Quotes by Japanese Authors - Page 32

Those who are not free to live as they choose are second class citizens. The weak will lose everything to the strong, even their lives.
Naoyuki Ochiai
Stupidity isn't the only thing humans carry inside of them. I'll show you that we also have the power to purify.
Yellow Tanabe
At times everything grows misty and dark before my eyes, and I feel that the strength of my whole body is oozing away through my finger tips.
Osamu Dazai
In your very imperfections you will find the basis for your firm, way-seeking mind.
Shunryu Suzuki
To be thankful for just being alive...To survive means to win... That only applies to animals, but I'm a human being!
Nobuyuki Fukumoto
When desire meets desire, the stronger one survives. Fulfill your desires! The predator will eat the prey. Our world is a cruel and dirty place...but that's what makes it so beautiful! Hell is the true paradise!
Naoyuki Ochiai
The strength I'm looking for isn't the type where you win or lose. I'm not after a wall that'll repel power coming from outside. What I want us the kind of strength to be able to absorb that kind of power, to stand up to it. The strength to quietly endure things - unfairness, misfortunes, sadness, mistakes, misunderstandings.
Haruki Murakami
Become like the sun. If you do so, all darkness will be dispelled. No matter what happens, live confidently with the conviction that you, yourself are the “sun.” Of course, in life there are sunny days and cloudy days. But even on cloudy days, the sun is still there. Even when you are suffering, it is vital that you strive to keep the sun shining brightly in your heart.
Daisaku Ikeda
Even the strongest of opponents always has a weakness.-Itachi Uchiha
Masashi Kishimoto
Justice without strength isn't justice at all.
Shinjirou
Strength is seeing yourself as you are.
Taro Okamoto
once your get your hopes up, your mind starts acting on its own. And when your hopes are dashed you get dissapointed, and dissapointment leads to a feeling of helplessness. You get careless and let your guard down. And right now, she though, that si the last thing I can afford.
Haruki Murakami
Not all men are handsome and strong. There are some who are cowards from birth. There are some who are weak by nature. There are even some who cry easily. But for such a man, a man both weak and cowardly, to bear the burden of his weakness and struggle valiantly to live a beautiful life-- that's what I call great. The reason I'm so fond of Gaston is not because he has a strong will or a good head. Rather it's because, weakling and coward that he is, he keeps on fighting in his own way.
Shūsaku Endō
Only through the group, I realised — through sharing the suffering of the group — could the body reach that height of existence that the individual alone could never attain. And for the body to reach that level at which the divine might be glimpsed, a dissolution of individuality was necessary. The tragic quality of the group was also necessary, the quality that constantly raised the group out of the abandon and torpor into which it was prone to lapse, leading it to an ever-mounting shared suffering and so to death, which was the ultimate suffering. The group must be open to death — which meant, of course, that it must be a community of warriors.
Yukio Mishima
You're not completely alone, you have me! Even if the entire world turns its back on you, you'll still be the strongest as long as you have me!
Kyo Shirodaira
That's a good attitude. You should hate me more, curse me more, and detest me! Then you should take the power of that hatred and use it to survive this rotten world.
Hideaki Sorachi
Kurogane: For all my life... I've wanted strength. I didn't want those things precious to me to be taken away from me anymore. But, to have strength means to invite disaster to come to you. And strength alone can't really protect you.
CLAMP
Perception is strong and sight weak. In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things.
Miyamoto Musashi
The weaker you are the louder you bark.-Tenten
Masashi Kishimoto
Most of the psychological differences between men and women seem to come from differences in their reproductive system
Haruki Murakami
I should have learned many things from that experience, but when I look back on it, all I gained was one single, undeniable fact. That ultimately I am a person who can do evil. I never consciously tried to hurt anyone, yet good intentions notwithstanding, when necessity demanded, I could become completely self-centered, even cruel. I was the kind of person who could, using some plausible excuse, inflict on a person I cared for a wound that would never heal.
Haruki Murakami
What I was chasing in circles must have been the tail of the darkness inside me.
Haruki Murakami
We're always contradicting ourselves.We want people to tell us apart.......yet we don't want them to be able to.We want people to get to know us......but we also want them to keep their distance.We've always longed for someone to accept us...But we never believed there'd be anyone who would accept our twisted ways.That's why we'll stay locked up tight......in our own little private world......and throw away the key, so that no one can ever hurt us.
