A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle, #1)

by Ursula K. Le Guin

‘When you know the fourfoil in all its seasons root and leaf and flower, by sight and scent and seed, then you may learn its true name, knowing its being: which is more than its use. What, after all, is the use of you? or of myself? Is Gont Mountain useful, or the Open Sea?’ Ogion went on a half-mile or so, and said at last, ‘To hear, one must be silent.’

And the truth is that as a man’s real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower; until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he must do …’