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Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes

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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.
From The Farthest Shore
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There are souls, he thought, whose umbilicus has never been cut. They never got weaned from the universe. They do not understand death as an enemy; they look forward to rotting and turning into humus.
From The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia
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Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.
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People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.
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To learn a belief without the belief is to sing a song without the tune.
From The Telling
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I went to the springs while the sun was still up, and sitting on a rocky outcrop above the cave mouth I watched the light grow reddish across the misty pools, and listened to the troubled voice of the water. After a while I moved farther up the hill, where I could hear birds singing near and far in the silence of the trees. The presence of the trees was very strong...The big oaks stood so many, so massive in their other life, in their deep, rooted silence: the awe of them came on me, the religion.
From Lavinia
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Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive
From The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
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I had forgotten how much light there is in the world, till you gave it back to me.
From A Wizard of Earthsea
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You will die. You will not live forever. Nor will any man nor any thing. Nothing is immortal. But only to us is it given to know that we must die. And that is a great gift: the gift of selfhood. For we have only what we know we must lose, what we are willing to lose... That selfhood which is our torment, and our treasure, and our humanity, does not endure. It changes; it is gone, a wave on the sea. Would you have the sea grow still and the tides cease, to save one wave, to save yourself?
From The Farthest Shore
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He began to see the truth, that Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life's sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark. In the Creation of Ea, which is the oldest song, it is said, 'Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life: bright the hawk's flight on the empty sky.
From A Wizard of Earthsea
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The unknown," said Faxe's soft voice in the forest, "the unforetold, the unproven, that is what life is based on. Ignorance is the ground of thought. Unproof is the ground of action. If it were proven that there is no God there would be no religion. No Handdara, no Yomesh, no hearthgods, nothing. But also if it were proven that there is a God, there would be no religion. ... Tell me, Genry, what is known? What is sure, unpredictable, inevitable -- the one certain thing you know concerning your future, and mine?"

That we shall die."

Yes, There's really only one question that can be answered, Genry, and we already know the answer. ... The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.
From The Left Hand of Darkness
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In our loss and fear we craved the acts of religion, the ceremonies that allow us to admit our helplessness, our dependence on the great forces we do not understand.
From Lavinia
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It's a rare gift, to know where you need to be, before you've been to all the places you don't need to be.
From Tales from Earthsea
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Let us do without soldiers. The joy built upon successful slaughter is not the right kind of joy; it will not do; it is fearful and it is trivial.
From The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
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Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life's sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark.
From A Wizard of Earthsea
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For a word to be spoken, there must be silence. Before, and after.
From A Wizard of Earthsea
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Life rises out of death, death rises out of life; in being opposite they yearn to each other, they give birth to each other and are forever reborn. And with them, all is reborn, the flower of the apple tree, the light of the stars. In life is death. In death is rebirth. What then is life without death? Life unchanging, everlasting, eternal?-What is it but death-death without rebirth?
From The Farthest Shore
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Her concern with landscapes and living creatures was passionate. This concern, feebly called, "the love of nature" seemed to Shevek to be something much broader than love. There are souls, he thought, whose umbilicus has never been cut. They never got weaned from the universe. They do not understand death as an enemy; they look forward to rotting and turning into humus. It was strange to see Takver take a leaf into her hand, or even a rock. She became an extension of it, it of her.
From The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia
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Having one king, one god, one belief, they can act single-mindedly.
From Voices
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The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.
From The Left Hand of Darkness
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I think," Tehanu said in her soft, strange voice, "that when I die, I can breathe back the breath that made me live. I can give back to the world all that I didn't do. All that I might have been and couldn't be. All the choices I didn't make. All the things I lost and spent and wasted. I can give them back to the world. To the lives that haven't been lived yet. That will be my gift back to the world that gave me the life I did live, the love I loved, the breath I breathed.
From The Other Wind
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She'll die.'
'Aye. That's a consequence of being alive.
From The Farthest Shore
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To oppose something is to maintain it... You must go somewhere else; you must have another goal; then you walk a different road.
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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. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.
From The Wind's Twelve Quarters, Volume 1
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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.
From The Farthest Shore
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There are souls, he thought, whose umbilicus has never been cut. They never got weaned from the universe. They do not understand death as an enemy; they look forward to rotting and turning into humus.
From The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
To learn a belief without the belief is to sing a song without the tune.
From The Telling
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I went to the springs while the sun was still up, and sitting on a rocky outcrop above the cave mouth I watched the light grow reddish across the misty pools, and listened to the troubled voice of the water. After a while I moved farther up the hill, where I could hear birds singing near and far in the silence of the trees. The presence of the trees was very strong...The big oaks stood so many, so massive in their other life, in their deep, rooted silence: the awe of them came on me, the religion.
From Lavinia
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Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive
From The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
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I had forgotten how much light there is in the world, till you gave it back to me.
From A Wizard of Earthsea
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You will die. You will not live forever. Nor will any man nor any thing. Nothing is immortal. But only to us is it given to know that we must die. And that is a great gift: the gift of selfhood. For we have only what we know we must lose, what we are willing to lose... That selfhood which is our torment, and our treasure, and our humanity, does not endure. It changes; it is gone, a wave on the sea. Would you have the sea grow still and the tides cease, to save one wave, to save yourself?
From The Farthest Shore
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He began to see the truth, that Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life's sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark. In the Creation of Ea, which is the oldest song, it is said, 'Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life: bright the hawk's flight on the empty sky.
From A Wizard of Earthsea
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The unknown," said Faxe's soft voice in the forest, "the unforetold, the unproven, that is what life is based on. Ignorance is the ground of thought. Unproof is the ground of action. If it were proven that there is no God there would be no religion. No Handdara, no Yomesh, no hearthgods, nothing. But also if it were proven that there is a God, there would be no religion. ... Tell me, Genry, what is known? What is sure, unpredictable, inevitable -- the one certain thing you know concerning your future, and mine?"

