Only what is mortal bears life. Only in death is there rebirth. The Balance is not a stillness. it is a movement--an eternal becoming.

But when we crave power over life—endless wealth, unassailable safety, immortality—then desire becomes greed. And if knowledge allies itself to that greed, then comes evil. Then the balance of the world is swayed, and ruin weighs heavy in the scale.

I prefer to save talking till I know what I’m talking about.

He who would be Seamaster must know the true name of every drop of water in the sea.

But need alone is not enough to set power free: there must be knowledge.

She found that their company revived her, carried her away from the constant presence of last night's terror, little by little, till she could begin to look back on it as something that had happened, not something that was happening, that must always be happening to her.

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?

I had forgotten how much light there is in the world, till you gave it back to me.

To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.

We all have forests on our minds. Forests unexplored, unending. Each one of us gets lost in the forest, every night, alone.

If you evade suffering you also evade the chance of joy. Pleasure you may get, or pleasures, but you will not be fulfilled. You will not know what it is to come home.

I had forgotten how much light there is in the world, till you gave it back to me.

He had always loved her, but had not understood that he loved her beyond anyone and anything. When he was with her, even when he was down on the docks thinking of her, he was alive.

The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it.

He who would be Seamaster must know the true name of every drop of water in the sea.

The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself.

You have to help another person. But it's not right to play God with masses of people. To be God you have to know what you're doing. And to do any good at all, just believing you're right and your motives are good isn't enough.

All men were alien to one another, at times.

You were moved to do this by pride and by hate. Is it any wonder the result was ruin?

Who knows a man's name, holds that man's life in his keeping. Thus to Ged, who had lost faith in himself, Vetch had given him that gift that only a friend can give, the proof of unshaken, unshakeable trust.

I think they drove your priestess Kossil mad a long time ago; I think she has prowled these caverns as she prowls the labyrinth of her own self, and now she cannot see the daylight any more.

Her dress was of turquoise-colored silk, bright and soft as the evening sky. It belled out full from her hips, and all the skirt was embroidered with thin silver threads and seed pearls and tiny crumbs of crystal, so that it glittered softly, like rain in April.

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.

He was appalled by the examination system, when it was explained to him, he could not imagine a greater deterrent to the natural wish to learn than this pattern of cramming in information and disgorging it on demand.

A dark hand had let go its lifelong hold upon her heart.

She put her head down in her arms and cried, and her cheeks were salt and wet. She cried for the waste of her years in bondage to a useless evil. She wept in pain, because she was free.

He had always loved her, but had not understood that he loved her beyond anyone and anything. When he was with her, even when he was down on the docks thinking of her, he was alive.

There's a point, around the age of twenty, when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities.

Have you never thought how danger must surround power as shadow does light?

They let us be, here, in the cage of our ignorance.