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Quotes from Tales from Earthsea — Ursula K. Le Guin

1929–2018 United States

← All quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin

21 quotes

How can people be anything but ignorant when knowledge isn’t saved, isn’t taught?

Tales from Earthsea (2001)

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.

Tales from Earthsea (2001)

Highdrake said that to make love is to unmake power.

Tales from Earthsea (2001)

The desire for power feeds off itself, growing as it devours.

Tales from Earthsea (2001)

It’s a rare gift, to know where you need to be, before you’ve been to all the places you don’t need to be.

Tales from Earthsea (2001)

“The solution lies in secrecy,” said Medra. “But so does the problem.”

Tales from Earthsea (2001)

Injustice makes the rules, and courage breaks them.

Tales from Earthsea (2001)

What goes too long unchanged destroys itself.

Tales from Earthsea (2001)

There’s people all over these parts, and maybe beyond, who think, as you said, that nobody can be wise alone. So these people try to hold to each other.

Tales from Earthsea (2001)

Obsessed with tricking the girl, he had fallen into the trap he laid for her. Bitterly he recognised that he was always believing his own lies, caught in nets he had elaborately woven.

Tales from Earthsea (2001)

To which Silence of course made no reply, letting him hear what he had said and feel its foolishness thoroughly.

Tales from Earthsea (2001)

It was men’s ambitions, they said, that had perverted all the arts to ends of gain.

Tales from Earthsea (2001)

She knew it, but she did not want to know it.

Tales from Earthsea (2001)

There’s no way to use power for good.

Tales from Earthsea (2001)

O foolish writer. Now moves. Even in storytime, dreamtime, once-upon-a-time, now isn’t then.

Tales from Earthsea (2001)

Before the gods and after, always, are the streams. Caves, stones, hills. Trees. The earth. The darkness of the earth.

Tales from Earthsea (2001)

You’ll know what to say when the time comes. That’s the art, eh? What to say, and when to say it. And the rest is silence.

Tales from Earthsea (2001)

Maybe that’s what the Masters are afraid of. Maybe celibacy isn’t as necessary as the Rule of Roke teaches. Maybe it’s not a way of keeping the power pure, but of keeping the power to themselves.

Tales from Earthsea (2001)

Ignorant power is a bane!

Tales from Earthsea (2001)

All times are changing times, but ours is one of massive, rapid moral and mental transformation. Archetypes turn into millstones, large simplicities get complicated, chaos becomes elegant, and what everybody knows is true turns out to be what some people used to think.

Tales from Earthsea (2001)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Ursula K. Le Guin (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.