Eugenia > Eugenia's Quotes

“I was my usual charming morning self, threatening blood feud with anyone fool enough to disturb my dreams.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“You who come after me, scribbling these Annals, by now realize that I shy off portraying the whole truth about our band of blackguards. You know they are vicious, violent, and ignorant. They are complete barbarians, living out their cruelest fantasies, their behavior tempered only by the presence of a few decent men. I do not often show that side because these men are my brethren, my family, and I was taught young not to speak ill of kin. The old lessons die hardest.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“A herd of minuscule lightning bugs poured out of One-Eye's nostrils. Good soldiers all, they fell into formation, spelling out the words Goblin is a Poof.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“Back to the company. Back to business. Back to the parade of years. Back to the annals. Back to fear.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“The lower ranks have the privilege of questioning the sanity and competence of their commanders. It’s the mortar holding an army together.”
― Glen Cook, The Black Company

“Only in silence the word,
Only in dark the light,
Only in dying life:
Bright the hawk's flight
On the empty sky.

—The Creation of Éa”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“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, Tehanu

“What is a woman's power then?" she asked.
"I don't think we know."
"When has a woman power because she's a woman? With her children, I suppose. For a while..."
"In her house, maybe."
She looked around the kitchen. "But the doors are shut," she said, "the doors are locked."
"Because you're valuable."
"Oh yes. We're precious. So long as we're powerless.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Tehanu

“Ours is only a little power, seems like, next to theirs," Moss said. "But it goes down deep. It's all roots. It's like an old blackberry thicket. And a wizard's power's like a fir tree, maybe, great and tall and grand, but it'll blow right down in a storm. Nothing kills a blackberry bramble.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Tehanu

“Tienes cicatrices, cicatrices feas, porque te hicieron algo feo, algo malvado. La gente ve las cicatrices. Pero también te ve a ti y tú no eres esas cicatrices. No eres fea. No eres malvada. Eres Therru y eres hermosa. Eres Therru, que puede trabajar y caminar y correr y bailar, hermosamente, con un vestido rojo.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Tehanu

“You are beautiful," Tenar said in a different tone. "Listen to me, Therru. Come here. You have scars, ugly scars, because an ugly, evil thing was done to you. People see the scars. But they see you, too, and you aren't the scars. You aren't ugly. You aren't evil. You are Therru, and beautiful. You are Therru who can work, and walk, and run, and dance, beautifully, in a red dress.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Tehanu

“wrong that cannot be repaired must be transcended”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Tehanu

“When I was young, I had to choose between the life of being and the life of doing. And I leapt at the latter like a trout to a fly. But each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you may stop and simply be. Or wonder who, after all, you are.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore

“Do nothing because it is righteous or praiseworthy or noble to do so; do nothing because it seems good to do so; do only that which you must do and which you cannot do in any other way.”
― Ursula K. LeGuin, The Farthest Shore

“Do you see how an act is not, as young men think, like a rock that one picks up and throws, and it hits or misses, and that's the end of it. When that rock is lifted, the earth is lighter; the hand that bears it heavier. When it is thrown, the circuits of the stars respond, and where it strikes or falls, the universe is changed. On every act the balance of the whole depends. The winds and seas, the powers of water and earth and light, all that these do, and all that the beasts and green things do, is well done, and rightly done. All these act within the Equilibrium. From the hurricane and the great whale's sounding to the fall of a dry leaf and the gnat's flight, all they do is done within the balance of the whole.

But we, insofar as we have power over the world and over one another, we must learn to do what the leaf and the whale and the wind do of their own nature. We must learn to keep the balance. Having intelligence, we must not act in ignorance. Having choice, we must not act without responsibility.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore

“Life rises out of death, death rises out of life; in being opposite they yearn to each other, they give birth to each other and are forever reborn. And with them, all is reborn, the flower of the apple tree, the light of the stars. In life is death. In death is rebirth. What then is life without death? Life unchanging, everlasting, eternal?-What is it but death-death without rebirth?”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore

“You will die. You will not live forever. Nor will any man nor any thing. Nothing is immortal. But only to us is it given to know that we must die. And that is a great gift: the gift of selfhood. For we have only what we know we must lose, what we are willing to lose... That selfhood which is our torment, and our treasure, and our humanity, does not endure. It changes; it is gone, a wave on the sea. Would you have the sea grow still and the tides cease, to save one wave, to save yourself?”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore

“To see a candle’s light, one must take it into a dark place.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore

“Having intelligence, we must not act in ignorance. Having choice, we must not act without responsibility.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore

“I prefer to save talking till I know what I’m talking about.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore

“My lord, do nothing because it is righteous or praiseworthy or noble to do so; do nothing because it seems good to do so; do only that which you must do and which you cannot do in any other way.” There”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore