Ursula K. Le Guin

To which Silence of course made no reply, letting him hear what he had said and feel its foolishness thoroughly.

All the mystery and wisdom of the Masters, when it’s out in the daylight, doesn’t amount to so much, you know. Tricks of the trade—wonderful illusions. But people don’t want to know that. They want the illusions, the mysteries. Who can blame them? There’s so little in life that’s beautiful or worthy.

How can people be anything but ignorant when knowledge isn’t saved, isn’t taught?

Ignorant power is a bane!

Great self-destruction follows upon unfounded fear.

Maybe that’s what the Masters are afraid of. Maybe celibacy isn’t as necessary as the Rule of Roke teaches. Maybe it’s not a way of keeping the power pure, but of keeping the power to themselves.

A person who believes, as she did, that things fit: that there is a whole of which one is a part, and that in being a part one is whole: such a person has no desire whatever, at any time, to play God. Only those who have denied their being yearn to play at it.

The desire for power feeds off itself, growing as it devours.

“The solution lies in secrecy,” said Medra. “But so does the problem.”

Is power that—an emptiness?

“But now you've come too far, and I warn you, woman! I will not have you set foot on this domain. And if you cross my will or dare so much as speak to me again, I will have you driven from Re Albi, and off the Overfell, with the dogs at your heels. Have you understood me?”

“No,” Tenar said, “I have never understood men like you.”

And I know that all I understand about living is having your work to do, and being able to do it. That’s the pleasure, and the glory, and all. And if you can’t do the work, or it’s taken from you, then what’s any good? You have to have something....