Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes

538 quotes · Author, Poet, Essayist

Page 20 of 45

Ursula K. Le Guin Quotes

All Philosophical Creative Angry Wise Spiritual 538 quotes · page 20 of 45

Ursula K. Le Guin

Author, Poet, Essayist

Spiritual

“In the airport, luggage-laden people rush hither and yon through endless corridors, like souls to each of whom the devil has furnished a different, inaccurate map of the escape route from hell.”

People Soul Airports

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Ursula K. Le Guin

Author, Poet, Essayist

Philosophical

“I believe that all novels, ... deal with character, and that it is to express character – not to preach doctrines, sing songs, or celebrate the glories of the British Empire, that the form of the novel, so clumsy, verbose, and undramatic, so rich, elastic, and alive, has been evolved ... The great novelists have brought us to see whatever they wish us to see through some character. Otherwise they would not be novelists, but poet, historians, or pamphleteers.”

Believe Character Song

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Courageous

“A man does not make his destiny: he accepts it or denies it.”

Men Fate Destiny

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Wise

“First sentences are doors to worlds.”

World Firsts

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Grateful

“To have a choice at all is to be privileged.”

Choices Privileged

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Courageous

“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...There is no strength to be gained from hurting one another. Only weakness.”

Law Hurt Peace

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Courageous

“Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it.”

May Light Choices Made

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Regretful

“Civilized Man says: I am Self, I am Master, all the rest is other--outside, below, underneath, subservient. I own, I use, I explore, I exploit, I control. What I do is what matters. What I want is what matter is for. I am that I am, and the rest is women & wilderness, to be used as I see fit.”

Men Self What Matters

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Philosophical

“The reason literacy is important is that literature is the operating instructions. The best manual we have. The most useful guide to the country we're visiting, life.”

Country Important Reading

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Spiritual

“Animals do neither good nor evil. They do as they must do.We may call what they do harmful or useful, but good and evil belong to us, who chose to choose what we do. [. . .] The animals need only be and do.We're yoked, and they're free. So to be with an animal is to know a little freedom.”

Needs Animal Evil

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Philosophical

“In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we're done with it, we may find - if it's a good novel - that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have changed a little... But it's very hard to say just what we learned, how we were changed.”

Believe Different Reading

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Philosophical

“The search for pleasure is circular, repetitive, atemporal. The variety seeking of the spectator, the thrill hunter, the sexually promiscuous, always ends in the same place. It has an end. It comes to the end and has to start over. It is not a journey and return, but a closed cycle, a locked room, a cell.”

Journey Cells Starting Over

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