|
4038110
|
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.
|
|
magic
fantasy
inspirational
earthsea
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
613d747
|
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.
|
|
dark
life
earthsea
self
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
5dc991f
|
On the sea he wished to meet it, if meet it he must. He was not sure why this was, yet he had a terror of meeting the thing again on dry land. Out of the sea there rise storms and monsters, but no evil powers: evil is of earth. And there is no sea, no running of river or spring, in the dark land where once Ged had gone. Death is the dry place.
|
|
death
earthsea
land
sea
water
evil
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
2fea0d0
|
So the first step out of childhood is made all at once, without looking before or behind, without caution, and nothing held in reserve.
|
|
earthsea
coming-of-age
childhood
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
f447f72
|
Am I supposed to feel so much awe and so on about the Godking? After all, he's just a man ... He's about fifty years old, and he's bald. And I'll bet he has to cut his toenails too like any other man. I know perfectly well he's a god, too. But what I think is, he'll be much godlier after he's dead.
|
|
fantasy
earthsea
kings
fantasy-fiction
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
772c39c
|
As a boy, Ogion like all boys had thought it would be a very pleasant game to take by art-magic whatever shape one liked, man or beast, tree or cloud, and so to play at a thousand beings. But as a wizard he had learned the price of the game, which is the peril of losing one's self, playing away the truth. The longer a man stays in a form not his own, the greater this peril. Every prentice-sorcerer learns the tale of the wizard Bordger of Way, who delighted in taking bear's shape, and did so more and more often until the bear grew in him and the man died away, and he became a bear, and killed his own little son in the forests, and was hunted down and slain. And no one knows how many of the dolphins that leap in the waters of the Inmost Sea were men once, wise men, who forgot their wisdom and their name in the joy of the restless sea.
|
|
wisdom
earthsea
animals
childhood
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
cf99bdf
|
"...All who ever died, live; they are reborn and have no end, nor will there ever be an end. All, save you. For you would not have death. You lost death, you lost life, in order to save yourself. Yourself! Your immortal self! What is it? Who are you?" "I am myself. My body will not decay and die-" "A living body suffers pain, Cob; a living body grows old; it dies. Death is the price we pay for our life and for all life." "I do not pay it! I can die and in that moment live again! I cannot be killed; I am immortal. I alone am myself forever!" "Who are you, then?" "The Immortal One." "Say your name." "The King." "Say my name. I told it to you but a minute since. Say my name!" "You are not real. You have no name. Only I exist." "You exist: without name, without form. You cannot see the light of day; you cannot see the dark. You sold the green earth and the sun and stars to save yourself. But you have no self. All that which you sold, that is yourself. You have given everything for nothing. And so now you seek to draw your world to you, all that light and life you lost, to fill up your nothingness. But it cannot be filled. Not all the songs of earth, not all the stars of heaven, could fill your emptiness."
|
|
heaven
life
earthsea
the-farthest-shore
self
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
4bea2c5
|
[Arren] was proud of his lineage, but thought of himself as an heir of princes, one of the House of Enlad. Morred, from whom that house descended, had been dead two thousand years. His deeds were matter of legends, not of this present world. It was as if the Archmage had named him son of myth, inheritor of dreams.
|
|
earthsea
arren
the-farthest-shore
lineage
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |