“It is not altogether a bad thing to have criminal ancestors. An arsonist grandfather may bequeath one a nose for smelling smoke.”

—  Ursula K. Le Guin, Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Chapter 10 “Conversations in Mishnory” (p. 143)

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 "It is not altogether a bad thing to have criminal ancestors. An arsonist grandfather may bequeath one a nose for smelli…" by Ursula K. Le Guin?
Ursula K. Le Guin photo
Ursula K. Le Guin292
American writer 1929–2018

Related quotes

Tenzin Gyatso photo

“Media people should have long noses like an elephant to smell out politicians, mayors, prime ministers and businessmen. We need to know the reality, the good and the bad, not just the appearance.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

News conference in Vancouver, B.C. as quoted in The Globe and Mail. (8 September 2006) http://web.archive.org/web/20070326201154/http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060908.BCDALAILAMA08/TPStory/.

Gilbert Ryle photo

“It is of first-rate importance to notice from the start that stupidity is not the same thing, or the same sort of thing, as ignorance. There is no incompatibility between being well-informed and being silly, and a person who has a good nose for arguments or jokes may have a bad head for facts.”

Gilbert Ryle book The Concept of Mind

Source: The Concept of Mind (1949), Ch. II: Knowing How and Knowing That, (2) Intelligence and Intellect

Gao Xingjian photo

“Grandfather, when you saw the tiger were you scared? Bad people scare me, not tigers.
Grandfather, have you ever run into bad people?
There aren’t many tigers but lots of bad people, only you can’t shoot people.”

Gao Xingjian (1940) Chinese novelist and playwright

Source: Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather (2005), p. 105

Norman Mailer photo

“It is the smell of the stockyards, all of it taken together, a smell so bad one must go down to visit the killing of the animals or never eat meat again. Watching the animals be slaughtered, one knows the human case — no matter how close to angel we may come, the butcher is equally there.”

Norman Mailer book Miami and the Siege of Chicago

Pt. 2, p. 87
Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968)

Heinrich Heine photo

“Whatever tears one may shed, in the end one always blows one's nose.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

As quoted in The Routledge Dictionary of Quotations (1987) by Robert Andrews, p. 60

William Saroyan photo

“You may tend to get cancer from the thing that makes you want to smoke so much, not from the smoking itself.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Source: Not Dying: An Autobiographical Interlude

Alice Hoffman photo

“She was disappearing a little more each day, so thin, so frail, a wisp of smoke. One day she would surely vanish altogether, and there was no way to stop her.”

Alice Hoffman (1952) Novelist, young-adult writer, children's writer

Source: Green Heart

“It is not my intention to denounce modern education. If it is bad, it may be said that all education is bad which is not self-education, and quite a lot of self-education is going on today — some of it in our schools, under the very noses of the teachers!”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

Related topics