Ursula K. Le Guin quotes - page 10

We may suffer for it when the balance of things rights itself, but we do not lose hope and forego art and forget the words of the Making. Nature is not unnatural. This is not a righting of the balance, but an upsetting of it. There is only one creature who can do that.” "A man?” Arren said, tentative. "We men.” "How?” "By an unmeasured desire for life.” "For life? But it isn't wrong to want to live?” "No. But when we crave power over life-endless wealth, unassailable safety, immortality-then desire becomes greed. And if knowledge allies itself to that greed, then comes evil. Then the balance of the world is swayed, and ruin weighs heavy in the scale. (Ursula K. Le Guin)
I forgot, being too interested myself, that he's a king, and does not see things rationally, but as a king. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
It seemed, at least, that they had not taught the boy to lie. But they had not taught him to know truth from lies. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
Why are you always so full of answers?” "Because life's so full of questions. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
No, I don't understand him, but he is worth listening to. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
A dark hand had let go its lifelong hold upon her heart. But she did not feel joy, as she had in the mountains. She put her head down in her arms and cried, and her cheeks were salt and wet. She cried for the waste of her years in bondage to a useless evil. She wept in pain, because she was free. What she had begun to learn was the weight of liberty. Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
As we did without clergy, let us do without soldiers. The joy built upon successful slaughter is not the right kind of joy; it will not do; it is fearful and it is trivial. A boundless and generous contentment, a magnanimous triumph felt not against some outer enemy but in communion with the finest and fairest in the souls of all men everywhere and the splendor of the world's summer: this is what swells the hearts of the people of Omelas, and the victory they celebrate is that of life. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
The High-Intelligence Life Forms of the planet, of which there were at least three species, all of low technological achievement, they would ignore or enslave or extirpate, whichever was most convenient. For to an aggressive people only technology mattered. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
The solution lies in secrecy,” said Medra. "But so does the problem. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
I was utterly miserable, and yet fearless as I had never been. I was carefree. It was like dying. It would be foolish to worry about anything while one died. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
Heal the Wound, Cure the illness, but let the Dying spirit go. (Ursula K. Le Guin)
The news had stirred him strangely. He listened for bulletins on the radio, which he had seldom turned on after finding that its basic function was advertising things for sale. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
And I know that all I understand about living is having your work to do, and being able to do it. That's the pleasure, and the glory, and all. And if you can't do the work, or it's taken from you, then what's any good? You have to have something.... View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
"Do you not understand that I want to give this to you-and to Hain and the other worlds-and to the countries of Urras? But to you all! So that one of you cannot use it, as A-Io wants to do, to get power over the others, to get richer or to win more wars. So that you cannot use the truth for your private profit, but only for the common good.” "In the end, the truth usually insists upon serving only the common good,” Keng said. "In the end, yes, but I am not willing to wait for the end. I have one lifetime, and I will not spend it for greed and profiteering and lies. I will not serve any master. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
This, at least, is the accepted explanation, though like most economic explanations it seems, under certain lights, to omit the main point. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
Going was easy. Keep on going was hard. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
She was not so naive as to think there was any necessary relation between religion and morality, or that if there was a relation it was likely to be a benevolent one. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
There is a certain bleakness in finding hope where one expected certainty. Arren found himself unwilling to stay on these cold summits. He said after a little while, "I see why you say that only men do evil, I think. Even sharks are innocent; they kill because they must.” "That is why nothing else can resist us. Only one thing in the world can resist an evil-hearted man. And that is another man. In our shame is our glory. Only our spirit, which is capable of evil, is capable of overcoming it.”. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
Summon up a supper,” he said. "Oh, I could. On golden plates, if you like. But that's illusion, and when you eat illusions you end up hungrier than before. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
Young he was not, so that one had to call him old, but the word did not suit him. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can't lick 'em, join 'em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. (Ursula K. Le Guin)
Aye. Like knows like, sister. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
"What's that all about?” Golden said to his wife, a rhetorical question. She looked at him and said nothing, a non-rhetorical answer. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
If you can see a thing whole,” he said, "it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives.... But close up, a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful the earth is, is to see it as the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death.” "That's all right for Urras. Let it stay off there and be the moon-I don't want it! But I'm not going to stand up on a gravestone and look down on life and say, ‘O lovely!' I want to see it whole right in the middle of it, here, now. I don't give a hoot for eternity. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
He detested them for forcing helplessness upon him. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin