A Quote by Ursula K. Le Guin

Things don't have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What's the function of a galaxy? I don't know if our life has a purpose and I don't see that it matters. What does matter is that we're a part. Like a thread in a cloth or a grass-blade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Quote Topics

Blade Blowing Cloth Does Every Field Function Galaxy Grass Know Life Like Machine Matter Matters Our Part Purpose Purposes See Things Thread Universe Useful Were Wind Wind Blowing

Quote Author

Ursula K. Le Guin
American - Novelist
October 21, 1929 - January 22, 2018

Is one human? Or merely alive? Like a blade of grass equal to all existance in the moment it is torn? Yes. If pain is fundament, then a blade of grass can know all there is.

Norman Mailer

You don't 'have' a life, you 'are' life. The One Life, the one consciousness that pervades the entire universe and takes temporary form to experience itself as a stone or blade of grass, as an animal, a person, a star or a galaxy.

Eckhart Tolle

Many expressions that are in common usage, and sometimes the structure of language itself, reveal the fact that people don't know who they are. You say: "He lost his life" or "my life," as if life were something that you can possess or lose. The truth is: you don't have a life, you are life. The One Life, the one consciousness that pervades the entire universe and takes temporary form to experience itself as a stone or blade of grass, as an animal, a person, a star or a galaxy. Can you sense deep within that you already know that? Can you sense that you already are That?

Eckhart Tolle

Men swagger around calling themselves "cattlemen" but abuse their grass like a rapist. And abuse their cattle with concrete fecal feedlots without any regards to rumen function. Vegetable growers plow thousands of acres, planting monocrops of annuals in a never-ending tillage routine that totally annihilates carbon wealth. Why? Why are we so enamored of things that destroy carbon and disrespect the animals under our care? Grass. Lowly grass. It just gets no respect. And yet it is the lifeblood of the planet.

Joel Salatin

"Humanism" is to be human, to think, to analyze, and to probe. To respond and to be stimulated by all living things - beasts, fowl, and fishes. To respond through touch, sight, smell, and sound to all things in nature - both organic and inorganic-to colors, shapes, and textures - to not only look at a blade of grass but to really see a blade of grass. These things, to me, are what life and living are all about. I would call it "Humanism."

Jacob Lawrence

A blade of grass is a commonplace on Earth; it would be a miracle on Mars. Our descendants on Mars will know the value of a patch of green. And if a blade of grass is priceless, what is the value of a human being?

Carl Sagan

I believe every space and comma is a living part of the poem and has its function, just as every muscle and pore of the body has its function. And the way the lines are broken is a functioning part essential to the life of the poem.

Denise Levertov

Dear Lord, our God and Saviour! for Thy gifts The world were poor in thanks, though every soul Were to do nought but breathe them, every blade Of grass, and every atomie of earth To utter it like dew.

Philip James Bailey

The one function that most gods seem to have in common is to give human existence some ultimate purpose - and, while it is not possible to disprove an ultimate purpose, there does not seem to be any evidence for it. This is not to say, of course, that there is no purpose in life at all: we all make our own purposes as we go through life. And life does not lose its value simply because it it not going to last forever.

Barbara Smoker

If you study Japanese art you see a man who is undoubtedly wise, philosophic and intelligent, who spends his time how? In studying the distance between the earth and the moon? No. In studying the policy of Bismarck? No. He studies a single blade of grass. But this blade of grass leads him to draw every plant and then the seasons, the wide aspects of the countryside, then animals, then the human figure. So he passes his life, and life is too short to do the whole.

Vincent Van Gogh

Times like this, with the wind moving the grass and curling around her like a huge cool hand, Tess felt the world as a second presence, as another person, as if the wind and the grass had voices of their own and she could hear them talking.

Robert Charles Wilson

I am humility, nothing more and nothing less. I am one blade of grass in a sea of grass. I am one wave in an endless ocean of waves. I am one glowing star in a galaxy of stars.

Frederick Lenz

As if a device can function if it has no style. As if a device can be called stylish that does not function superbly... yes, beauty matters. Boy, does it matter. It is not surface, it is not an extra, it is the thing itself.

Stephen Fry

If form follows function, as we know it does in this Universe, then consciousness will adapt to whatever form it requires in order to function. Hopefully, it will also develop its fundamental function; what that is may be debatable within many schools of thought, but it is indisputable that evolved thinking recognizes the universality of Life.