Br Le Quotes & Sayings

The Plot Against The Giant

First Girl
When this yokel comes maundering,
Whetting his hacker,
I shall run before him,
Diffusing the civilest odors
Out of geraniums and unsmelled flowers.
It will check him.

Second Girl
I shall run before him,
Arching cloths besprinkled with colors
As small as fish-eggs.
The threads
Will abash him.

Third Girl
Oh, la...le pauvre!
I shall run before him,
With a curious puffing.
He will bend his ear then.
I shall whisper
Heavenly labials in a world of gutturals.
It will undo him. — Wallace Stevens

Do you want it flowery or straight.'
She bites her lip. ' Straight.'
'I wanted to fuck you senseless from the moment our eyes met.'
'And the flowery version?'
'Now I think about it, there is no flowery version. It is what it is. — Georgia Le Carre

Dearest, your little heart is wounded; think me not cruel because I obey the irresistible law of my strength and weakness; if your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours. In the rapture of my enormous humiliation I live in your warm life, and you shall die
die, sweetly die
into mine. I cannot help it; as I draw near to you, you, in your turn, will draw near to others, and learn the rapture of that cruelty, which yet is love; so, for a while, seek to know no more of me and mine, but trust me with all your loving spirit. — J. Sheridan Le Fanu

Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying.
The weather bureau will tell you what next Tuesday will be like, and the Rand Corporation will tell you what the twenty-first century will be like. I don't recommend that you turn to the writers of fiction for such information. It's none of their business. All they're trying to do is tell you what they're like, and what you're like
what's going on
what the weather is now, today, this moment, the rain, the sunlight, look! Open your eyes; listen, listen. That is what the novelists say. But they don't tell you what you will see and hear. All they can tell you is what they have seen and heard, in their time in this world, a third of it spent in sleep and dreaming another third of it spent in telling lies. [Introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness] — Ursula K. Le Guin

KERRYANNE: Well, if I'm so spectacular why did my husband leave me for her?"
KURT: (Poor baby.) Because he's a weak *ssh*le, and you were way too much woman for him. — Jordan Silver

She could not have been born gray. Her
color, her color of brown, was an essential part of her, not an accident. Her anger, timidity, brashness, gentleness, all were elements of her mixed being, her mixed
nature, dark and clear right through, like Baltic amber. She could not exist in the gray people's world. She had not been born. — Ursula K. Le Guin

In Enlad," said Arren after a while, "we have a story about the boy whose schoolmaster
was a stone:'
"Aye? ... What did he learn?"
"Not to ask questions. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Our souls are old,
often used before.
The knife outlasts
the hand that holds it. — Ursula K. Le Guin

From the primary school till he leaves the
university a young man does nothing but acquire books by heart without his
judgment or personal initiative being ever called into play. — Gustave Le Bon

Art makes murder into the supreme image of Beauty and in doing so sets free the vengeful God. (referring to Jean Lorrain's LE VICE ERRANT)
— Jennifer Birkett

Well," he said slowly, "sometimes there's a passion that comes in its springtime to ill fate or death. And because it ends in its beauty, it's what the harpers sing of and the poets make stories of: the love that escapes the years ...
"All or nothing, the true lover says, and that's the truth of it. My love will never die, he says. He claims eternity. And rightly. How can it die when it's life itself? What do we know of eternity but the glimpse we get of it when we enter in that bond? — Ursula K. Le Guin

But it doesn't take a thousand men to open a door, my lord."
"It might to keep it open. — Ursula K. Le Guin

It is the beginning of the end.
[Fr., C'est le commencement de al fin.] — Charles Maurice De Talleyrand

As for ideology, the Hell with it.
All of it. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Niko? I have decided to christen this little pool Le Cagot's Soul."
"Oh?"
"Yes. Because it is clear and pure and lucid."
"And treacherous and dangerous?"
"You know, Niko, I begin to suspect that you are a man of prose. It is a blemish on you."
"No one's perfect."
"Speak for yourself. — Trevanian

The people are a story that never ends,
A river that winds and falls and gleams erect in many dawns;
Lost in deep gulleys, it turns to dust, rushes in the spring freshet,
Emerges to the sea. The people are a story that is a long incessant
Coming alive from the earth in better wheat, Percherons,
Babies, and engines, persistent and inevitable.
The people always know that some of the grain will be good,
Some of the crop will be saved, some will return and
Bear the strength of the kernel, that from the bloodiest year
Some survive to outfox the frost. — Meridel Le Sueur

I saw that you can't do anything for anybody. We can't save each other. Or ourselves."
"What have you left, then? Isolation and despair! You're denying brotherhood, Shevek!" the tall girl cried.
"No - no, I'm not. I'm trying to say what I think brotherhood really is. It begins - it begins in shared pain. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Lifting his head, he whispered against her wet, throbbing lips, "Too much?"
Wasn't that sweet,
Consider even.
But oh, hell no.
She gasped, "Not enough. — Thea Harrison

Who do you think is lying to us?" Shevek demanded.
Placid, Bedap met his gaze. "Who, brother? Who but ourselves? — Ursula K. Le Guin

And to this hour the image of Carmilla returns to mind with ambiguous alterations
sometimes the playful, languid, beautiful girl; sometimes the writhing fiend I saw in the ruined church; and often from a reverie I have started, fancying I heard the light step of Carmilla at the drawing room door. — J. Sheridan Le Fanu

Hasten slowly, and without losing heart, put your work twenty times upon the anvil.
[Fr., Hatez-vous lentement; et, sans perdre courage,
Vingt fois sur le metier remettez votre ouvrage.] — Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux

Hello, Lucy. Do you name all your weapons, Grunthor?"
"O' course. It's tradition."
Rhapsody nodded, understanding coming into her eyes. "That makes perfect sense. Do you find that you fight better with a weapon you've named?"
"Yep."
Her eyes began to sparkle with excitement. "Why, Grunthor, in a way, you're a Namer, too!"
The giant broke into a pleased grin. "Well, whaddaya know. Should Oi sing a lit'le song?"
"No," said Rhapsody and Achmed in unison. — Elizabeth Haydon

George, you won,' said Guillam, as they walked slowly towards the car.
'Did I?' said Smiley. 'Yes. Yes, well I suppose I did. — John Le Carre

I was saying to him only yesterday: 'You are imprudent, M. le Comte; for when you go to Auteuil and take your servants the house is left unprotected.' 'Well,' said he, 'what next?' 'Well, next, someday you will be robbed."
"What did he say?"
"He quietly said: 'What do I care if I am? — Alexandre Dumas

Some people are agents from birth, Monsignors
he told them
appointed to the work by the period of history, the place, and their own natural dispositions. In their cases, it was simply a question of who got to them first, Your Eminences: 'Whether it's us, whether it's the opposition, or whether it's the bloody missionaries. — John Le Carre

It's whatever you make of it, whatever you want to take away. Because like all of the best virtual realities, Disneyland interacts with its visitors. It becomes what we seek, and we contribute.
Disneyland can be as simple as a fun place to spend a couple of hours. Ride a roller coaster. Wave to Mickey. Eat an ice cream cone. Watch a parade.
And Disneyland can be deeply important, as sacred, as the irreplaceable home of our deepest values and dreams, everything that's best, bright and beautiful in the human spirit.
As always,Walt said it best 'Disneyland is a work of love. — Leslie Le Mon

Many people make their own God; and he is much what the French may mean when they talk of le bon Dieu,
very indulgent, rather weak, near at hand when we want anything, but far away out of sight when we have a mind to do wrong. Such a God is as much an idol as if he were an image of stone. — Julius Charles Hare

It is not wise to be wiser than is necessary.
[Fr., Ce n'est pas etre sage
D'etre plus sage qu'il ne le faut.] — Philippe Quinault

His efforts to break out of his essential seclusion were, in fact, a failure, and he knew it. He made no close friend. He copulated with a number of girls, but copulation was not the joy it ought to be. It was a mere relief of need, and he felt ashamed of it afterward because it involved another person as object. Masturbation was preferable, the suitable course for a man like himself. Solitude was his fate; he was trapped by his heredity. She [his mother] had said it: "The work comes first." Rulag had said it calmly, stating fact, powerless to change it, to break out of her cold cell. So it was with him. His heart yearned towards them, the kindly young souls who called him brother, but he could not reach them, nor they him. He was born to be alone, a damned cold intellectual, an egoist.
The work came first, but it went nowhere. Like sex, it ought to have been a pleasure, and it wasn't. — Ursula K. Le Guin

I think men mostly have to learn to be anarchists. Women don't have to learn."
Vokep shook his head grimly. "It's the kids," he said. "Having babies. Makes 'em propertarians. They won't let go." He sighed. "Touch and go, brother, that's the rule. Don't ever let yourself be owned. — Ursula K. Le Guin

I have been in love with no one, and never shall," she whispered, "unless it should be with you."
How beautiful she looked in the moonlight!
Shy and strange was the look with which she quickly hid her face in my neck and hair, with tumultuous sighs, that seemed almost to sob, and pressed in mine a hand that trembled.
Her soft cheek was glowing against mine. "Darling, darling," she murmured, "I live in you; and you would die for me, I love you so."
I started from her.
She was gazing on me with eyes from which all fire, all meaning had flown, and a face colorless and apathetic.
"Is there a chill in the air, dear?" she said drowsily. "I almost shiver; have I been dreaming? Let us come in. Come; come; come in. — J. Sheridan Le Fanu

Please bring strange things.
Please come bringing new things.
Let very old things come into your hands.
Let what you do not know come into your eyes.
Let desert sand harden your feet.
Let the arch of your feet be the mountains.
Let the paths of your fingertips be your maps
And the ways you go be the lines of your palms.
Let there be deep snow in your inbreathing
And your outbreath be the shining of ice.
May your mouth contain the shapes of strange words.
May you smell food cooking you have not eaten.
May the spring of a foreign river be your navel.
May your soul be at home where there are no houses.
Walk carefully, well-loved one,
Walk mindfully, well-loved one,
Walk fearlessly, well-loved one.
Return with us, return to us,
Be always coming home.
Ursula K. Leguin — Ursula K. Le Guin

So maybe the difference isn't language. Maybe it's this: animals do neither good nor evil. They do as they must do. We may call what they do harmful or useful, but good and evil belong to us, who chose to choose what we do. The dragons are dangerous, yes. They can do harm, yes. But they're not evil. They're beneath our morality, if you will, like any animal. Or beyond it. They have nothing to do with it.
We must choose and choose again. The animals need only be and do. We're yoked, and they're free. So to be with an animal is to know a little freedom ... — Ursula K. Le Guin

Sadly but, perhaps, not altogether unexpectedly this society has had very limited success in achieving what is supposed to be the justification for its existence
the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest possible number of people. In so far as its citizens are saved from the major anxieties and responsibilities which normally surround the business of being a man, they transfer what appears to be an unvarying human capacity for worry to the most trivial things, making mountains out of molehills on a vast scale; and they have 'nervous breakdowns' over problems which men and women living under sterner conditions would hardly find time to notice. — Charles Le Gai Eaton

And I see a lot of us, the producers, who write the books and make the books, accepting this
letting commodity profiteers sell us like deodorant, and tell us what to publish, what to write.
Books aren't just commodities; the profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable
but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Here comes Monseiur Le Beau.
Rosalind: With his mouth full of news.
Celia: Which he will put on us, as pigeons feed their young.
Rosalind: Then shall we be news-crammed.
Celia: All the better; we shall be the more marketable. — William Shakespeare

When Debussy was seeming to get nowhere with an opera he was composing, he put it this way: "I spent my days pursuing the nothingness -le rien - it creates." My job is to create that void, that rien.
Hunting knife — Haruki Murakami

I have not written for their pleasure ... I have never flattered their opinions, nor their pride; nor will I. Neither will I make "Ladies' books" al dilettar le femine e la plebe. I have written from the fulness of my mind, from passion, from impulse, from many sweet motives, but not for their "sweet voices."
I know the precise worth of popular applause, for few scribblers have had more of it; and if I chose to swerve into their paths, I could retain it, or resume it. But I neither love ye, nor fear ye; and though I buy with ye and sell with ye, I will neither eat with ye, drink with ye, nor pray with ye. — George Gordon Byron

Let us consider Elfland as a great national park, a vast and beautiful place where a person goes by himself, on foot, to get in touch with reality in a special, private, profound fashion. But what happens when it is considered merely as a place to "get away to"?
Well, you know what has happened to Yosemite. Everybody comes, not with an ax and a box of matches, but in a trailer with a motorbike on the back and a motorboat on top and a butane stove, five aluminum folding chairs, and a transistor radio on the inside. They arrive totally encapsulated in a secondhand reality. And then they move on to Yellowstone, and it's just the same there, all trailers and transistors. They go from park to park, but they never really go anywhere; except when one of them who thinks that even the wildlife isn't real gets chewed up by a genuine, firsthand bear.
The same sort of thing seems to be happening to Elfland, lately. — Ursula K. Le Guin

That dog is mine said those poor children; that place in the sun is mine; such is the beginning and type of usurpation throughout the earth.
[Fr., Ce chien est a moi, disaient ces pauvres enfants; c'est la ma place au soleil. Voila le commencement et l'image de l'usurpation de toute la terre.] — Blaise Pascal

The reality of our life is in love, in solidarity," said a tall, soft-eyed girl. "Love is the true condition of human life."
Bedap shook his head. "No. Shev's right," he said. "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. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Why are my sons followed thus by darkness?'
... 'Because they were born in the house of flesh, therefore death follows at their heels. — Ursula K. Le Guin

A terrorist for Karen is someone who has a bomb but no aeroplane.
Ch. 4 — John Le Carre

The DCA Tower of Terror is a powerful visual landmark that looms over the park day and night. It's not just the tallest building at Disneyland Resort; it's the tallest building in Anaheim.
Amtrak travelers know they're approaching the Anaheim train station when they see the Tower of Terror looming in the distance. — Leslie Le Mon

Vede insieme l'uno e l'altro polo,
Le stelle vaghe e lor viaggio torto;
E vedi, 'I veder nostro quanto e corto.
(You see both poles at once, the travelling stars in their winding courses, and you see just how limited our seeing really is.) — Francesco Petrarca

I get a little Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behan's new play or Le Balcon or Les Negres
of Genet, but I don't, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness — Frank O'Hara

He nuzzled my neck, inhaling deeply. "Mmm. You smell so good."

"Oh, yeah," I said, smirking. "I call this new perfume 'Le Jungle grime et tropical BO.' "

"Dirt and sweat. Very sexy. — James Patterson

We leave to monsieur Le Corbusier his style that suits factories as well as it does hospitals. And the prisons of the future: is he not already building churches? I do not know what this individual
ugly of countenance and hideous in his conceptions of the world
is repressing to make him want thus to crush humanity under ignoble heaps of reinforced concrete, a noble material that ought to permit an aerial articulation of space superior to Flamboyant Gothic. His power of cretinization is vast. A model by Corbusier is the only image that brings to my mind the idea of immediate suicide. With him moreover any remaining job will fade. And love
passion
liberty.
Gilles Ivain (aka Ivan Chtcheglov) — Tom McDonough

Her despair grew so great that it burst her breast open and like a bird of fire shattered the stone and broke out into the light of day
the light of day, faint in her windowless room. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Civilized Man says: I am Self, I am Master, all the rest is other
outside, below, underneath, subservient. I own, I use, I explore, I exploit, I control. What I do is what matters. What I want is what matter is for. I am that I am, and the rest is women & wilderness, to be used as I see fit. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Being brave is not a part of your
personality, it's your job. It's what you owe the people who love you. — Kate Le Vann

I need to move on and take chances when
they find me. To be fearless even if it means getting hurt again. — Kate Le Vann

A conscious mind must be part of the whole, intentionally, and carefully
as the rock is part of the whole unconsciously. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Poirot said "you will find,M.le docteur,if you have much to do with cases of this kind,that they all resemble each other in one thing."
"what is that?" I asked curiously
"everyone concerned in them has something to hide — Agatha Christie

Into this life of cruel wonder sent,
Without a word to tell us what it meant,
Sent back again without a reason why -
Birth, life, and death - 'twas all astonishment. — Richard Le Gallienne

You have knowledge, and I have skill, and between us we have ... "
"We have the Ring of Erreth-Akbe."
"Yes, that. But I thought also of another thing between us. Call it trust ... That is one of its names. It is a very great thing. Though each of us alone is weak, having that we are strong, stronger than the Powers of the Dark. — Ursula K. Le Guin

As jolaha ka maram na jana, jinh jag ani pasarinhh tana;
dharti akas dou gad khandaya, chand surya dou nari banaya;
sahastra tar le purani puri, ajahu bine kathin hai duri;
kahai kabir karm se jori, sut kusut bine bhal kori;
No one could understand the secret of this weaver who, coming into existence, spread the warp as the world; He fixed the earth and the sky as the pillars, and he used the sun and the moon as two shuttles; He took thousands of stars and perfected the cloth; but even today he weaves, and the end is difficult to fathom.
Kabir says that the weaver, getting good or bad yarn and connecting karmas with it, weaves beautifully. — Kabir

QUICK TALK Kelis The 34-year-old singer first hit it big in 2003 with a single called "Milkshake." In the decade since, she's diversified her menu with a stint at Le Cordon Bleu culinary school, a hosting gig for the Cooking Channel and a new album, out April 22. It's titled
what else?
Food. — Anonymous

They are of the dream time. I don't understand it, I can't say it in words. Everything dreams. The play of form, of being, is the dreaming of substance. Rocks have their dreams, and the earth changes ... But when the mind becomes conscious, when the rate of evolution speeds up, then you have to be careful. Careful of the world. You must learn the way. You must learn the skills, the art, the limits. A conscious mind must be part of the whole, intentionally and carefully
as the rock is part of the whole unconsciously. Do you see? Does it mean anything to you? — Ursula K. Le Guin

It is very seldom," the young man said at last, "that dragons ask to do men favours."
"But it is very common," said the dragon, "for cats to play with mice before they kill them. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Whoever did not live in the years neighboring 1789 does not know what the pleasure of living means.
[Fr., Qui n'a pas vecu dans les annees voisines de 1789 ne sait pas ce que c'est le palisir de vivre.] — Charles Maurice De Talleyrand

Page 112 The Honorable Schoolboy
He was attended this morning by his wife, a former Bible School teacher from Borneo, a dried- out shrew in bobbed hair and ankle socks who could spot a sin before it was committed. — John Le Carre

The best I can say, it's like this. A man's in his skin, see, like a nut in its shell ... It's hard and strong, that shell, and it's all full of him. Full of grand man-meat, man-self. And that's all. That's all there is.
A woman's a different thing entirely. Who knows where a woman begins and ends? Listen mistress, I have roots, I have roots deeper than this island. Deeper than the sea, older than the raising of the lands. I go back into the dark ... I go back into the dark! Before the moon I am, what a woman is, a woman of power, a woman's power, deeper than the roots of trees, deeper than the roots of islands, older than the Making, older than the moon. Who dares ask questions of the dark? Who'll ask the dark its name? — Ursula K. Le Guin

