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The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.

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
Rather
Admit
Pendants
Evil
Intellectual
Pedants
Pain
Habit
Banality
Artist
Terrible
Treason
Something
Stupid
Refusal
Trouble
Encouraged
Interesting
Considering
Happiness
Boredom

More quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin

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I have never heard a dancer asking for advice about how to stay focused on her footwork, or a painter complaining about the dull day-to-day task of painting. What task worth doing isn't worth daily effort? Do you think Michelangelo was having fun the whole time he was on his back painting the Sistine Chapel's ceiling?
Ursula K. Le Guin
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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.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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The danger in trying to do good is that the mind comes to confuse the intent of goodness with the act of doing things well.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Dead anarchists make martyrs, you know, and keep living for centuries. But absent ones can be forgotten.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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One man may as easily destroy, as govern: be King or Anti-King.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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The explorer who will not come back or send back his ships to tell his tale is not an explorer, only an adventurer and his sons are born in exile.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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To be oneself is a rare thing, and a great one.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Well, the secret to writing is writing. It's only a secret to people who don't want to hear it. Writing is how you be a writer.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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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.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Claude Levi-Strauss has been a great source of fruitful irritation to my mind.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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One must work with time and not against it.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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There are two kinds of knowledge, local and universal.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable - but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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And I speak of spiritual suffering! Of people seeing their talent, their work, their lives wasted. Of good minds submitting to stupid ones. Of strength and courage strangled by envy, greed for power, fear of change. Change is freedom, change is life
Ursula K. Le Guin
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The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel. The rabbit shrieks dying in the green meadows. The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men's eyes.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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It is a real wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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The counsel of the dead is not profitable to the living.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Do nothing because it is righteous or praiseworthy or noble to do so do nothing because it seems good to do so do only that which you must do and which you cannot do in any other way.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Dragons are more dangerous, and a good deal commoner, than bears. Fantasy is nearer to poetry, to mysticism, and to insanity than naturalistic fiction is. It is a real wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe.
Ursula K. Le Guin