It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
Love's just one of the ways through, and it can go wrong, and miss. Pain never misses. But therefore we don't have much choice about enduring it! We will, whether we want to or not.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Love can lead to both joy and pain, and while we cannot avoid pain, we must choose how to endure it.
In this quote, Ursula K. Le Guin highlights the dual nature of love and pain in human experience. Love is presented as a pathway that is filled with potential for both happiness and disappointment, implying that while one's affection may not always succeed, pain is an inevitable part of life that one must learn to endure. The quote emphasizes that suffering is unavoidable and that our response to it is a choice we have to make, suggesting resilience in the face of life's challenges.
Themes
LovePainEnduranceSufferingLife
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech about relationships, one might use this quote to illustrate the complexities of love.
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
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.
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
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