“After a lifetime of living on hope because there is nothing but hope, one loses the taste for victory.”
“The Day Before the Revolution” p. 270 (originally published in Galaxy, August 1974)
Short fiction, The Wind’s Twelve Quarters (1975)
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Ursula K. Le Guin 292
American writer 1929–2018Related quotes
Il y a une chose plus triste à perdre que la vie, c’est la raison de vivre,
Plus triste que de perdre ses biens, c’est de perdre son espérance.
L'otage (Paris: Édition de la Nouvelle revue française, 1911) p. 162; Pierre Chavannes (trans.) The Hostage (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1917) p. 130.
Source: The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (1993), p. 108
Variant: Therefore you can never lose hope--because if you keep hope alive, it will keep you alive.
Source: City of Lost Souls
With the century, vol. 5
The Spirit of Revolt (1880)
Context: One courageous act has sufficed to upset in a few days the entire governmental machinery, to make the colossus tremble; another revolt has stirred a whole province into turmoil, and the army, till now always so imposing, has retreated before a handful of peasants armed with sticks and stones. The people observe that the monster is not so terrible as they thought they begin dimly to perceive that a few energetic efforts will be sufficient to throw it down. Hope is born in their hearts, and let us remember that if exasperation often drives men to revolt, it is always hope, the hope of victory, which makes revolutions.
The government resists; it is savage in its repressions. But, though formerly persecution killed the energy of the oppressed, now, in periods of excitement, it produces the opposite result. It provokes new acts of revolt, individual and collective, it drives the rebels to heroism; and in rapid succession these acts spread, become general, develop. The revolutionary party is strengthened by elements which up to this time were hostile or indifferent to it.
1832. Passions. Translation by Tim Parks. [Yale University Press, 2014, ISBN 9780300186338], p. 8
Zibaldone (1898)
