245 quotes
In fact, the Veksi resolutely ignore visitors from other planes, considering them to be the impotent and evil-smelling ghosts of dead enemies who will go away if no attention at all is paid to them. This has generally proved to be true.
Changing Planes (2003)
All or nothing at all, the true lover says, and that’s the truth of it. My love will never die, he says. He claims eternity. And rightly. How can it die when it’s life itself? What do we know of eternity but the glimpse we get of it when we enter in that bond?
The Other Wind (2001)
And the rest, all the rest. All the days and lights and winds and years that would have been, and that would not be, that should be and were not, because he was dead. Shot dead on the road, in the wind, at twenty-one. His mountains unclimbed, never to be climbed.
The Eye of the Heron (1978)
I talk about the gods; I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.
The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
Ignorant power is a bane!
Tales from Earthsea (2001)
Those were men in whom great strength and knowledge served the will to evil and fed upon it. Whether the wizardry that serves a better end may always prove the stronger, we do not know. We hope.
The Farthest Shore (1972)
What is one man's and one woman's love and desire, against the history of two worlds, the greatest revolution of our lifetimes, the hope, the unending cruelty of our species? A little thing. But a key is a little thing, next to the door it opens.
Four Ways to Forgiveness (1995)
If you cannot or will not imagine the results of your actions, there's no way you can act morally or responsibly. Little kids can't do it; babies are morally monsters—completely greedy. Their imagination has to be trained into foresight and empathy.
To me the “female principle” is, or at least historically has been, basically anarchic. It values order without constraint, rule by custom not by force. It has been the male who enforces order, who constructs power structures, who makes, enforces, and breaks laws.
Dancing at the Edge of the World (1989)
And I wondered, not for the first time, what patriotism is, what the love of country truly consists of, how that yearning loyalty that had shaken my friend’s voice arises, and how so real a love can become, too often, so foolish and vile a bigotry. Where does it go wrong?
The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
I haven't any strength, I haven't any character, I'm a born tool. I haven't any destiny. All I have is dreams. And now other people run them.
The Lathe of Heaven (1971)
"Aye. Like knows like, sister"
The Farthest Shore (1972)
To hear, one must be silent.
A Wizard of Earthsea (1968)
Go to bed; tired is stupid.
A Wizard of Earthsea (1968)
By such literalism, fundamentalism, religions betrayed the best intentions of their founders. Reducing thought to formula, replacing choice by obedience, these preachers turned the living word into dead law.
The Telling (2000)
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 is most perilous. It must follow knowledge, and serve need. To light a candle is to cast a shadow.
A Wizard of Earthsea (1968)
Some dreams tell us what we wish to believe. Some dreams tell us what we fear. Some dreams are of what we know though we may not know we knew it. The rarest dream is the dream that tells us what we have not known.
Changing Planes (2003)
What would that be, a world without war? It would be the real world. Peace was the true life, the life of working and learning and bringing up children to work and learn. War, which devoured work, learning, and children, was the denial of reality.
Four Ways to Forgiveness (1995)
A man wants his virility regarded, a woman wants her femininity appreciated, however indirect and subtle the indications of regard and appreciation. On Winter they will not exist. One is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience.
The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
It did not matter, after all. He was only one man. One man’s fate is not important.
“If it is not, what is?”
He could not endure those remembered words.
Rocannon’s World (1966)