Ursula Shipton Quotes

For storms will rage and oceans roar,
When Gabriel stands on sea and shore,
And as he blows his wondrous horn,
Old worlds die and new be born. ~ Deborah Harkness

As a child in Atuan, Tenar had learned how to learn. There seemed always to be a great deal to be learned, more than she would have believed when she was a prentice-priestess or the pupil of a mage. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

No, I don't understand him, but he is worth listening to. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Children know perfectly well that unicorns aren't real, but they also know that books about unicorns, if they are good books, are true books. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

A dangerous book will always be in danger from those it threatens with the demand that they question their assumptions. They'd rather hang on to the assumptions and ban the book. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

He was appalled by the examination system, when it was explained to him, he could not imagine a greater detterent to the natural wish to learn than this pattern of cramming in information and disgorging it on demand. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Okay. Morality in a nutshell. Don't hurt people if you can avoid it. Don't steal stuff unless you're starving or it's really, really important. Work hard. Pay your bills. Try to help others. Always double-check your math if there are explosives involved. If you screwed it up, you need to see it gets fixed. And don't eat anything that talks. If it doesn't fall under one of those categories, just do the best you can. ~ Ursula Vernon

If you can't lick'em, join'em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight , to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

As I've progressed in my career, I've come to appreciate - and really value - the other attributes that define a company's success beyond the P&L: great leadership, long-term financial strength, ethical business practices, evolving business strategies, sound governance, powerful brands, values-based decision-making. ~ Ursula Burns

I withdraw my consent from reality. I deny it my assistance. I dedicate myself to the temptations of escapism, and throw myself wholeheartedly into the endlessness of unreality. ~ Ursula Poznanski

Everything gives way before the recurring torment and festivity of passion. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Ours is only a little power, seems like, next to theirs," Moss said. "But it goes down deep. It's all roots. It's like an old blackberry thicket. And a wizard's power's like a fir tree, maybe, great and tall and grand, but it'll blow right down in a storm. Nothing kills a blackberry bramble. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

We cannot turn away," Miss Woolf told her, "we must get on with our job and we must bear witness." What did that mean, Ursula wondered. "It means," Miss Woolf said, "that we must remember these people when we are safely in the future."
"And if we are killed?"
"Then others must remember us. ~ Kate Atkinson

He was one whose power was akin to, and as strong as, the Old Powers of the earth; one who talked with dragons, and held off earthquakes with his word. And there he lay asleep on the dirt, with a little thistle growing by his hand. It was very strange. Living, being in the world, was a much greater and stranger thing than she had ever dreamed. The glory of the sky touched his dusty hair, and turned the thistle gold for a little while. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

It is our suffering that brings us together. It is not love. Love does not obey the mind, and turns to hate when forced. The bond that binds us is beyond choice. We are brothers. We are brothers in what we share. In pain, which each of us must suffer alone, in hunger, in poverty, in hope, we know our brotherhood. We know it, because we have had to learn it. We know that there is no help for us but from one another, that no hand will save us if we do not reach out our hand. And the hand that you reach out is empty, as mine is. You have nothing. You possess nothing. You own nothing. You are free. All you have is what you are, and what you give. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Early humans, bursting with questions about Nature but with limited understanding of its dynamics, explained things in terms of supernatural persons and person-animals who delivered the droughts and floods and plagues ... ~ Ursula Goodenough

Besides, when you say you're a feminist it annoys the bigots and the old farts and the prissy ladies so much, it's kind of irresistible. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

They argued because they liked argument, liked the swift run of the unfettered mind along the paths of possibility, liked to question what was not questioned. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

I didn't see Dr. No for a year, but I liked it when I saw it. It was a fun movie. I don't like the Bond movies now. I hate special effects. ~ Ursula Andress

Never fear. It is much easier for men to act than to refrain from
acting. We will continue to do good and to do evil... But if there were
a king over us all again and he sought counsel of a mage, as in the
days of old, and I were that mage, I would say to him: My lord, 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

But the death of a great mage, who has many times in his life walked on the dry steep hillsides of death's kingdom, is a strange matter: for the dying man goes not blindly, but surely, knowing the way. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

You sit down and you do it, and you do it, and you do it, until you have learned to do it. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Art is craft: all art is always and essentially a work of craft: but in the true work of art, before the craft and after it, is some essential durable core of being, which is what the craft works on, and shows, and sets free. The statue in the stone. How does the artist find that, see it, before it's visible? That is a real question. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Life from nonlife, like wine from water, has long been considered a miracle wrought by gods or God. Now it is seen to be the near-inevitable consequence of our thermal and chemical circumstances. ~ Ursula Goodenough

I've got some gift for languages. You follow your gift. But Latin's not easy. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

The last time Wendell's mother had caught them playing cowboys and Indians, she'd read them a twenty-minute lecture on the history of Native American oppression, which had really put a damper on things. It was hard to have a thrilling shoot-out while yelling: 'I respect your position and hope that we can come to a mutually respectful conclusion! ~ Ursula Vernon

To use the enemy's weapon is to play the enemy's game ... speak the truth and hear the truth. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Orr slept. He dreamed. There was no rub. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

We are all contingent. Resentment is foolish and ungenerous, and even anger is inadequate. I am a fleck of light on the surface of the sea, a glint of light from the evening star. I live in awe. If I never lived at all, yet I am a silent wing on the wind, a bodiless voice in the forest of Albunea. I speak, but all I can say is: Go, go on. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

She thought about how it was to have been a woman in the prime of life, with children and a man, and then to lose all that, becoming old and a widow, powerless. But even so she did not feel she understood his shame, his agony of humiliation. Perhaps only a man could feel so. A woman got used to shame. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

And I needed a rock. Something to hold onto, to stand on. Something solid. Because everything was going soft, turning into mush, into marsh, into fog. Fog closing in on all sides. I didn't know where I was at all. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

They preserved autonomy of conscience even at the cost of becoming eccentric. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

The unconscious mind is coextensive with the universe. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Heaven and earth
begin in the unnamed:
name's the mother
of the ten thousand things. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Shevek, meeting her eyes, knew that he had committed an unforgivable fault in forgetting her and, ... ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Belief in the lie is the life of the lie. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Wealth, status, pride, are their own ruin. To do good, work well, and lie low is the way of the blessing. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Dead anarchists make martyrs, you know, and keep living for centuries. But absent ones can be forgotten. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

The world is full of opportunities - every day there's something new that you can do. For example, you could make dirty water potable. Why does anyone not have potable water? Because it's a problem that hasn't been solved yet, but it can be. ~ Ursula Burns

Our model of the cosmos must be as inexhaustible as the cosmos. A complexity that includes not only duration but creation, not only being but becoming, not only geometry but ethics. It is not the answer we are after, but only how to ask the question. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city. Omelas, bright-towered by the sea. The rigging of the boats in harbor sparkled with flags. In the streets between houses with red roofs and painted walls, between old moss-grown gardens and under avenues of trees, past great parks and public buildings, processions moved. Some were decorous: old people in long stiff robes of mauve and grey, grave master workmen, quiet, merry women carrying their babies and chatting as they walked. In other streets the music beat faster, a shimmering of gong and tambourine, and the people went dancing, the procession was a dance. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin