Ursula K. Le Guin on affinity
Ursula K. Le Guin161 quotes“If you deny any affinity with another person or kind of person, if you declare it to be wholly different from yourself.”
More from Ursula K. Le Guin
If it were proven that there is no God there would be no religion. …But also if it were proven that there is a God, there would be no religion.
Ursula K. Le GuinUrsula K. Le Guin I doubt that the imagination can be suppressed. If you truly eradicated it in a child, he would grow up to be an eggplant.
Ursula K. Le GuinUrsula K. Le Guin I believe that maturity is not an outgrowing, but a growing up: that an adult is not a dead child, but a child who survived.
Ursula K. Le GuinUrsula K. Le Guin We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel… is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.
Ursula K. Le GuinUrsula K. Le Guin f we can get feminine and human morality out from under the yoke of a dead ethic, then maybe we’ll begin to get somewhere on the road that leads to survival.
Ursula K. Le GuinUrsula K. Le Guin We’re each of us alone, to be sure. What can you do but hold your hand out in the dark?
Ursula K. Le GuinUrsula K. Le Guin The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid.
Ursula K. Le GuinUrsula K. Le Guin You are in the country where you make up the rules, the laws. You are both dictator and obedient populace. It is a country nobody has ever explored before. It is up to you to make the maps, to build the cities.
Ursula K. Le GuinUrsula K. Le Guin The worst walls are never the ones you find in your way. The worst walls are the ones you put there .
Ursula K. Le GuinUrsula K. Le Guin As great scientists have said and as all children know, it is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception, and compassion, and hope.
Ursula K. Le GuinUrsula K. Le Guin A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart.
Ursula K. Le GuinUrsula K. Le Guin 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…
Ursula K. Le GuinUrsula K. Le Guin The two imperatives can no longer coexist with each other; nor can any society founded on the myth that they can be reconciled hope to survive.
Ursula K. Le GuinUrsula K. Le Guin The important thing is not the finding, it is the seeking, it is the devotion with which one spins the wheel of prayer and scripture, discovering the truth little by little.
Ursula K. Le GuinUrsula K. Le Guin There are no right answers to wrong questions.
Ursula K. Le GuinUrsula K. Le Guin Fantasy is nearer to poetry, to mysticism, and to insanity than naturalistic fiction is. It is a wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe.
Ursula K. Le GuinUrsula K. Le Guin
Original quotes
From our community writers
We were dirt poor but we had each other. We didn’t need much to have a lot.
Brad NeatonBrad Neaton Always show kindness and love to others. Your words might be filling the empty places in someone else heart.
Alexander KandovAlexander Kandov One quick sip of your memory I let it slip, and I go on without you.
Emma SchippersEmma Schippers If the scars on my heart were visible to the naked eye, maybe you’d think twice about inflicting more.
Laura Natoli-KearneyLaura Natoli-Kearney I am getting better at forgetting you. I am slowly but steadily learning the art of forgetting you.
Juana GarciaJuana Garcia Paper and pen petrify me, for they pierce right through me, drawing deep blue blood, leaving me utterly cold.
Shreya JoshiShreya Joshi Spend time with people who get excited over even the smallest victories you earn.
Sonia SabnisSonia Sabnis I wonder if you were the poison or the antidote.
Ginnie BaleGinnie Bale
Meet the writers
More on affinity
I have no affinity for animals. I don’t hate animals and I would never hurt an animal; I just don’t actively care about them.
Tina FeyTina Fey Competition between women is good only if it does not prevail; that is to say if it coexists with affinity, affection, with a real sense of being mutually indispensable, with sudden peaks of solidarity in spite of envy, jealousy and the whole inevitable cohort of bad feelings.
Elena FerranteElena Ferrante Love is the affinity which links and draws together the elements of the world… Love, in fact, is the agent of universal synthesis.
Pierre Teilhard de ChardinPierre Teilhard de Chardin