Earthsea Quotes

“On the sea he wished to meet it, if meet it he must. He was not sure why this was, yet he had a terror of meeting the thing again on dry land. Out of the sea there rise storms and monsters, but no evil powers: evil is of earth. And there is no sea, no running of river or spring, in the dark land where once Ged had gone. Death is the dry place.”

“It's a rare gift, to know where you need to be, before you've been to all the places you don't need to be.”

“I had said that Le Guin's worlds were real because her people were so real, and he said yes, but the people were so real because they were the people the worlds would have produced. If you put Ged to grow up on Anarres or Shevek in Earthsea, they would be the same people, the backgrounds made the people, which of course you see all the time in mainstream fiction, but it's rare in SF.”

“They praised his modesty and did not listen to him, for listening is a rare gift, and men will have their heroes.”

“But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.”

“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.”

“Manhood is patience. Mastery is nine time patience”

“The danger in trying to do good is that the mind comes to confuse the intent of goodness with the act of doing things well.”

“In the latter months of his own long sickness the Master Herbal had taught him much of the healer's lore, and the first lesson and the last of all that lore was this: Heal the wound and cure the illness, but let the dying spirit go.”