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

To enter with heart and mind into the world of the imagination may be to head deliberately and directly toward, or back toward, engagement with the real world.

My name, and yours, and the true name of the sun, or a spring of water, or an unborn child, all are syllables of the great word that is very slowly spoken by the shining of the stars. There is no other power. No other name.

Wrong that cannot be repaired must be transcended.

A man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life’s sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark.

I was with you at the beginning of your journey. It is right that I should follow you to its end.

“If a word can heal, a word can wound,” the witch said. “If a hand can kill, a hand can cure.”

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.

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.

it seemed to him that he himself was a word spoken by the sunlight.

Manhood is patience. Mastery is nine times patience.

She looked where he was looking, into the dim gulf of air above the western sea. “If she comes, she'll come from there,” he said. “And if she doesn't come, she is there.” She nodded. “I know.” Her eyes were filled with tears.

it seemed to him that he himself was a word spoken by the sunlight.

So when one stands in a cherished place for the last time before a voyage without return, he sees it all whole, and real, and dear, as he has never seen it before and never will see it again.

As he came to the bank Ogion, waiting, reached out his hand and clasping the boy’s arm whispered to him his true name: Ged.

I have given my love to what is worthy of love. Is that not the kingdom and the unperishing spring?

Death and life are the same thing-like the two sides of my hand, the palm and the back. And still the palm and the back are not the same...They can be neither separated, nor mixed.

Laws are made against the impulse a people most fears in itself. Do not kill was the Shing's vaunted single Law. All else was permitted: which meant, perhaps, there was little else they really wanted to do...

But the death of a great mage, who has many times in his life walked on the dry steep hillsides of death’s kingdom, is a strange matter: for the dying man goes not blindly, but surely, knowing the way.

Falcon-winged, falcon-mad, like an unfalling arrow, like an unforgotten thought.

Yet a greater, unlearned skill he possessed, which was the art of kindness.

We're each of us alone, to be sure. What can you do but hold your hand out in the dark?

This story is about one of the ones who walked away from Omelas.

But in time nothing can be without becoming.

Stealthily the stars slid forward into nothingness.

The Old Powers of earth are not for men to use. They were never given into our hands, and in our hands they work only ruin. Ill means, ill end. I was not drawn here, but driven here, and the force that drove me works to my undoing.

Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I'm going to go fulfil my proper function in the social organism. I'm going to go unbuild walls.

For to keep dark the mind of the mageborn, that is a dangerous thing.

My name, and yours, and the true name of the sun, or a spring of water, or an unborn child, all are syllables of the great word that is very slowly spoken by the shining of the stars. There is no other power. No other name.

All her life she had looked into dark; but this was a vaster darkness, this night on the ocean. There was no end to it. There was no roof. It went out beyond the stars.