It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
They can send death at once, but life is slower.
Interpretation
Life unfolds gradually while death can come suddenly.
Ursula K. Le Guin's quote reflects on the nature of life and death, emphasizing that the experience of living is often prolonged, filled with complexities and nuances, whereas death can strike abruptly and without warning. This highlights a fundamental truth about human existence, where the journey of life is intricate and layered, contrasting with the simplicity and immediacy of death.
In practice
In a speech about the resilience of the human spirit, this quote can illustrate the gradual journey of overcoming challenges.
It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
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.
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.
The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.
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.
When he found that the administrators were upset, he laughed. βDo they expect students not to be anarchists?β he said. βWhat else can the young be? When you are on the bottom, you must organize from the bottom up
We believe that civilization has been created under the pressure of the exigencies of life at the cost of satisfaction of the instincts.
No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades, that of government.
Faith and Reason are like two wings of the human spirit by which is soars to the truth.
β¦ people didn't seem to be able to remember what it was like with the elves around. Life was certainly more interesting then, but usually because it was shorter. And it was more colorful, if you liked the color of blood.
The only certainty is that nothing is certain.
Truth, for any man, is that which makes him a man.
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