...Writings can be stolen, or changed, or used for evil purposes. But isn't the risk worth taking? The more people who share knowledge, the greater safeguard for it. Isn't there more danger in ignorance than knowledge?
Lloyd AlexanderRead
Llonio said life was a net for luck; to Hevydd the Smith life was a forge; and to Dwyvach the Weaver-Woman a loom. They spoke truly, for it is all of these. But you,' Taran said, his eyes meeting the potter's, 'you have shown me life is one thing more. It is clay to be shaped, as raw clay on a potter's wheel.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Life can be seen from different perspectives, and ultimately it is something we can shape and create.
In this quote, Taran reflects on the various metaphors proposed by others about life, highlighting how it can be viewed as a net for luck, a forge, or a loom. However, he comes to realize that life is also like raw clay, suggesting that individuals have the power to mold their own destinies and experiences through their choices and actions.
Themes
LifeCreationDestinyMoldingPerspective
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about personal growth, one might use this quote to illustrate how we can shape our own lives.
More from Lloyd Alexander
All quotes →Long ago I yearned to be a hero without knowing, in truth, what a hero was. Now, perhaps, I understand it a little better. A grower of turnips or a shaper of clay, a Commot farmer or a king--every man is a hero if he strives more for others than for himself alone. Once you told me that the seeking counts more than the finding. So, too, must the striving count more than the gain.
Lloyd AlexanderRead
Perhaps one reason we are fascinated by cats is because such a small animal can contain so much independence, dignity, and freedom of spirit. Unlike the dog, the cat's personality is never bet on a human's. He demands acceptance on his own terms.
Lloyd AlexanderRead
We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.
Lloyd AlexanderRead
In whatever guise - our own daily nightmares of war, intolerance, inhumanity or the struggles of an Assistant Pig-Keeper against the Lord of Death - the problems are agonizingly familiar. And an openness to compassion, love, and mercy is as essential to us here and now as it is to any inhabitant of an imaginary kingdom.
Lloyd AlexanderRead
Similar quotes
The only humility that is really ours is not that which we try to show before God in prayer, but that which we carry with us, and carry out, in our ordinary conduct; the insignficances of daily life are the importances and the tests of eternity, because they prove what really is the spirit that possesses us.
Andrew MurrayRead
The world is too brutal for me-I am glad there is such a thing as the grave-I am sure I shall never have any rest till I get there.
John KeatsRead
When evil acts in the world it always manages to find instruments who believe that what they do is not evil but honorable.
Max LernerRead
The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago... had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands.
Havelock EllisRead
Let not that man think he makes any progress in holiness who walks not over the bellies of his lusts. He who doth not kill sin in this way takes no steps toward his journey's end.
John OwenRead
Here I shall add that the concept of change, and with it the concept of motion, as change of place, is possible only through and in the representation of time. & Motion, for example, presupposes the perception of something movable. But space considered in itself contains nothing movable; consequently motion must be something which is found in space only through experience -in other words, is an empirical datum.
Immanuel KantRead