There is a field where all wonderful perfections of microscope and telescope fail. All exquisite niceties of weights and measures as well as that which is behind them, the keen and driving power of the mind. No facts, however indubitably detected, no effort of reason, however magnificently maintained, can prove that Bach's music is beautiful.

—Ursula K. Le Guin in The Dispossessed

mind beauty perfection reason

About Ursula K. Le Guin

Portrait of Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula Kroeber Le Guin ( KROH-bər lə GWIN; née Kroeber; October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018) was an American author. She is best known for her works of speculative fiction, including science fiction works set in her Hainish universe and the fantasy series Earthsea. Her work was first published...

More quotations from Ursula K. Le Guin

If you see a whole thing—it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives.… But up close a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern.

—Ursula K. Le Guin

True myths may serve for thousands of years as an inexhaustible source of intellectual speculation, religious joy, ethical inquiry, and artistic renewal. The real mystery is not destroyed by reason. The fake one is. You look at it and it vanishes. You look at the Blond Hero—really look—and he turns into a gerbil. But you look at Apollo, and he looks back at you. The poet Rilke looked at a statue of Apollo about fifty years ago, and Apollo spoke to him. "You must change your life," he said. When the true myth rises into consciousness, that is always its message: "You must change your life.

—Ursula K. Le Guin

life religion change myth mystery art reason consciousness reflection inquiry

All civilization ever does is hide the blood and cover up hate with pretty words.

—Ursula K. Le Guin

Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.

—Ursula K. Le Guin

love time change

A person who believes… that there is a whole of which one is part, and that in being a part, one is whole: such a person has no desire whatever, at any time, to play God. Only those who have denied their being yearn to play at it.

—Ursula K. Le Guin

God belief desire denial

More quotations tagged with “reason”

I believe in fate, and I believe you were supposed to walk into my life.

—Ella Frank in Exquisite

purpose reason fate

Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war.

—Norman Mailer

war bad necessity reason

Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so.

—Bertrand Russell

death logic thinking reason

Do you have to have a reason for loving?

—Brigitte Bardot

People come into your life for a reason. They might not know it themselves, why. You might not know it. But there's a reason. There has to be.

—Joyce Carol Oates in and Flew Away

life people reason

History

29 Oct 2018 Added
3 Nov 2022 Edited (details weren’t recorded yet)