I certainly wasn’t happy. Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it. What I was given was the thing you can’t earn, and can’t keep, and often don’t even recognize at the time; I mean joy.
Meaning of the quote
The quote explains that happiness is something you have to work for, using your thinking and logic. But there's also something called joy, which is different. Joy is a feeling you can't earn or keep, and you might not even realize you have it at the time. It's a special experience that's different from happiness.
About Ursula K. LeGuin
Ursula K. Le Guin was an acclaimed American author known for her groundbreaking works of speculative fiction, including the Earthsea fantasy series. With a career spanning nearly 60 years, she won numerous prestigious awards and had a profound influence on the genre and beyond.
More quotes from Ursula K. LeGuin
The children of the revolution are always ungrateful, and the revolution must be grateful that it is so.
What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end.
Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.
As great scientists have said and as all children know, it is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception, and compassion, and hope.
The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.
I certainly wasn’t happy. Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it. What I was given was the thing you can’t earn, and can’t keep, and often don’t even recognize at the time; I mean joy.
In so far as one denies what is, one is possessed by what is not, the compulsions, the fantasies, the terrors that flock to fill the void.
The power of the harasser, the abuser, the rapist depends above all on the silence of women.