““Is it a wicked thing, then?”
“I should call it a misunderstanding, rather. A misunderstanding of life. Death and life are the same thing—like the two sides of my hand, the palm and the back. And still the palm and the back are not the same… They can be neither separated, nor mixed.””

— Ursula K. Le Guin

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

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "“Is it a wicked thing, then?” “I should call it a misunderstanding, rather. A misunderstanding of life. Death and life…" by Ursula K. Le Guin?

Ursula K. Le Guin 292

American writer 1929–2018

Related quotes

“I thought, my love is so good, why isn't it calling the same thing back.”

Amy Hempel (1951) Short story writer

Source: The Collected Stories

“God is life supreme. Now God, the power that holds the universe in the palm of his hand, is the only being that can say, "I Am," and put a period there and never look back. And don't be foolish enough to forget Him.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Why Jesus Called A Man A Fool (1967)

“I live in a world where two truths coexist: where both hell and hope lie in the palm of my hand”

Alice Sebold book Lucky

Source: Lucky

“I think, in general, it's clear that most bad things come from misunderstanding, and communication is generally the way to resolve misunderstandings — and the Web's a form of communications — so it generally should be good.”

Tim Berners-Lee (1955) British computer scientist, inventor of the World Wide Web

developerWorks Interviews: Tim Berners-Lee (podcast/audio plus transcript) http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/podcast/dwi/cm-int082206txt.html
Context: The fact that we're all connected, the fact that we've got this information space — does change the parameters. It changes the way people live and work. It changes things for good and for bad. But I think, in general, it's clear that most bad things come from misunderstanding, and communication is generally the way to resolve misunderstandings — and the Web's a form of communications — so it generally should be good. But I think, also, we have to watch whether we preserve the stability of the world — like we don't want to watch this phenomena like the stock market becoming unstable when it became computerized, for example.
We need to look at the whole society and think, "Are we actually thinking about what we're doing as we go forward, and are we preserving the really important values that we have in society? Are we keeping it democratic, and open, and so on?"

“Jesus has given me eternal life in Him. Let them take my life here, but God holds me in the palm of His hand and no one can take Him from me.”

Francine Rivers book An Echo in the Darkness

Source: An Echo in the Darkness

“Life is but a series of misunderstandings.”

Denis Diderot book Jacques the Fatalist

Source: Jacques the Fatalist

“Neither in the arts, nor in logic, nor in life should an idea by in any way treated as a thing.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

“Conservation and rural-life policies are really two sides of the same policy; and down at bottom this policy rests upon the fundamental law that neither man nor nation can prosper unless, in dealing with the present, thought is steadily taken for the future.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

"Rural Life", in The Outlook (27 August 1910), republished in American Problems (vol. 16 of The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, national ed., 1926), chapter 20, p. 146
1910s

“Only our voices
and gray strips of palm
like shining backs
of coleoptera,
atrocious
and suffering
under the infinite sun;
…”

Caterina Davinio (1957) Italian writer

Aliens on Safari, Africa
Source: Caterina Davinio, Aliens on Safari (Light from Hell), in AAVV, Dentro il mutamento, Rome, Fermenti, 2011. English translation by Caterina Davinio and David W. Seaman.

“It was a good thing to have a couple of thousand people all rigid and frozen together, in the palm of one's hand.”

Charles Dickens (1812–1870) English writer and social critic and a Journalist

About having a book
Letter to Mrs. Richard Watson (7 December 1857)

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Ursula K. Le Guin 292

Related quotes

Related topics