Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes
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A forest ecology is a delicate one. If the forest perishes, its fauna may go with it. The Athshean word for world is also the word for forest.
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'The law of evolution is that the strongest survives.''Yes, and the strongest, in the existence of any social species, are those who are most social. In human terms, most ethical.'
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'The solution lies in secrecy,' said Medra. 'But so does the problem.'
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After a lifetime of living on hope because there is nothing but hope, one loses the taste for victory.
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Elegance is a small price to pay for enlightenment, and I was glad to pay it.
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I think hard times are coming. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries, the realists of a larger reality.
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And I know that all I understand about living is having your work to do, and being able to do it. That’s the pleasure, and the glory, and all. And if you can’t do the work, or it’s taken from you, then what’s any good? You have to have something....
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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.
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As she stumbled forward she cried out in her mind, which was as dark, as shaken as the subterranean vault, 'Forgive me. O my Masters, O unnamed ones, most ancient ones, forgive me, forgive me!'There was no answer. There had never been an answer.
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She had come to Aka to learn how to sing this world's tune, to dance its dance; and at last, she thought, away from the city's endless noise, she was beginning to hear the music and to learn how to move to it.
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'Well,' he said. 'Strange roads have strange guides. Let’s go on.'
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The hunger of a dragon is slow to wake, but hard to sate.
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You cannot buy the Revolution. You cannot make the Revolution. You can only be the Revolution. It is in your spirit or, it is nowhere.
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It was men’s ambitions, they said, that had perverted all the arts to ends of gain.
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Armed men don’t sit down and talk.
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What is the use trying to describe the flowing of a river at any one moment, and then at the next moment, and then at the next, and the next, and the next? You wear out. You say: There is a great river, and it flows through this land, and we have named it History.
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'Why must there be war?' 'Oh Lavinia, what a woman's question that is! Because men are men.'
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Wrongs done could not be righted, but at least they were not still being done.
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'Is it different, then, for men and for women?''What isn’t, dearie?'
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I thought, shivering, that there are things that outweigh comfort, unless one is an old woman or a cat.
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It is a terrible thing, this kindess that human beings do not lose. Terrible, because when we are finally naked in the dark and cold, it is all we have. We who are so rich, so full of strength, we end up with that small change. We have nothing else to give.
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He liked the vast openness of sky and prairie, and found loneliness a pleasure with so immense a domain to be alone in.
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All or nothing at all, the true lover says, and that’s the truth of it. My love will never die, he says. He claims eternity. And rightly. How can it die when it’s life itself? What do we know of eternity but the glimpse we get of it when we enter in that bond?
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It seemed, at least, that they had not taught the boy to lie. But they had not taught him to know truth from lies.