It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
But now his dry and silent grieving for his lost wife must end, for there she stood, the fierce, recalcitrant, and fragile stranger, forever to be won again.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the complexities of love and loss, highlighting the continual effort to reconnect with a loved one.
In this quote, Ursula K. Le Guin explores the emotional landscape of mourning and the enduring bond between partners, even after loss. The imagery of a 'fierce, recalcitrant, and fragile stranger' suggests that while the beloved has changed through absence, the effort to understand and reconnect with them remains vital and ongoing, emphasizing that love is an active pursuit requiring vulnerability and resilience.
In practice
In a eulogy, to express the enduring love for a lost spouse.
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
I think . . . I said things to Silas. He'll be angry.' 'If he didn't care about you, you couldn't upset him,' was all she said.
A constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages is a form of gay bashing and it would do nothing at all to protect traditional marriages.
We're trained to see only male or female and to plot people into those categories when they actually don't fit neatly at all. But if we pause, watch and listen closely we'll see the multiplicity of ways in which people are sexed and gendered. There exists a range of personal identifications around woman, man, in-between-we don't even have names or pronouns that reflect that in between place but people certainly live in it.
Marriage is one long conversation, chequered by disputes.
How true, how true" said the Sour Kangaroo, "And from now on, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm going to protect them with you!" And the Young Kangaroo in her pouch said "Me too!
Human relationships are rich and they're messy and they're demanding. And we clean them up with technology. Texting, email, posting, all of these things let us present the self as we want to be. We get to edit, and that means we get to delete, and that means we get to retouch, the face, the voice, the flesh, the body -- not too little, not too much, just right.
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