It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
A profound love between two people involves, after all, the power and chance of doing profound hurt.
Interpretation
Deep love carries the risk of causing significant emotional pain.
Ursula K. Le Guin highlights that a profound love between two individuals is not merely a source of joy and connection; it also comes with the potential for deep emotional injury. The intensity of love means that the actions and words of loved ones can have greater impacts, for better or worse, emphasizing the complexity of intimate relationships.
In practice
During a speech about the complexities of relationships.
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
SHE is neither pink nor pale, And she never will be all mine; She learned her hands in a fairy-tale, And her mouth on a valentine. She has more hair than she needs; In the sun βtis a woe to me! And her voice is a string of colored beads, Or steps leading into the sea. She loves me all that she can, And her ways to my ways resign; But she was not made for any man, And she never will be all mine.
What I write comes from a place of deep love, and a deep understanding of all kinds of otherness.
You have to wait together - for a week, for a year, for a lifetime, before the final intimate conversation may be attained ... and exhausted. So that ... That in effect was love.
I'll make my heaven in a lady's lap
For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, so shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.
Through your love for each other, through learning the art of making one person happy, you learn to express your love for the whole of humanity and all beings. Please help us develop the curriculum for the Institute for the Happiness of One Person. Don't wait until we open the school. You can begin practicing right away.
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