That we shall die."

Yes, There's really only one question that can be answered, Genry, and we already know the answer. ... The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.
From The Left Hand of Darkness
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
In our loss and fear we craved the acts of religion, the ceremonies that allow us to admit our helplessness, our dependence on the great forces we do not understand.
From Lavinia
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It's a rare gift, to know where you need to be, before you've been to all the places you don't need to be.
From Tales from Earthsea
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Let us do without soldiers. The joy built upon successful slaughter is not the right kind of joy; it will not do; it is fearful and it is trivial.
From The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life's sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark.
From A Wizard of Earthsea
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
For a word to be spoken, there must be silence. Before, and after.
From A Wizard of Earthsea
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Life rises out of death, death rises out of life; in being opposite they yearn to each other, they give birth to each other and are forever reborn. And with them, all is reborn, the flower of the apple tree, the light of the stars. In life is death. In death is rebirth. What then is life without death? Life unchanging, everlasting, eternal?-What is it but death-death without rebirth?
From The Farthest Shore
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Her concern with landscapes and living creatures was passionate. This concern, feebly called, "the love of nature" seemed to Shevek to be something much broader than love. There are souls, he thought, whose umbilicus has never been cut. They never got weaned from the universe. They do not understand death as an enemy; they look forward to rotting and turning into humus. It was strange to see Takver take a leaf into her hand, or even a rock. She became an extension of it, it of her.
From The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Having one king, one god, one belief, they can act single-mindedly.
From Voices
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The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.
From The Left Hand of Darkness
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I think," Tehanu said in her soft, strange voice, "that when I die, I can breathe back the breath that made me live. I can give back to the world all that I didn't do. All that I might have been and couldn't be. All the choices I didn't make. All the things I lost and spent and wasted. I can give them back to the world. To the lives that haven't been lived yet. That will be my gift back to the world that gave me the life I did live, the love I loved, the breath I breathed.
From The Other Wind
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
She'll die.'
'Aye. That's a consequence of being alive.
From The Farthest Shore
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
To oppose something is to maintain it... You must go somewhere else; you must have another goal; then you walk a different road.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.
From The Wind's Twelve Quarters, Volume 1
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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.
From The Farthest Shore
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There are souls, he thought, whose umbilicus has never been cut. They never got weaned from the universe. They do not understand death as an enemy; they look forward to rotting and turning into humus.
From The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
To learn a belief without the belief is to sing a song without the tune.
From The Telling
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I went to the springs while the sun was still up, and sitting on a rocky outcrop above the cave mouth I watched the light grow reddish across the misty pools, and listened to the troubled voice of the water. After a while I moved farther up the hill, where I could hear birds singing near and far in the silence of the trees. The presence of the trees was very strong...The big oaks stood so many, so massive in their other life, in their deep, rooted silence: the awe of them came on me, the religion.
From Lavinia
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive
From The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I had forgotten how much light there is in the world, till you gave it back to me.
From A Wizard of Earthsea
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You will die. You will not live forever. Nor will any man nor any thing. Nothing is immortal. But only to us is it given to know that we must die. And that is a great gift: the gift of selfhood. For we have only what we know we must lose, what we are willing to lose... That selfhood which is our torment, and our treasure, and our humanity, does not endure. It changes; it is gone, a wave on the sea. Would you have the sea grow still and the tides cease, to save one wave, to save yourself?
From The Farthest Shore
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He began to see the truth, that Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life's sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark. In the Creation of Ea, which is the oldest song, it is said, 'Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life: bright the hawk's flight on the empty sky.
From A Wizard of Earthsea
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The unknown," said Faxe's soft voice in the forest, "the unforetold, the unproven, that is what life is based on. Ignorance is the ground of thought. Unproof is the ground of action. If it were proven that there is no God there would be no religion. No Handdara, no Yomesh, no hearthgods, nothing. But also if it were proven that there is a God, there would be no religion. ... Tell me, Genry, what is known? What is sure, unpredictable, inevitable -- the one certain thing you know concerning your future, and mine?"