Can you walk the road your dream goes?
Sometimes. Sometimes I am afraid to.
Who is not.
... — Ursula K. Le Guin

The book itself is a curious artifact, not showy in its technology but complex and extremely efficient: a really neat little device, compact, often very pleasant to look at and handle, that can last decades, even centuries. It doesn't have to be plugged in, activated, or performed by a machine; all it needs is light, a human eye, and a human mind. It is not one of a kind, and it is not ephemeral. It lasts. It is reliable. If a book told you something when you were fifteen, it will tell it to you again when you're fifty, though you may understand it so differently that it seems you're reading a whole new book.
(Staying Awake: Notes on the alleged decline of reading, Harper's Magazine, February 2008) — Ursula K. Le Guin

("We will call Chase, Jeans Are Too Thight, and Fulton shall be Short One Chewing Tobacco," Hassan whispered to Colin.)

"Je m'appelle Pierre," Colin blurted out after the boys had introduced themselves. "Quand je vais dans le metro, je fais aussi de la musique de prouts. — John Green

The beginning and the end of love are both marked by embarrassment when the two find themselves alone.
[Fr., Le commencement et le declin de l'amour se font sentir par l'embarras ou l'on est de se trouver seuls.] — Jean De La Bruyere

He had been taught as a child that Urras was a festering mass of inequity, iniquity, and waste. But all the people he met, and all the people he saw, in the smallest country village, were well dressed, well fed, and contrary to his expectations, industrious. They did not stand about sullenly waiting to be ordered to do things. Just like Anaresti, they were simply busy getting things done. It puzzled him. He had assumed that if you removed a human being's natural incentive to work
his initiative, his spontaneous creative energy
and replaced it with external motivation and coercion, he would become a lazy and careless worker. But no careless workers kept those lovely farmlands, or made the superb cars and comfortable trains. The lure and compulsion of profit was evidently a much more effective replacement of the natural initiative than he had been led to believe. — Ursula K. Le Guin

The fact that everyone between seventeen and thirty-five or so is liable to be (as Nim put it) "tied down to childbearing," implies that no one is quite so thoroughly "tied down" here as women, elsewhere are likely to be
psychologically or physically. Burden and privilege are shared out pretty equally; everybody has the same risk to run or choice to make. Therefore nobody here is quite so free as a free male anywhere else. — Ursula K. Le Guin

In my experience, a lot of the boys who are real computer-heads tend to be pale-skinned sci-fi fans. Not that there's anything wrong with that - I happen to be a pale-skinned sci-fi fan myself - but that doesn't mean I have to fancy other seethrough geeks.
So let's hope Adam isn't as picky as me. — Kate Le Vann

The presence of females was oppressive to them all. It seemed to them that lately the world was full of girls. Everywhere they looked, waking or asleep, they saw giris. They had all tried copulating with girls; some of
them in despair had also tried not copulating with girls. It made no difference. The girls were there. — Ursula K. Le Guin

To know how to dissemble is the knowledge of kings.
[Fr., Savoir dissimuler est le savoir des rois.] — Cardinal Richelieu

On the blank leaf glued to the inner back cover I drew the double curve within the circle, and blacked the yin half of the symbol, then pushed it back to my companion. 'Do you know that sign?'
He looked at it a long time with a strange look, but he said, 'No.'
'It's found on Earth, and on Hain-Davenant, and on Chiffewar. It is yin and yang. Light is the left hand of darkness ... how did it go? Light, dark. Fear, courage. Cold, warmth. Female, male. It is yourself, Therem. Both and one. A shadow on snow.' — Ursula K. Le Guin

