|
080ad77
|
A machine is more blameless, more sinless even than any animal. It has no intentions whatsoever but our own.
|
|
machines
sin
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
15f87e0
|
There are talking dogs all over the place, unbelievably boring they are, on and on and on about sex and shit and smells, and smells and shit and sex, and do you love me, do you love me, do you love me.
|
|
dogs
anthropomorphization
anthropomorphizing
dogs-humour
dogs-speak
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
d11fe07
|
He had been taught as a child that Urras was a festering mass of inequity, iniquity, and waste. But all the people he met, and all the people he saw, in the smallest country village, were well dressed, well fed, and contrary to his expectations, industrious. They did not stand about sullenly waiting to be ordered to do things. Just like Anaresti, they were simply busy getting things done. It puzzled him. He had assumed that if you removed a..
|
|
inequity
iniquity
profit
initiative
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
82ef9a7
|
Estraven stood there in harness beside me looking at that magnificent and unspeakable desolation. 'I'm glad I have lived to see this,' he said. I have felt as he did. It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
|
|
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
ad17b43
|
I know who I was, I can tell you who I may have been, but I am, now, only in this line of words I write. I'm not sure of the nature of my existence, and wonder to find myself writing.
|
|
|
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 |
|
4b95ae8
|
The Owl thinks slowly, but the Owl thinks long.
|
|
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
db2754b
|
And the strangest thing about the nightmare street was that none of the millions of things for sale were made there. They were only sold there. Where were the workshops, the factories, where were the farmers, the craftsmen, the miners, the weavers, the chemists, the carvers, the dyers, the designers, the machinists, where were the hands, the people who made? Out of sight, somewhere else. Behind walls. All the people in all the shops were ei..
|
|
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
85091a0
|
Darkness is only in the mortal eye, that thinks it sees, but sees not.
|
|
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
bd316b9
|
I tried to speak insipidly, yet everything I said seemed to take on a double meaning.
|
|
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
103138b
|
He never spoke with any bitterness at all, no matter how awful the things he said. Are there really people without resentment, without hate, she wondered. People who never go cross-grained to the universe? Who recognize evil, and resist evil, and yet are utterly unaffected by it? Of course there are. Countless, the living and the dead. Those who have returned in pure compassion to the wheel, those who follow the way that cannot be followed ..
|
|
good-and-evil
resistance
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
29519b0
|
Belief in the lie is the life of the lie.
|
|
lies
truth
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
0acafa3
|
What is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one's country; is it hate of one's uncountry?
|
|
love
countries
boundaries
patriotism
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
7845ef7
|
The truth is that as a man's real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing but does only and wholly what he must do.
|
|
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
c0f72a2
|
A decision worthy of the name is based on observation, factual information, intellectual and ethical judgment. Opinion--that darling of the press, the politician, and the poll--may be based on no information at all.
|
|
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
bb9fdbd
|
He was very weary; the day had been long, and full of dragons.
|
|
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
8104333
|
Stories are what death thinks he puts an end to. He can't understand that they end in him, but they don't end with him.
|
|
stories
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
173b58d
|
Smiles, bells, parades, horses, bleh. If so, please add an orgy. If an orgy would help, don't hesitate.
|
|
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
63a41f5
|
Ai was exhausted and enraged. He looked ready to cry, but did not. I believe he considers crying either evil or shameful. Even when he was very ill and weak, the first days of our escape, he hid his face from me when he wept. Reasons personal, racial, social, sexual - how can I guess why Ai must not weep?
|
|
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
0305e9a
|
Whatever language we speak, before we begin a sentence we have an almost infinite choice of words to use. A, The, They, Whereas, Having, Then, To, Bison, Ignorant, Since, Winnemucca, In, It, As . . . Any word of the immense vocabulary of English may begin an English sentence. As we speak or write the sentence, each word influences the choice of the next -- its syntactical function as noun, verb, adjective, etc., its person and number if a p..
|
|
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
2d4e355
|
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,..
|
|
spirituality
religion
trees
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
e53ffcf
|
But when we crave power over life--endless wealth, unassailable safety, immortality--then desire becomes greed. And if knowledge allies itself to that greed, then comes evil. Then the balance of the world is swayed, and ruin weighs heavy in the scale.
|
|
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
1c7cf8f
|
my heart told me incontrovertibly that neither gender could go far without the other. So, in my story, neither the woman nor the man can get free without the other.
