To claim power over what you do not understand is not wise, nor is the end of it likely to be good.
URSULA K. LE GUINEvery book purchase made from Amazon is a vote for a culture without content and without contentment.
More Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes
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The delight of the nursing mother, of the scholar, of the successful hunter, of the good cook, of the skilful maker, of anyone doing needed work and doing it well, – this durable joy is perhaps the deepest source of human affection and of sociality as a whole.
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It doesn’t have to be plugged in, activated, or performed by a machine; all it needs is light, a human eye, and a human mind. It is not one of a kind, and it is not ephemeral. It lasts. It is reliable.
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Hate gets going, it goes round, it gets older and tighter and older and tighter, until it holds a person inside it like a fist holds a stick.
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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.
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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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We’re each of us alone, to be sure. What can you do but hold your hand out in the dark?
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You have made it into a thing, to which the only possible relationship is a power relationship. And thus you have fatally impoverished your own reality.
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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.
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If you evade suffering you also evade the chance of joy. Pleasure you may get, or pleasures, but you will not be fulfilled. You will not know what it is to come home.
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The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men’s eyes.
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I never knew anybody . . . who found life simple. I think a life or a time looks simple when you leave out the details.
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I had forgotten how much light there is in the world, till you gave it back to me.
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What is the other text, the original? I have no answer. I suppose it is the source, the deep sea where ideas swim, and one catches them in nets of words and swings them shining into the boat… where in this metaphor they die and get canned and eaten in sandwiches.
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Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like anything else.
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The worst walls are never the ones you find in your way. The worst walls are the ones you put there .
URSULA K. LE GUIN