Suddenly, out of its stale and drowsy air, the air of slaves,
Like lightning Europe le'pt forth,
Sombre, superb and terrible. — Walt Whitman

Remorse goes to sleep during a prosperous period and wakes up in adversity.
[Fr., Le remords s'endort durant un destin prospere et s'aigrit dans l'adversite.] — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The ground on which you once stood is cut away. You have become a citizen of No Man's Land. I send you my greetings.
the closing lines of Smiley's letter to Karla persuading him to defect. — John Le Carre

He knew that he was very near achieving the General Temporal Theory that the Ioti wanted so badly for their spaceflight and their prestige. He knew also that he had not achieved it and might never do so. He had never admitted either fact clearly to anyone. Before he left Anarres, he had thought the thing was in his grasp.
...
He wasn't quite sure he was ready to publish. There was something not quite right, something that needed a little refining. As he had been working ten years on the theory, it wouldn't hurt to take a little longer, to get it polished perfectly smooth. The little something not quite right kept looking wronger. A little flaw in the reasoning. A big flaw. A crack right through the foundations...The night before he left Anarres he had burned every paper he had on the General Theory. He had come to Urras with nothing. For half a year he had, in their terms, been bluffing them.

Or had he been bluffing himself? — Ursula K. Le Guin

I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain ploughland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name
and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one's country, is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing. Is it simply self-love? That's a good thing, but one mustn't make a virtue of it, or a profession ... — Ursula K. Le Guin

What's wrong with pleasure, Takver? why don't you want it?"
"Nothing's wrong with it. And I do want it. Only I don't need it. And if I take what I don't need, I'll never get to what I do need. — Ursula K. Le Guin

You do not comprehend. It is not the victim who concerns me so much. It is the effect on the character of the slayer."
"What about war?"
"In war you do not exercise the right of private judgement. That is what is so dangerous. Once a man is imbued with the idea that he knows who ought to be allowed to live and who ought not - then he is halfway to becoming the most dangerous killer there is - the arrogant killer who kills not for profit - but for an idea. He has usurped the functions of le bon Dieu. — Agatha Christie

So rest a while, we can talk in the cool of the evening. Or the cool of the morning. There 's seldom as much hurry as I used to think there was.
-Hawk
Who had been Archmage
The Other Wind — Ursula K. Le Guin

Arthuriana has become a genre in itself, more like TV soap opera where people think they know the characters. All that's fair enough, but it does remove the mythic power of the feminine and masculine principles. So I prefer it in its original form, even if you have to wade through Mallory's 'Le Morte d'Arthur'
people smashing people for pages and pages! It still has the resonances of myth about it, which makes it work for me. I don't want to know if Mordred led an unhappy childhood or not. — Michael Moorcock

I stood benumbed. The man was like an electric shock
nothing to hold on to and you don't know what hit you. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Disputing about those already made. I therefore never answered M. Nollet, and the event gave me no cause to repent my silence; for my friend M. le Roy, of the Royal Academy of Sciences, took up my cause and refuted him; my book was translated into the Italian, German, and Latin languages; and the doctrine it contain'd was by degrees universally adopted by the philosophers of Europe, in preference to that of the abbe; so that he lived to see himself the last of his sect, except Monsieur B
, of Paris, his eleve and immediate disciple. What gave my book the more sudden and general celebrity, was the success of one of its proposed experiments, made by Messrs. Dalibard and De Lor at Marly, for drawing — Benjamin Franklin

The Sun Going South
In late sunshine I wander troubled.
Restless I wander in autumn sunlight.
Too many changes, partings, and deaths.
Doors have closed that were always open.
Trees that held the sky up are cut down.
So much that I alone remember!
This creek runs dry among its stones.
Souls of the dead, come drink this water!
Come into this side valley with me,
a restless old woman, unseemly,
troubled, walking on dry grass, dry stones. — Ursula K. Le Guin

