Quotes from A Wizard of Earthsea

“It is very hard for evil to take hold of the unconsenting soul.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from A Wizard of Earthsea

“But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from A Wizard of Earthsea

“To light a candle is to cast a shadow...”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from A Wizard of Earthsea

“I had forgotten how much light there is in the world, till you gave it back to me.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from A Wizard of Earthsea

“Go to bed; tired is stupid.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from A Wizard of Earthsea

“From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from A Wizard of Earthsea

“You thought, as a boy, that a mage is one who can do anything. So I thought, once. So did we all. And the truth is that as a man's real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he *must *do . . .”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from A Wizard of Earthsea

“But need alone is not enough to set power free: there must be knowledge.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from A Wizard of Earthsea

“It is no secret. All power is one in source and end, I think. Years and distances, stars and candles, water and wind and wizardry, the craft in a man's hand and the wisdom in a tree's root: they all arise together. My name, and yours, and the true name of the sun, or a spring of water, or an unborn child, all are syllables of the great word that is very slowly spoken by the shining of the stars. There is no other power. No other name.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from A Wizard of Earthsea

“He knew now, and the knowledge was hard, that his task had never been to undo what he had done, but to finish what he had begun.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from A Wizard of Earthsea

“What good is power when you're too wise to use it?”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from A Wizard of Earthsea

“In that moment Ged understood the singing of the bird, and the language of the water falling in the basin of the fountain, and the shape of the clouds, and the beginning and end of the wind that stirred the leaves; it seemed to him that he himself was a word spoken by the sunlight.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from A Wizard of Earthsea

“But 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 must follow knowledge, and serve need.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from A Wizard of Earthsea

“Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life: bright the hawk's flight on the empty sky.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from A Wizard of Earthsea

“A man would know the end he goes to, but he cannot know it if he does not turn, and return to his beginning, and hold that beginning in his being. If he would not be a stick whirled and whelmed in the stream, he must be the stream itself, all of it, from its spring to its sinking in the sea.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from A Wizard of Earthsea

“Who knows a man's name, holds that man's life in his keeping. Thus to Ged, who had lost faith in himself, Vetch had given him that gift that only a friend can give, the proof of unshaken, unshakeable trust.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from A Wizard of Earthsea

“War as a moral metaphor is limited, limiting, and dangerous. By reducing the choices of action to “a war against” whatever-it-is, you divide the world into Me or Us (good) and Them or It (bad) and reduce the ethical complexity and moral richness of our life to Yes/No, On/Off. This is puerile, misleading, and degrading. In stories, it evades any solution but violence and offers the reader mere infantile reassurance. All too often the heroes of such fantasies behave exactly as the villains do, acting with mindless violence, but the hero is on the “right” side and therefore will win. Right makes might.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from A Wizard of Earthsea

“Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life's sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from A Wizard of Earthsea

“The wise needn't ask, the fool asks in vain.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from A Wizard of Earthsea

“A rock is a good thing, too, you know. If the Isles of Earthsea were all made of diamond, we'd lead a hard life here. Enjoy the illusions, lad, and let the rocks be rocks.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from A Wizard of Earthsea

“War as a moral metaphor is limited, limiting, and dangerous. By reducing the choices of action to “a war against” whatever-it-is, you divide the world into Me or Us (good) and Them or It (bad) and reduce the ethical complexity and moral richness of our life to Yes/No, On/Off.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from A Wizard of Earthsea

“Manhood is patience. Mastery is nine time patience”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from A Wizard of Earthsea

“Later, when Ged thought back upon that night, he knew that had none touched him when he lay thus spirit-lost, had none called him back in some way, he might have been lost for good. It was only the dumb instinctive wisdom of the beast who licks his hurt companion to comfort him, and yet in that wisdom Ged saw something akin to his own power, something that went as deep as wizardry. From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from A Wizard of Earthsea

“That is between me and my shadow.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from A Wizard of Earthsea

“Yet a greater, unlearned skill he possessed, which was the art of kindness.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from A Wizard of Earthsea

“Now they came back to him, on this night he was seventeen years old. All the years and places of his brief broken life came within mind's reach and made a whole again. He knew once more, at last, after this long, bitter, waisted time, who he was and where he was. But where he must go in the years to come, that he could not see; and he feared to see it. ”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from A Wizard of Earthsea

“Infinite are the arguments of mages,”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from A Wizard of Earthsea

“I was with you at the beginning of your journey. It is right that I should follow you to its end.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from A Wizard of Earthsea

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

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