That we shall die."

Yes, There's really only one question that can be answered, Genry, and we already know the answer. ... The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.
From The Left Hand of Darkness
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
In our loss and fear we craved the acts of religion, the ceremonies that allow us to admit our helplessness, our dependence on the great forces we do not understand.
From Lavinia
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It's a rare gift, to know where you need to be, before you've been to all the places you don't need to be.
From Tales from Earthsea
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Let us do without soldiers. The joy built upon successful slaughter is not the right kind of joy; it will not do; it is fearful and it is trivial.
From The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life's sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark.
From A Wizard of Earthsea
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
For a word to be spoken, there must be silence. Before, and after.
From A Wizard of Earthsea
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Life rises out of death, death rises out of life; in being opposite they yearn to each other, they give birth to each other and are forever reborn. And with them, all is reborn, the flower of the apple tree, the light of the stars. In life is death. In death is rebirth. What then is life without death? Life unchanging, everlasting, eternal?-What is it but death-death without rebirth?
From The Farthest Shore
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Her concern with landscapes and living creatures was passionate. This concern, feebly called, "the love of nature" seemed to Shevek to be something much broader than love. There are souls, he thought, whose umbilicus has never been cut. They never got weaned from the universe. They do not understand death as an enemy; they look forward to rotting and turning into humus. It was strange to see Takver take a leaf into her hand, or even a rock. She became an extension of it, it of her.
From The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Having one king, one god, one belief, they can act single-mindedly.
From Voices
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.
From The Left Hand of Darkness
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I think," Tehanu said in her soft, strange voice, "that when I die, I can breathe back the breath that made me live. I can give back to the world all that I didn't do. All that I might have been and couldn't be. All the choices I didn't make. All the things I lost and spent and wasted. I can give them back to the world. To the lives that haven't been lived yet. That will be my gift back to the world that gave me the life I did live, the love I loved, the breath I breathed.
From The Other Wind
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
She'll die.'
'Aye. That's a consequence of being alive.
From The Farthest Shore
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
To oppose something is to maintain it... You must go somewhere else; you must have another goal; then you walk a different road.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.
From The Wind's Twelve Quarters, Volume 1
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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