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 decided that it was no good asking what is the meaning of life, because life isn't an answer, life is the question, and you, yourself, are the answer.
Interpretation
Life is not about finding answers, but about exploring questions, with personal understanding being key.
This quote by Ursula K. Le Guin reflects the idea that life should not be approached as a series of questions seeking definitive answers. Instead, it emphasizes that the essence of life involves questioning and the personal journey of understanding oneself, suggesting that each individual has the potential to find their own meaning and truth through their experiences.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal growth, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of self-discovery.
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
Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born --a hundred million years --and I have suffered more in an hour, in this life, than I remember to have suffered in the whole hundred million years put together.
God is not something I think about but something I experience as an energy, a Presence. I do find it easier to pray to a female Presence or an androgynous Presence.
The true life is not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever.
There is no real evil in life, except great pain; all the rest is imaginary, and depends on the light in which we view things
Philosophy attempts, not to discover new truths about the world, but to gain a clear view of what we already know and believe about it. That depends upon attaining a more explicit grasp of the structure of our thoughts; and that in turn on discovering how to give a systematic account of the working of language, the medium in which we express our thoughts.
Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.
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