Bisco Hatori
There are certain questions that scientists may not ask, or, more accurately, for some questions, there are certain answers that scientists must a priori preclude from consideration.
Satoshi Kanazawa
Forgive me for stating the obvious, but the world is made up of all kinds of people. Other people have their own value to live by, and the same holds true with me.
Haruki Murakami
Society conspires against her from early infancy. Her brain is steadily filled with plaster until it sets: ‘If you’re not married by the time you’re twenty-five, you’ll have good reason to be ashamed’; ‘if you laugh, you won’t look dignified’ ; ‘if your face betrays your feelings, you’ll look coarse’; ‘if you mention the existence of a single body hair, you’re repulsive’ ; ‘if a boy kisses you on the cheek in public, you’re a whore’; if you enjoy eating, you’re a pig’; ‘if you take pleasure in sleeping, you’re no better than a cow’; and so on.These precepts would be merely anecdotal if they weren’t taken so much to heart.
Amélie Nothomb
She missed the built environment of New York City. It was only in an urban landscape, amid straight lines and architecture, that she could situate herself in human time and history. She missed people. She missed human intrigue, drama and power struggles. She needed her own species, not to talk to, necessarily, but just to be among, as a bystander in a crowd or an anonymous witness.
Ruth Ozeki
I swear that I will never cause trouble for anybody, as long as I live!! So please! Nobody cause any trouble for me, either!!
Minoru Furuya
Humanity? Don't be silly. I know. It is knocking down your fellow-men for the sake of your own happiness.
Osamu Dazai
I wonder if there is anyone who is not depraved. A wearisome thought.I want money. Unless I have it....In my sleep, a natural death!
Osamu Dazai
I would far prefer to be told simply to go and die. It's straightforward. But people almost never say, "Die!" Paltry, prudent hypocrites!
Osamu Dazai
After being hurt by the world so much, they began to see the demons within humans. So without hiding it through trickery, they worked to express it.
Osamu Dazai
Anyway, you can be sure of one thing, a man's got to fake just to stay alive.
Osamu Dazai
One measure of a civilization, in fact, is the percentage of misfits in its society.
Kōbō Abe
Every person should decide for himself how happy, or unhappy, our society might be.
Haruki Murakami
The laugh left a bitter taste in our mouths, but we laughed out all the same.
Haruki Murakami
It's like the frog that tried to outdo the cow...see, the consequences are reflected in each of us as individuals. A people so oppressed by the West have no mental leisure, they can't do anything worthwhile. They get an education that's stripped to the bare bone, and they're driven with their noses to the grindstone until they're dizzy -- that's why they all end up with nervous breakdowns. Try talking to them -- they're usually stupid. They haven't thought about a thing beyond themselves, that day, that very instant. They're too exhausted to think about anything else; it's not their fault. Unfortunately, exhaustion of the spirit and deterioration of the body come hand-in-hand. And that's not all. The decline of morality has set in too. Look where you will in this country, you won't find one square inch of brightness. It's all pitch black. So what difference would it make...
Sōseki Natsume
True freedom comes from being unknown.
Ruth Ozeki
Within two or three years of World War II's end, starvation had been basically eliminated in Japan, and yet the Japanese had continued slaving away as if their lives depend on it. Why? To create a more abundant life? If so, where was the abundance? Where were the luxurious living spaces? Eyesores dominated the scenery wherever you went, and people still crammed themselves into packed commuter trains each morning, submitting to conditions that would be fatal for any other mammal. Apparently what the Japanese wanted wasn't a better life, but more things.
Ryū Murakami
When I watched you dancing that day, I saw something else. I saw a new world coming rapidly. More scientific, efficient, yes. More cures for the old sicknesses. Very good. But a harsh, cruel world. And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind world, one that she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go. That is what I saw. It wasn't really you, what you were doing, I know that. But I saw you and it broke my heart.
Kazuo Ishiguro
Depending on each other and facing the difficulties that go with it takes a lot more effort than living on your own, separated from the rest of the world. Loving each other, hurting each other, over and over, until our death. All those things that seem so normal are actually incredibly difficult. To accomplish a normal life might be an achievement as great as writing a book that goes down in history!
Naoyuki Ochiai
The animals known as human beings live in humongous condominium blocks, just going about their daily lives. I've come to realize that it's just a modern jungle. And I'm the girl who's wandered into the forest.
Inio Asano
It’s so unrewarding, being a woman.
