It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Books help us explore our identity and understand ourselves through the experiences of others.
This quote by Ursula K. Le Guin emphasizes the role of literature in personal development and self-discovery. By engaging with the thoughts, feelings, and actions of characters—whether real or imagined—we gain insight into our own identities and potentials. Books serve as a mirror, reflecting our inner selves and guiding us in shaping who we might become.
Themes
BooksIdentitySelf-DiscoveryUnderstandingLiterature
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture about personal growth, one could quote this to highlight the importance of reading.
More from Ursula K. Le Guin
All quotes →In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we're done with it, we may find - if it's a good novel - that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have changed a little... But it's very hard to say just what we learned, how we were changed.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
Reason is a faculty far larger than mere objective force. When either the political or the scientific discourse announces itself as the voice of reason, it is playing God, and should be spanked and stood in the corner.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
When he found that the administrators were upset, he laughed. “Do they expect students not to be anarchists?” he said. “What else can the young be? When you are on the bottom, you must organize from the bottom up
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
The creative adult is the child who has survived.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
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God be thanked for books; they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.
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