# Quote — Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore

> “We may suffer for it when the balance of things rights itself, but we do not lose hope and forego art and forget the words of the Making. Nature is not unnatural. This is not a righting of the balance, but an upsetting of it. There is only one creature who can do that.”
>
> “A man?” Arren said, tentative.
>
> “We men.”
>
> “How?”
>
> “By an unmeasured desire for life.”
>
> “For life? But it isn’t wrong to want to live?”
>
> “No. 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.”

- Author: [Ursula K. Le Guin](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin.md)
- Book: [The Farthest Shore](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/the-farthest-shore.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ursula_K._Le_Guin#The_Farthest_Shore_(1972)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/the-farthest-shore/we-may-suffer

## More from this book

> “There’s nothing to fear, Lebannen,” he said gently, mockingly. “They were only the dead.”

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/the-farthest-shore/theres-nothing-to-fear.md)

> “You exist: without name, without form. You cannot see the light of day; you cannot see the dark. You sold the green earth and the sun and stars to save yourself. But you have no self. All that which you sold, that is yourself. You have given everything for nothing. And so now you seek to draw the world to you, all that light and life you lost, to fill up your nothingness. But it cannot be filled. Not all the songs of earth, not all the stars of heaven, could fill your emptiness.”

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/the-farthest-shore/you-exist-without.md)

> So the first step out of childhood is made all at once, without looking before or behind, without caution, and nothing held in reserve.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/the-farthest-shore/so-the-first.md)