Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore
20 quotes
"He said after a little while, 'I see why you say that only men do evil, I think. Even sharks are innocent, they kill because they must.' 'That is why nothing can resist us. Only one thing in the worl can resist an evil-hearted man. And that is another man. In our shame is our glory. Only our spirit, which is capable of evil, is capable of overcoming it."
"Life rises out of death, death rises out of life; in being opposite they yearn to each other, they give birth to each other and are forever reborn. And with them, all is reborn, the flower of the apple tree, the light of the stars. In life is death. In death is rebirth. What then is life without death? Life unchanging, everlasting, eternal?-What is it but death-death without rebirth?"
"Death and life are the same thing-like the two sides of my hand, the palm and the back. And still the palm and the back are not the same...They can be neither separated, nor mixed."
"You fear them because you fear death, and rightly: for death is terrible and must be feared,' the mage said...'And life is also a terrible thing,' Ged said, 'and must be feared and praised."
"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... That selfhood which is our torment, and our treasure, and our humanity, does not endure. It changes; it is gone, a wave on the sea. Would you have the sea grow still and the tides cease, to save one wave, to save yourself?"
"I use your love as a man burns a candle, burns it away, to light his steps."
"Stealthily the stars slid forward into nothingness."
"For discipline is the channel in which our acts run strong and deep; where there is no direction, the deeds of men run shallow and wander and are wasted."
"Would you give up the craft of your hands, and the passion of your heart, and the hunger of your mind, to buy safety?"
"A man does not make his destiny: he accepts it or denies it."
"If the rowan's roots are shallow, it bears no crown."
"No man, no power, can bind the action of wizardry or still the words of power. For they are the very words of Making, and one who could silence them could unmake the world."
"There must be darkness to see the stars."
"I am tired of safe places, and roofs, and walls around me."
"What is evil?" asked the younger man. The round web, with its black center, seemed to watch them both. "A web we men weave." Ged answered."
"Do you see, Arren, how an act is not, as young men think, like a rock that one picks up and throws, and it hits or misses, and that's the end of it. When that rock is lifted, the earth is lighter; the hand that bears it is heavier. When it is thrown, the circuits of the stars respond, and where it strikes or falls the universe is changed."
"Try to choose carefully, Arren, when the great choices must be made. {...} But each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you may stop and simply be."
"And though I came to forget or regret all I have ever done, yet I would remember that once I saw the dragons aloft on the wind at sunset above the western isles; and I would be content."
"We men dream dreams, we work magic, we do good, we do evil. The dragons do not dream. They are dreams. They do not work magic: it is their substance, their being. They do not do; they are."
"Life rises out of death, death rises out of life, in being opposite they yearn to each other, they give birth to each other and are forever reborn. And with them all is reborn, the flower of the apple tree, the light of the stars."