Quote collection
32 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Cosmic time is the same for everyone, but human time differs with each person. Time flows in the same way for all human beings; every human being flows through time in a different way."
"The true joy of a moonlit night is something we no longer understand. Only the men of old, when there were no lights, could understand the true joy of a moonlit night."
"Put your soul in the palm of my hand for me to look at, like a crystal jewel. I'll sketch it in words."
"The labor into which a heart has poured its whole love--where will it have its say, to excite and inspire, and when?"
"In the depths of the mirror the evening landscape moved by, the mirror and the reflected figures like motion pictures superimposed one on the other. The figures and the background were unrelated, and yet the figures, transparent and intangible, and the background, dim in the gathering darkness, melted into a sort of symbolic world not of this world. Particularly when a light out in the mountains shone in the center of the girl's face, Shimamura felt his chest rise at the inexpressible beauty of it."
"The road was frozen. The village lay quiet under the cold sky. Komako hitched up the skirt of her kimono and tucked it into her obi. The moon shone like a blade frozen in blue ice."
"Our language is primarily for expressing human goodness and beauty."
"It's remarkable how we go on year after year, doing the same old things. We get tired and bored, and ask when they'll come for us"
"The woman was silent, her eyes on the floor. Shimamura had come to a point where he knew he was only parading his masculine shamelessness, and yet it seemed likely enough that the woman was familiar with the failing and need not be shocked by it. He looked at her. Perhaps it was the rich lashes of the downcast eyes that made her face seem warm and sensuous. She shook her head very slightly, and again a faint blush spread over her face."
"Does pain go away and leave no trace, then?’ ‘You sometimes even feel sentimental for it."
"People have separated from each other with walls of concrete that blocked the roads to connection and love. and Nature has been defeated in the name of development."
"I suppose even a woman's hatred is a kind of love."
"Lunatics have no age. If we were crazy, you and I, we might be a great deal younger."
"A secret, if it's kept, can be sweet and comforting, but once it leaks out it can turn on you with a vengeance."
"Maybe vagueness has been good for me. The word means two different things in Tokyo and Osaka, you know. In Tokyo it means stupidity, but in Osaka they talk about vagueness in a painting and in a game of Go."
"They were words that came out of nothing, but they seemed to him somehow significant. He muttered them over again."
"Seeing the moon, he becomes the moon, the moon seen by him becomes him. He sinks into nature, becomes one with nature. The light of the "clear heart" of the priest, seated in the meditation hall in the darkness before the dawn, becomes for the dawn moon its own light."
"From the way of Go the beauty of Japan and the Orient had fled. Everything had become science and regulation."
"Now, even more than the evening before, he could think of no one with whom to compare her. She had become absolute, beyond comparison. She had become decision and fate."
"Because you cannot see him, God is everywhere."