|
|
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
2791569
|
The exercise of imagination is dangerous to those who profit from the way things are because it has the power to show that the way things are is not permanent, not universal, not necessary. Having that real though limited power to put established institutions into question, imaginative literature has also the responsibility of power. The storyteller is the truthteller.
|
|
story
literature
imagination
science-fiction
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
410d423
|
We will not know our own injustice if we cannot imagine justice. We will not be free if we do not imagine freedom. We cannot demand that anyone try to attain justice and freedom who has not had a chance to imagine them as attainable.
|
|
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
bc9098e
|
But he had not brought anything. His hands were empty, as they had always been.
|
|
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
7a98a20
|
Because you are human beings you are going to meet failure. You are going to meet disappointment, injustice, betrayal, and irreparable loss. You will find you're weak where you thought yourself strong. You'll work for possessions and then find they possess you. You will find yourself -- as I know you already have -- in dark places, alone, and afraid.
|
|
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
35dd564
|
My mother was mad, but I was not. My father was old, but I was young. Like Spartan Helen, I caused a war. She caused hers by letting men who wanted her take her. I caused mine because I wouldn't be given, wouldn't be taken, but chose my man and my fate.
|
|
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
139d999
|
I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain ploughland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one's country, is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing. Is it simply self-love? That's a good thing, but one mustn't make ..
|
|
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
d2125fc
|
Outside the locked room is the landscape of time, in which the spirit may, with luck and courage, construct the fragile, makeshift, improbable roads and cities of fidelity: a landscape inhabitable by human beings.
|
|
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
ef79afe
|
Meaning in art isn't the same as meaning in science. The meaning of the second law of thermodynamics, so long as the words are understood, isn't changed by who reads it, or when, or where. The meaning of Huckleberry Finn is.
|
|
|
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 |
|
203beec
|
I was with you at the beginning of your journey. It is right that I should follow you to its end.
|
|
friendship
journeys
companionship
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
347185e
|
Since he was very young he had known that in certain ways he was unlike anyone else he knew. For a child the consciousness of such difference is very painful, since, having done nothing yet and being incapable of doing anything, he cannot justify it. The reliable and affectionate presence of adults who are also, in their own way, different, is the only reassurance such a child can have; and Shevek had not had it. His father had indeed been ..
|
|
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
57be994
|
I did a lot today. That is, I did something. The only thing I have ever done. I pressed a button. It took the entire willpower, the accumulated strength of my entire existence, to press one damned OFF button.
|
|
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
2820641
|
Fire and fear, good servants, bad lords.
|
|
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
102b569
|
Aeneas' mother is a star?" "No; a goddess." I said cautiously, "Venus is the power that we invoke in spring, in the garden, when things begin growing. And we call the evening star Venus." He thought it over. Perhaps having grown up in the country, among pagans like me, helped him understand my bewilderment. "So do we, he said. "But Venus also became more...With the help of the Greeks. They call her Aphrodite...There was a great poet who pra..
|
|
worship
prayer
poetry
venus
mythology
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
a7b534c
|
I know who you are," she said. "You're my enemy. The true believer. The righteous man with the righteous mission. The one that jails people for reading and burns the books. That persecutes people who do exercises the wrong way. That dumps out the medicine and pisses on it. That pushes the button that sends the drones to drop the bombs. And hides behind a bunker and doesn't get hurt. Shielded by God. Or the state. Or whatever lie he uses to ..
|
|
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
16b07d6
|
Words are events, they do things, change things. They transform both speaker and hearer; they feed energy back and forth and amplify it. They feed understanding or emotion back and forth and amplify it.
|
|
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
1b02b2b
|
And I needed a rock. Something to hold onto, to stand on. Something solid. Because everything was going soft, turning into mush, into marsh, into fog. Fog closing in on all sides. I didn't know where I was at all.
|
|
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
e5a197c
|
Having intelligence, we must not act in ignorance. Having choice, we must not act without responsibility.
|
|
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
57364e7
|
Owning is owing, having is hoarding.
|
|
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
8a75fc3
|
To make something well is to give yourself to it, to seek wholeness, to follow spirit. To learn to make something well can take your whole life. It's worth it.
|
|
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
|
5562d5f
|
His gentleness was uncompromising; because he would not compete for dominance, he was indomitable.
|
|
dominance
gentleness
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |