Quotes by Japanese Authors - Page 8

But when we consider how small after all the cup of human enjoyment is, how soon overflowed with tears, how easily drained to the dregs in our quenchless thirst for infinity, we shall not blame ourselves for making so much of the tea-cup.
Kakuzō Okakura
Tears will not fill your stomach; Tears will not bring kindness. If you have time to shed tears, laugh; someone will be willing to look at a hearty smile more then a tear soaked sponge.
Reiko Saibara
Nothing is less trustworthy than a woman's tears.
Wataru Watari
When a human's tears dry up forever, they transform into a monster
Kohta Hirano
Give them back! Give my tears back, right now——with interest!!
Natsuki Takaya
There's no sense forcing yourself if you don't feel like it. Tell you the truth, I've had sex with lots of guys, but I think I did it mostly out of fear. I was scared not to have somebody putting his arms around me, so I could never say no. That's all. Nothing good ever came of sex like that. All it does is grind down the meaning of life a piece at a time.
Haruki Murakami
The earth is not just for the clever and the strong.
Shūsaku Endō
I don't think it's a question of liking or disliking it," Tengo said..."It was the one thing he was best at." "Hmm. I see," Kumi said. She pondered this. "But that might very well be the best way to live your life.
Haruki Murakami
I've had sex with lots of guys, but I think I did it mostly out of fear. I was scared not to have somebody putting his arms around me, so I could never say no. That's all. Nothing good ever came of sex like that. All it does is grind down the meaning of life a piece at a time.
Haruki Murakami
Actually, time had always been passing. I had just managed to avoid thinking about it very much. It would be hard for me to recapture that feeling—life wasn’t so easy anymore. Small things pricked my heart. In those early days, I lived in a world of overwhelming sensations; it was like I had just fallen out of love.
Banana Yoshimoto
You never know who it's going to be, or what they'll bring, but whatever it is, it's always exactly what is needed.
Ruth Ozeki
It was painful to consider that the nation which could produce the world's greatest battleships was unable under pressure to produce a single satisfactory torpedo boat.
Tameichi Hara
I always thought I wasn't afraid to die. No... No one is afraid of death itself. Your pain and suffering is over in an instant. What really makes me suffer... Is seeing you crying over me... From the darkness of the Milky Way.I'm sorry... Please don't make that face. You look best when you're smiling, you know.
Inio Asano
Emptiness which is conceptually liable to be mistaken for sheer nothingness is in fact the reservoir of infinite possibilities.
D.T. Suzuki
To him, they looked like shadows that his wife had left behind. Size 7 shadows of his wife hung there in long rows, layer upon layer, as if someone had gathered and hung up samples of the infinite possibilities (or at least the theoretically infinite possibilities) implied in the existence of a human being.
Haruki Murakami
Once a person has been poisoned by self-deception, he can't make decisions about himself as neatly as all that," Himiko said, elaborating her friend's terrific prophecy; " You won't get a divorce Bird. You'll justify yourself like crazy, and try to salvage your married life by confusing the real issues. A decision like divorce is beyond you now, Bird, the poison has gone to work. And you know how the story ends ? Not even your own wife will trust you absolutely, and one day you'll discover for yourself that your entire private life is in the shadow of deception and in the end you'll destroy yourself. Bird, the first signs of self-destruction have appeared already!" " But that's a blind alley! Leave it to you to paint the most hopeless future you can think of. " Bird lunged at jocularity...
Kenzaburō Ōe
Knowing that it is the earth we tread, we learn to tread carefully, lest it be rent open. Realizing that it is the heavens that hang above us, we come to fear the echoing thunderbolt. The world demands that we battle with others for the sake of our own reputation, and so we undergo the sufferings bred of illusion. While we live in this world with its daily business, forced to walk the tightrope of profit and loss, true love is an empty thing, and the wealth before our eyes mere dust.
Sōseki Natsume
I've been mistaken to assume that in this little village in the spring, so like a dream or a poem, life is a matter only of the singing birds, the falling blossoms, and the bubbling springs. The real world has crossed mountains and seas and is bearing down even on this isolated village, whose inhabitants have doubtless lived here in peace down the long stretch of years ever since they fled as defeated warriors from the great clan wars of the twelfth century. Perhaps a millionth part of the blood that will dye the wide Manchurian plains will gush from this young man's arteries, or seethe forth at the point of the long sword that hangs at his waist. Yet here this young man sits, beside an artist for whom the sole value of human life lies in dreaming. If I listen carefully, I can even hear the beating of his heart, so close are we. And perhaps even now, within that beat reverberates the beating of the great tide that is sweeping across the hundreds of miles of that far battlefield. Fate has for a brief and unexpected moment brought us together in this room, but beyond that it speaks no more.
Sōseki Natsume
The sky both exists and doesn’t exist. It has substance and at the same time doesn’t. And we merely accept that vast expanse and drink it in.
Haruki Murakami
I really should have died then, Tsukuru often told himself. Then this world, the one in the here and now, wouldn't exist. It was a captivating, bewitching thought. The present world wouldn't exist, and reality would no longer be real. As far as this world was concerned, he would simply no longer exist—just as this world would no longer exist for him.
Haruki Murakami
Even at a time like this, the street is bright enough and filled with people coming and going—people with places to go and people with no place to go; people with a purpose and people with no purpose; people trying to hold time back and people trying to urge it forward.
Haruki Murakami
He framed a question inwardly to his vanity: 'Will this be tougher than I thought?
Sōseki Natsume
They say it's a dangerous experiment to include dreams (actual dreams or otherwise) in the fiction you write. Only a handful of writers - and I'm talking the most talented - are able to pull off the irrational synthesis you find in dreams.
Haruki Murakami
All right people, listen up! If you've got a family back home waiting for you or if you just want to save your own skin, turn around and walk away. Also, women! I have no intention of fighting any women!
Hiromu Arakawa
I disagree. You want to bring back someone that you've lost. You might want money. Maybe you want women. Or, you might want to protect the world. These are all common things people want. Things that their hearts desire. Greed may not be good, but it's not so bad, either. You humans think greed is just for money and power! But everyone wants something they don't have.
Hiromu Arakawa
Here is a greedy man who keeps to himselfThe beautiful pears ripe in his garden.
Bashō Matsuo
Otani: Oh... I didn't get you a Christmas present. Risa: But you already gave me something.Otani: Huh? I didn't give you anything.Risa: It was something wonderful. 'I seem to like you much more than I realized'.
Atsushi Otani
So... Stop shaking my heart like this.
Yamane Ayano
Thinking of you, wherever you areWe pray for our sorrows to end,and hope that our hearts will blend.Now I will step forward to realize this wish.And who knows,starting a new journey may not be so hardOr maybe it has already begun.There are many worlds.but they share the same skyone sky, one destiny. Kairi
Square Enix
There. My ears are all dead. Now you try."Three times I repeated the movements she'd made. Slowly, carefully, but nothing left me with the impression that my ears had died. The wine was rapidly circulating through my system."I do believe that my ears aren't dying properly, " I said, disappointed.She shook her head. "That's okay. If your ears don't need to die, there's nothing wrong with them not dying.
Haruki Murakami
By then she was dead. In fact, she may have been dead a while ago. Physically, several seconds ago, mentally, ages ago.
Koushun Takami
It seems as if Americans like to be the center of attention even after they're dead.
Hidekaz Himaruya
Hatsuharu Sohma: [after tripping Kyo] If I hadn't had tripped you you wouldn't have stopped now would you. [addressing the audience] Hatsuharu Sohma: By the way what I just did was very dangerous. And if it had been anyone but Kyo they probably would have been hurt pretty badly so don't try it at home. Kyo Sohma: Don't try it here and who are you even talking to
Natsuki Takaya
The sense of tragedy - according to Aristotle - comes, ironically enough, not from the protagonist's weak points but from his good qualities. Do you know what I'm getting at? People are drawn deeper into tragedy not by their defects but by their virtues. Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex being a great example. Oedipus is drawn into tragedy not because of laziness or stupidity, but because of his courage and honesty. So an inevitable irony results....[But] we accept irony through a device called metaphor. And through that we grow and become deeper human beings.
Haruki Murakami
But I had deliberately acquired the habit of closing my eyes even to such obvious assumptions, just as though I did not want to miss a single opportunity for tormenting myself. This is a trite device, often adopted by persons who, cut off from all other means of escape, retreat into the safe haven of regarding themselves as objects of tragedy.
Yukio Mishima
Now that I think about it, this might all have been inevitable. The reason we all ended up here, the reason I couldn't leave her alone...it all had to be a ridiculous fairy tale.
Jun Mochizuki
ALL LOSSES IN THIS WORLD ARE DUE TO A LACK OF ABILITY. IF YOU WANT TO CURSE SOMETHING, CURSE YOUR OWN WEAKNESS
Sui Ishida
It is much more valuable to look for the strength in others. You can gain nothing by criticizing their imperfections.
Daisaku Ikeda
I must go on living. And, though itmay be childish of me, I can't go on insimple compliance. From now on I muststruggle with the world. I thought thatMother might well be the last of thosewho can end their lives beautifully andsadly, struggling with no one, neitherhating nor betraying anyone. In theworld to come there will be no room forsuch people. The dying are beautiful,but to live, to survive – those thingssomehow seem hideous andcontaminated with blood.