Sōseki Natsume
I may be someone who was always destined to spend my life wandering aimlessly. I can’t settle down. The cruel part is, I want to settle down and the world won’t let me. So what choice do I have but to become a fugitive?
Sōseki Natsume
Reflection may be essential to a scholar, but it’s taboo in social intercourse.
Sōseki Natsume
People may make fun of me because I’m wearing something odd, but it’s still good to be alive.
Sōseki Natsume
In a totally dysfunctional society, the profession of a writer would not exist.
Minae Mizumura
I want to spy on all sorts of places, and the box is a portable hole that occurred to me under the circumstances, it being impossible to punch holes throughout the world.
Kōbō Abe
If I were just in trousers, somehow I could go out into the world. It would make no difference whether I was naked from the waist up and my feet bare just as long as I had trousers on. Otherwise if you go walking around the streets without trousers, no matter how new your shoes and how elegant your coat, it’s enough to raise a big hue and cry. Enlightened society is a kind of trouser society.
Kōbō Abe
Clinging to one’s outward appearance interferes with living.
Kōbō Abe
These days only a guerrilla or a box man would want to cover up his identity to the extent of refusing the convenience of instalment buying. But I am that box man. A representative of anti-instalmentism.
Kōbō Abe
You can only do what you can no matter how you try.
Kōbō Abe
We're attacking all accepted values. Authority, class differences, shared perceptions. We don't care what happens to our social structure -- revolutions are for suckers. Our target is people's collective consciousness. It's like throwing a cream pie in their face.
Fuminori Nakamura
Hirota feels strongly drawn toward nature and the natural, is hyper-sensitive to the artificial—particularly that most cramped and constraining man-made creation, society—and does his best to avoid it.
Sōseki Natsume
I have friends like that—very straightforward and responsible, good at what they do, good home life. But they get stressed, and they blow off steam by posting aggressive comments on the web. Their web personality is different from their real personality. They keep them separate. They just laugh and say it’s okay to write whatever you can’t say in the real world, no matter how critical or negative it is. That does seem to be one purpose of the Internet for a lot of people.”Kotaro nodded.“But I think my friends are wrong. Their posts will never disappear. They think they’re just putting opinions out there. They don’t use real names. They say what they think. They assume no one pays attention for more than a few moments. That’s a big mistake.”“Most of what goes on the net, stays on the net—somewhere.”“That’s not what I mean. No matter how carefully they choose their words, whatever they say, the words they use stay inside them. Everything is cumulative. Words don’t ‘disappear.’“Maybe they post a comment saying a certain actress should just die. They think they’ve blown off steam by criticizing someone no one likes anyway. But those words—’I hope she dies’—stay inside the writer, along with the feeling that it’s acceptable to write things like that. All that negativity accumulates, and someday the weight of it will change the writer.“That’s what words do. However they’re expressed, there’s no way people can separate their words from themselves. They can’t escape the influence of their own thoughts. They can divide their comments among different handles and successfully hide their identity, but they can’t hide from themselves. They know who they are. You can’t run from yourself.”Mom would say, “What goes around, comes around.”“So be careful, Kotaro. If the real world is stressing you out, deal with your stress in the real world, no matter how dumb you think it makes you look. Okay?
Miyuki Miyabe
Society. I felt as though even I were beginning at last to acquire some vague notion of what it meant. It is a struggle between one individual to another, a then-and-there struggle, in which the immediate triumph is everything. ‘Human beings never submit to human beings.’ Even slaves practice their mean retaliations. Human beings cannot conceive of any means of survival except of a single then-and-there contest. They speak of duty to one’s country and such like things, but the object of their effort is invariably the individual, and, even once the individual’s needs have been met, again the individual comes in. The incomprehensibility of society is the incomprehensibility of the individual. The ocean is not society; it is individuals.
Osamu Dazai
Extravagance of desire is the fundamental cause which has led the world into its present predicament. Fast rather than slow, more rather than less—this flashy "development" is linked directly to society's impending collapse.
Masanobu Fukuoka
The people of Hiroshima went to work at once to restore human society in the aftermath of the great atomic flood. They were concerned to salvage their own lives, but in the process they also salvaged the souls of the people who have brought the atomic bomb.
Kenzaburō Ōe
Our standards of morality are begotten of the past needs of society, but is society to remain always the same?
Kakuzō Okakura
Soon after I began working for the Professor, I realized that he talked about numbers whenever he was unsure of what to say or do. Numbers were also his way of reaching out to the world. They were safe, a source of comfort.
Yōko Ogawa