It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
I believe that maturity is not an outgrowing, but a growing up: that an adult is not a dead child, but a child who survived. I believe that all the best faculties of a mature human being exist in the child. . . that one of the most deeply human, and humane, of these faculties is the power of imagination.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Maturity is a process of growth rather than simply aging, and it retains the qualities of childhood, especially imagination.
In this quote, Ursula K. Le Guin conveys the idea that maturity is not merely a matter of aging and accumulating life experiences; rather, it is an ongoing process of growth that maintains the essence of childhood. She emphasizes that adults carry within them the imaginative abilities and unique perspectives of their younger selves, highlighting the importance of creativity and imagination as key aspects of what it means to be truly human.
Themes
MaturityImaginationGrowthChildhoodHumanity
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about personal development during a workshop.
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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