I have advice for people who want to write. I don't care whether they're 5 or 500. There are three t...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE No long-term marriage is made easily, and there have been times when I've been so angry or so hurt t...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE But unless we are creators we are not fully alive. What do I mean by creators? Not only artists, who...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE I love, therefore I am vulnerable.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than w...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE I will have nothing to do with a God who cares only occasionally. I need a God who is with us always...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE People are more than just the way they look.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE It might be a good idea if, like the White Queen, we practiced believing six impossible things every...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE We all tend to make zealous judgments and thereby close ourselves off from revelation. If we feel th...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE Don't try to comprehend with your mind. Your minds are very limited. Use your intuition.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE The artist is a servant who is willing to be a birthgiver. In a very real sense the artist (male or ...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE I do not know everything; still many things I understand.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE We can't take any credit for our talents. It's how we use them that counts.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE Qui plussait, plus se tait. French, you know. The more a man knows, the less he talks.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE We think because we have words, not the other way around. The more words we have, the better able we...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE I Name you Echthroi. I Name you Meg.
I Name you Calvin.
I Name you Mr. Jenkins.
I Nam...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE We live by revelation, as Christians, as artists, which means we must be careful never to get set in...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE I didn't mean to tell you," Mrs. Whatsit faltered. "I didn't mean ever to let you know. But oh, my d...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE Love of music, of sunsets and sea; a liking for the same kind of people; political opinions that are...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE We can surely no longer pretend that our children are growing up into a peaceful, secure, and civili...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE the discoveries don't come when you're looking for them. They come when for some reason you've let g...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE The peculiar idea that bigger is better has been around for at least as long as I have, and it's alw...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE God promised to make you free. He never promised to make you independent.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE One of the most pusillanimous things we of the female sex have done throughout the centuries is to h...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created, ...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE Jesus was more forgiving to those who made mistakes in love than to those who judged each other hars...
MADELINE L'ENGLE When I start a new seminar I tell my students that I will undoubtedly contradict myself, and that I ...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE As Emmanuel, Cardinal Suhard says, "To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda, nor ...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE Basically there can be no categories such as 'religious' art and 'secular' art, because all true art...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred, and that is one of the deepest messages of the...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE Jesus, who comes across in the Gospels as extraordinarily strong, begged in the garden, with drops o...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE Growing up is a process that never ends. It isn't a point you attain so you can say, Hooray, I'm gro...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE Maybe that's the best part of going away for a vacation-coming home again.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers. To define everything is to annihilate muc...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE A straight line is not the shortest distance between two points.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE In my dreams, I never have an age.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE It is ... through the world of the imagination which takes us beyond the restrictions of provable fa...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE You cannot see the past that did not happen any more than you can foresee the future.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE The discipline of creation, be it to paint, compose, write, is an effort towards wholeness.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE Western man has tried for too many centuries to fool himself that he lives in a rational world. No. ...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE But there is something about Time. The sun rises and sets. The stars swing slowly across the sky and...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE Calvin said, "Do you know that this is the first time I've seen you without your glasses?"

MADELEINE L'ENGLE Think of the person you love the most in the world. Do you really see them visually? Or don't you se...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE For an artist is not a consumer, as our commercials urge us to be. An artist is a nourisher and a cr...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE If it can be verified, we don't need faith... Faith is for that which lies on the other side of reas...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE I am still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child, I am always a child. Because I wa...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE Our country in general assumes that "the pursuit of happiness" really means "the pursuit of pleasure...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE Stories are like children. They grow in their own way.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE The foolish of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of god is stronger than men. For ye see your ...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE Human beings are the only creatures who are allowed to fail. If an ant fails, it's dead. But we're a...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE It was a star," Mrs. Whatsit said sadly. "A star giving up its life in battle with the Thing. It won...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE The well-intentioned mothers who don't want their children polluted by fairy tales would not only de...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE When we lose our myths we lose our place in the universe.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE Come t'e' picciol fallo amaro morso! Dante. What grievous pain a little fault doth give thee!
MADELEINE L'ENGLE Ridicule is a terrible witherer of the flower of imagination. It binds us where we should be free.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE Ridicule is a terrible witherer of the flower of the imagination. It binds us where we should be fre...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE You mean you're comparing our lives to a sonnet? A strict form, but freedom within it? Yes. Mrs. Wha...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE Thinking I'm a moron gives people something to feel smug about," Charles Wallace said. "Why should I...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE when I’m mad I don’t have room to be scared.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE There will no longer be so many pleasant things to look at if responsible people do not do something...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE You see, though we travel together, we travel alone.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE Experiment is the mother of knowledge.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE Believing takes practice.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE Our story is never written in isolation. We do not act in a one-man play. We can do nothing that doe...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE At Tara in this fateful hour,
I place all Heaven with its power,
And the sun with its brig...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE A winter ago I had an after-school seminar for high-school students and in one of the early sessions...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE Two people whose opinion I respect told me that the word "Christian" would turn people off. This cer...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE