Ursula K. Le Guin: Trending quotes (page 4)

“Wrongs done could not be righted, but at least they were not still being done.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Section 5
Hainish Cycle, The Word for World Is Forest (1972)

“I’d rather get bad news from an honest man than lies from a flatterer.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

Source: Earthsea Books, The Other Wind (2001), Chapter 2 “Palaces” (p. 79)

“You’ll know what to say when the time comes. That’s the art, eh? What to say, and when to say it. And the rest is silence.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

“The Bones of the Earth” (p. 139)
Earthsea Books, Tales from Earthsea (2001)

Art , Silence , Time

“There is nothing, nothing on Urras that we Anarresti need! We left with empty hands, a hundred and seventy years ago, and we were right. We took nothing. Because there is nothing here but States and their weapons, the rich and their lies, and the poor and their misery. There is no way to act rightly, with a clear heart, on Urras. There is nothing you can do that profit does not enter into, and fear of loss, and the wish for power. You cannot say good morning without knowing which of you is ‘superior’ to the other, or trying to prove it. You cannot act like a brother to other people, you must manipulate them, or command them, or obey them, or trick them. You cannot touch another person, yet they will not leave you alone. There is no freedom. It is a box—Urras is a box, a package, with all the beautiful wrapping of blue sky and meadows and forests and great cities. And you open the box, and what is inside it? A black cellar full of dust, and a dead man. A man whose hand was shot off because he held it out to others. I have been in Hell at last. Desar was right; it is Urras; Hell is Urras.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, (1974), Chapter 11 (pp. 346-347)

People , Fear , Beauty , Way

“We live well in the houses—well enough. But we are ruled utterly by fear. There was a time we sailed in ships between the stars, and now we dare not go a hundred miles from home. We keep a little knowledge, and do nothing with it. But once we used that knowledge to weave the pattern of life like a tapestry across night and chaos. We enlarged the chances of life. We did man’s work.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

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

Life , Fear , Home , Star

“You must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard's power of Changing and Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power. It is most perilous. It must follow knowledge, and serve need. To light a candle is to cast a shadow.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

Source: Earthsea Books, A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), Chapter 3 (Master Hand)

World , Knowledge , Light , Evil

“Most civilisations, perhaps, look shinier in general terms and from several light-years away.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, The Telling (2000), Ch. 2, §2 (p. 32)

Light

“Her left hand reminded her of its existence, and she looked round to see what was scratching the heel of her hand. It was a tiny thistle, crouched in a crack in the sandstone, barely lifting its colorless spikes into the light and wind. It nodded stiffly as the wind blew, resisting the wind, rooted in rock. She gazed at it for a long time.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

Source: Earthsea Books, Tehanu (1990), Chapter 4, "Kalessin"

Light , Time

“But you knew them to be evil men—”
“Was I to join them therefore? To let their acts rule my own? I will not make their choices for them, nor will I let them make mine for me!”

Ursula K. Le Guin

Source: Earthsea Books, The Farthest Shore (1972), Chapter 4, "Magelight" (Arren and Ged)

Men , Evil

“The Revolution is in the individual spirit, or it is nowhere. It is for all, or it is nothing. If it is seen as having any end, it will never truly begin. We can’t stop here. We must go on. We must take the risks.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, (1974), Chapter 12 (p. 359)

“Long ago we parted,” said the slight, still man of the Fiia. “Longer ago we were one. What we are not, they are. What we are, they are not. Think of the sunlight and the grass and the trees that bear fruit, Semley; think that not all roads that lead down lead up as well.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Prologue
Hainish Cycle, Rocannon’s World (1966)

Thinking , Tree , Grass , Parting

“Is power that—an emptiness?”

Ursula K. Le Guin

Source: Earthsea Books, Tehanu (1990), Chapter 10, "The Dolphin"

“Injustice makes the rules, and courage breaks them.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

“Dragonfly” (p. 201)
Earthsea Books, Tales from Earthsea (2001)

Courage

“You exist: without name, without form. You cannot see the light of day; you cannot see the dark. You sold the green earth and the sun and stars to save yourself. But you have no self. All that which you sold, that is yourself. You have given everything for nothing. And so now you seek to draw the world to you, all that light and life you lost, to fill up your nothingness. But it cannot be filled. Not all the songs of earth, not all the stars of heaven, could fill your emptiness.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

Source: Earthsea Books, The Farthest Shore (1972), Chapter 12, "The Dry Land"

Life , World , Star , Light

“The more defensive a society, the more conformist.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, City of Illusions (1967), Chapter 4

“The world’s vast and strange, Hara, but no vaster and no stranger than our minds are. Think of that sometimes.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

Source: Earthsea Books, The Other Wind (2001), Chapter 2 “Palaces” (p. 72)

World , Thinking

“So the first step out of childhood is made all at once, without looking before or behind, without caution, and nothing held in reserve.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

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

Childhood

“The counsel of the dead is not profitable to the living.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

Source: Earthsea Books, The Farthest Shore (1972), Chapter 5, "Sea Dreams"

Dead

“You have to help another person. But it’s not right to play God with masses of people. To be God you have to know what you’re doing. And to do any good at all, just believing you're right and your motives are good isn’t enough. You have to…be in touch. He isn’t in touch. No one else, no thing even, has an existence of its own for him; he sees the world only as a means to his end. It doesn’t make any difference if his end is good; means are all we’ve got.”

Ursula K. Le Guin book The Lathe of Heaven

Source: The Lathe of Heaven (1971), Chapter 10 (Orr)

God , People , World , Motivation

“In the self-important, Falco reflected, there is always room for a little more self-importance.”

Ursula K. Le Guin book The Eye of the Heron

Source: The Eye of the Heron (1978), Chapter 5 (p. 66)