Quote

If you see a whole thing - it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives... But up close a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern.

Ursula K. Le Guin

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Ursula K. Le Guin
Age: 88 †
Born: 1929
Born: October 21
Died: 2018
Died: January 22
Author
Feminist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Poet
Prosaist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Translator
Writer
Berkeley
California
Ursula Kroeber
Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
Hard
Lose
Thing
Loses
Dirt
Always
Wisdom
Pattern
Life
Lives
Patterns
World
Jobs
Planets
Beautiful
Tired
Seems
Rocks
Whole
Close

More quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin

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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.
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If eternity had a season, it would be midsummer. Autumn, winter, spring are all change and passage, but at the height of summer the year stands poised. It's only a passing moment, but even as it passes the heart knows it cannot change.
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When action grows unprofitable, gather information when information grows unprofitable, sleep.
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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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Having one king, one god, one belief, they can act single-mindedly.
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The old knowledge had been difficult but not distressing. It had been all paradox and myth, and it had made sense. The new knowledge was all fact and reason, and it made no sense.
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This is. And thou art. There is no safety. There is no end. The word must be heard in silence. There must be darkness to see the stars. The dance is always danced above the hollow place, above the terrible abyss.
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But you must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard's power of Changing and Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power...It must follow knowledge, and serve need.
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Statesmen remember things selectively.
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There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.
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A man wants his virility regarded. A woman wants her femininity appreciated, however indirect and subtle the indications of regard and appreciation. [Here] one is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience.
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Success is somebody else's failure.
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If a book told you something when you were fifteen, it will tell you it again when you're fifty, though you may understand it so differently that it seems you're reading a whole new book.
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All makers must leave room for the acts of the spirit. But they have to work hard and carefully, and wait patiently, to deserve them.
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It is very hard for evil to take hold of the unconsenting soul.
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You can’t crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them. By refusing to think, refusing to change.
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My great-aunt. . . . said nobody under 18 had any business reading Dickens. . . . She was right.
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No darkness lasts forever. And even there, there are stars.
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I do not care what comes after I have seen the dragons on the wind of morning.
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The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty not knowing what comes next.
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