Ursula K. Le Guin: Trending quotes (page 13)

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“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.””

Ursula K. Le Guin

Source: Earthsea Books, The Farthest Shore (1972), Chapter 3, "Hort Town" (Arren and Ged)

Men , World , Hope , Thinking

“Men who fight wars in Winter don’t live till Spring.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, Planet of Exile (1966), Chapter 4 (The Tall Young Men)

Men , War , Spring , Winter

“A man who doesn’t detest a bad government is a fool. And if there were such a thing as a good government on earth, it would be a great joy to serve it.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Chapter 15 “To the Ice” (p. 213)

Fools , Joy

““We in the Handdara don’t want answers. It’s hard to avoid them, but we try to.”
“Faxe, I don’t think I understand.”
“Well, we come here to the Fastnesses mostly to learn what questions not to ask.”
“But you’re the Answerers!”
“You don’t see, Genry, why we perfected and practice Foretelling?”
“No—”
“To exhibit the perfect uselessness of knowing the answer to the wrong question.””

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Chapter 5 “The Domestication of Hunch” (pp. 69-70)

Understanding , Question , Thinking , Learning

“I talk about the gods, I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

Introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness (1976)

God , Truth

““The mission I am on overrides all personal debts and loyalties.”
“If so,” said the stranger with fierce certainty, “it is an immoral mission.””

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Chapter 8 “Another Way into Orgoreyn” (p. 104)

Personality , Loyalty

“Is it the gods who set this fire in our hearts, or do we each make our fierce desire into a god?”

Ursula K. Le Guin book Lavinia

Source: Lavinia (2008), p. 66

God , Heart

“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.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

Source: Earthsea Books, The Tombs of Atuan (1971), Chapter 11, "The Western Mountains"

“Young he was not, so that one had to call him old, but the word did not suit him.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

Source: Earthsea Books, The Farthest Shore (1972), Chapter 1, "The Rowan Tree"

“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

“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” p. 254 (originally published in New Dimensions 3, edited by Robert Silverberg)
Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1974
Short fiction, The Wind’s Twelve Quarters (1975)

Pain , Stupidity , Evil , Hurt

“Aye. Like knows like, sister”

Ursula K. Le Guin

Source: Earthsea Books, The Farthest Shore (1972), Chapter 6, "Lorbanery" (Ged)

Sister

“The hunger of a dragon is slow to wake, but hard to sate.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

Source: Earthsea Books, A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), Chapter 5

Hunger

“When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Chapter 3 “The Mad King” (p. 42)

Sleep

““What’s that all about?” Golden said to his wife, a rhetorical question. She looked at him and said nothing, a non-rhetorical answer.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

“Darkrose and Diamond” (p. 125)
Earthsea Books, Tales from Earthsea (2001)

Question

““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.””

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, (1974), Chapter 6 (p. 190)

Love , Life , Death , World

“We have been civilized for a thousand millennia. We have histories of hundreds of those millennia. We have tried everything, Anarchism, with the rest. But I have not tried it. They say there is nothing new under any sun. But if each life is not new, each single life, then why are we born?”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, (1974), Chapter 13 (p. 385)

Life , History , Sun

““For a word to be spoken,” Ged answered slowly, “there must be silence. Before, and after.” Then all at once he got up, saying, “I have no right to speak of these things. The word that was mine to say I said wrong. It is better that I keep still; I will not speak again. Maybe there is no true power but the dark.””

Ursula K. Le Guin

Source: Earthsea Books, A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), Chapter 9

Silence

“You cannot buy the Revolution. You cannot make the Revolution. You can only be the Revolution. It is in your spirit or, it is nowhere.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, (1974), Chapter 9 (p. 301)

“Truth, as ever, avoids the stranger.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, City of Illusions (1967), Chapter 1

Truth

““The law of evolution is that the strongest survives.”
“Yes, and the strongest, in the existence of any social species, are those who are most social. In human terms, most ethical.””

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, (1974), Chapter 7 (p. 220)

Law