The satires of Isaiah against the makers of idols of wood and gold apply just as much to the makers of conceptual idols. the simple man sculpts a bit of wood and prostrates himself: "You are my God"...
The intelligent man sculpts a concept and does likewise. And he thinks he got there because he has made a god of his own size! — Henri Le Saux

I'm old to be raising a child. And she ... She obeys me, but only because she wants to."
"It's the only justification for obedience," Ged observed. — Ursula K. Le Guin

I hate the bigotry you believe in. But I'll try not to hate you."
"Why?" he asked. His voice was cold, as she remembered it.
"Hate eats the hater," she quoted from a familiar text of the Telling. — Ursula K. Le Guin

One sacrificed for many. It's not pretty, I know, choosing who it'll be
turning the plan into people. — John Le Carre

Their own souls rose and cried
Alarum when they heard the sudden wail
Of stricken freedom and along the gale
Saw her eternal banner quivering wide. — John Le Gay Brereton

COME HOME, TENAR! COME HOME!"
In the deep valley, in the twilight, the apple trees were on the eve of blossoming; here and there among the shadowed boughs one flower had opened early, rose and white, like a faint star. Down the orchard aisles, in the thick, new, wet grass, the little girl ran for the joy of running; hearing the call she did not come at once, but made a long circle before she turned her face toward home. The mother waiting in the doorway of the hut, with the firelight behind her, watched the tiny figure running and bobbing like a bit of thistledown blown over the darkening grass beneath the trees. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Heaven deprives me of a wife who never caused me any other grief than that of her death.
[Fr., Le ciel me prive d'une epouse qui ne m'a jamais donne d'autre chagrin que celui de sa mort.] — Louis XIV

Happy is the man who loves the woods and waters,
Brother to the grass and well beloved of Pan;
The earth shall be his, and all her laughing daughters.
Happy the man. — Richard Le Gallienne

Ward: Which would you rather have, a National Book Award or a Hugo?
Le Guin: Oh, a Nobel, of course.
Ward: They don't give Nobel Awards in fantasy.
Le Guin: Maybe I can do something for peace. — Ursula K. Le Guin

You're a respectable woman, dearie, and her reputation is a woman's wealth."
"Her wealth," Tenar repeated in the same blank way; then she said it again: "Her wealth. Her treasure. Her hoard. Her value ... — Ursula K. Le Guin

For as laws are necessary that good manners may be preserved, so there is need of good manner that laws may be maintained.
[It., Perche, cosi come i buoni costumi, per mantenersi, hanno bisogno delli leggi; cosi le leggi per ossevarsi, hanno bisogno de' buoni costumi.] — Niccolo Machiavelli

Let us find the way to the peace
Le us make peace, the way of life
Let us sing the song of peace
Let us dance together with joy of life
Let us feel and love each other
Let us share and bloom together
Let us dare to care for who suffer
Let us dream a peaceful earth forever. — Debasish Mridha

To the Bullock Roseroot
What's the thought you think
all your life long?
It must be a great one,
a solemn one, to make you gaze
through the world at it,
all your life long.
When you have to look aside from it
your eyes roll, you bellow
in anger, anxious
to return to it, steadily
to gaze at it, think it
all your life long. — Ursula K. Le Guin

What's wrong with men?" Tenar inquired cautiously.
As cautiously, lowering her voice, Moss replied, "I don't know, my dearie. I've thought on it. Often I've thought on it. The best I can say it is like this. A man's in his skin, see, like a nut in its shell." She held up her long, bent, wet fingers as if holding a walnut. "It's hard and strong, that shell, and it's all full of him. Full of grand man-meat, man-self. And that's all. That's all there is. It's all him and nothing else, inside. — Ursula K. Le Guin

If I had to pick a hero, it would be Charles Darwin
the size of his mind, which included all that scientific curiosity and knowledge seeking, and the ability to put it all together. There is a genuine spirituality about Darwin's thinking. — Ursula K. Le Guin