Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Ursula K. Le Guin

Quote by Ursula K. Le Guin

“Hope is a slighter, tougher thing even than trust, he thought, pacing his room as the soundless, vague lightning flashed overhead. In a good season one trusts life; in a bad season one only hopes. But they are of the same essence: they are the mind's indispensable relationship with other minds, with the world, and with time. Without trust, a man lives, but not a human life; without hope, he dies.”

Quote by Ursula K. Le Guin

Work

City of Illusions

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Ursula K. Le Guin
Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin, born on October 21, 1929, is an esteemed American author of science fiction and fantasy. Known for her profound philosophical insights, rich imagination, and unique narrative style, Le Guin's works have won numerous literary awards and have had a significant impact on science fiction and fantasy literature. Her most famous works include the 'Earthsea' series and 'The Left Hand of Darkness', which have won her awards such as the Nebula and Hugo Awards, and she has also received the National Book Award for lifetime achievement for her contributions to literature. more

You May Also Like

“I say, I can not identify that thing which is called happiness, that thing whose token is a laugh, or a smile, or a silent serenity on the lip. I may have been happy, but it is not in my conscious memory now. Nor do I feel a longing for it, as though I had never had it; my spirit seeks different food from happiness, for I think I have a suspicion of what it is. I have suffered wretchedness, but not because of the absence of happiness, and without praying for happiness. I pray for peace -- for motionlessness -- for the feeling of myself, as of some plant, absorbing life without seeking it, and existing without individual sensation. I feel that there can be no perfect peace in individualness. Therefore, I hope one day to feel myself drank up into the pervading spirit animating all things. I feel I am an exile here. I still go straying.”

“I feel a resurgence of my 6-year-old self… that little warrior, goddess of a girl reminding me of who I was when I was little, before the world got its hands on me.”

“The disruption of the anticipated American future that was simply to have unrolled out of the solid American past, out of each generation’s getting smartersmarter for knowing the inadequacies and limitations of the generations beforeout of each new generation’s breaking away from the parochialism a little further, out of the desire to go the limit in America with your rights, forming yourself as an ideal person who gets rid of the traditional Jewish habits and attitudes, who frees himself of the pre-America insecurities and the old, constraining obsessions so as to live unapologetically as an equal among equals.”

“America is The Warning (Sonnet) Finally America has fallen, it's a great day for the human race, now that the american dream is infected, it's a golden occasion for earth upliftment. Uncle Sam has contracted something nasty, nothing surprising, it's long time coming; the time has never been more immaculate, for actual human cultures and civilizations to dream beyond the monkeys of silicon valley. It's a golden age of decolonization, time to rescue your mind from the parasites; it's time for great rejoicing, now that the land of plague has lost its marbles - fall of America is a blessing for humankind. West never had culture to begin with, neither Washington nor Rome or Buck House - when parasites bury themselves in castles, light of the human engulf the world around.”