Osamu Dazai
Is it a crime to be strong?' That's something you might have asked. And I would have answered by asking the opposite question...'Is it a crime to be weak?
Naoyuki Ochiai
The Professor never really seemed to care whether we figured out the right answer to a problem. He preferred our wild, desperate guesses to silence, and he was even more delighted when those guesses led to new problems that took us beyond the original one. He had a special feeling for what he called the "correct miscalculation," for he believed that mistakes were often as revealing as the right answers.
Yōko Ogawa
The real bottleneck is software. Creating software can be done only the old-fashioned way. A human -sitting quietly in a chair with a pencil, paper and laptop- is going to have to write the codes... One can mass-produce hardware and increase it's power by piling on more and more chips, but you cannot mass-produce the brain.
Michio Kaku
These computer simulations try only to duplicate the interactions between the cortex and the thalamus. Huge chunks of the brain are therefore missing. Dr. [Dharmendra] Modha understands the enormity of his project. His ambitious research has allowed him to estimate what it would take to create a working model of the entire human brain, and not just a portion or a pale version of it, complete with all parts of the neocortex and connections to the senses. He envisions using not just a single Blue Gene computer [with over a hundred thousand processors and terabytes of RAM] but thousands of them, which would fill up not just a room but an entire city block. The energy consumption would be so great that you would need a thousand-megawatt nuclear power plant to generate all the electricity. And then, to cool off this monstrous computer so it wouldn't melt, you would need to divert a river and send it through the computer circuits.It is remarkable that a gigantic, city-size computer is required to simulate a piece of human tissue that weighs three pounds, fits inside your skull, raises your body temperature by only a few degrees, uses twenty watts of power, and needs only a few hamburgers to keep it going.
Michio Kaku
You're such a book girl.
Mizuki Nomura
Girls who are on top of things must have three hundred ways of responding to tired thirty-five-year-old divorced men.
Haruki Murakami
If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there’s salvation in life. Even if you can’t get together with that person.
Haruki Murakami
If you flipped a switch in the back of your brain, you could watch a second go by like the frames of a movie. Once you figured out what would be happening ten frames later, you could take whatever steps you needed to turn the situation to your advantage. All at a subconscious level. In battle, you couldn't count on anyone who didn't understand how to break down time.
Hiroshi Sakurazaka
We are not wounded so deeply when betrayed by the things we hope for as when betrayed by things we try our best to despise.In such betrayal comes the dagger in the back.
Yukio Mishima
When you find yourself looking ridiculous, reasoning isn't worth a damn.
Osamu Dazai
When I lived on the Bluff in Yokohama I spend a good deal of my leisure in the company of foreign residents, at their banquets and balls. At close range I was not particularly struck by their whiteness, but from a distance I could distinguish them quite clearly from the Japanese. Among the Japanese were ladies who were dressed in gowns no less splendid than the foreigners’, and whose skin was whiter than theirs. Yet from across the room these ladies, even one alone, would stand out unmistakably from amongst a group of foreigners. For the Japanese complexion, no matter how white, is tinged by a slight cloudiness. These women were in no way reticent about powdering themselves. Every bit of exposed flesh—even their backs and arms—they covered with a thick coat of white. Still they could not efface the darkness that lay below their skin. It was as plainly visible as dirt at the bottom of a pool of pure water. Between the fingers, around the nostrils, on the nape of the neck, along the spine—about these places especially, dark, almost dirty, shadows gathered. But the skin of the Westerners, even those of a darker complexion, had a limpid glow. Nowhere were they tainted by this gray shadow. From the tops of their heads to the tips of their fingers the whiteness was pure and unadulterated. Thus it is that when one of us goes among a group of Westerners it is like a grimy stain on a sheet of white paper. The sight offends even our own eyes and leaves none too pleasant a feeling.
Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
In any case, suffice it to say I enjoyed hearing about faraway places. I had stocked up a whole store of these places, like a bear getting ready for hibernation. I’d close my eyes, and streets would materialize, rows of houses take shape. I could hear people’s voices, feel the gentle, steady rhythm of their lives, those people so distant, whom I’d probably never know.
Haruki Murakami
If I sound as if I'm always predicting ominous things, it's because I'm a pragmatist. I use deductive reasoning to generalize, and I suppose this sometimes ends up sounding like unlucky prophecies. You know why? Because reality's just the accumulation of ominous prophecies come to life. You have to only open a newspaper on any given day and weigh the good news versus the bad, and you'll see what I mean.
Haruki Murakami
That's when he hit her, when he saw how scared she was. He couldn't bear it that she was frightened and asking for help. Asking for help is wrong. Because there isn't any such thing as help in this world.
Ryū Murakami
It’s because we help out when they’re in trouble that we can count on them to come running when we need it.-Shikamaru Nara
Masashi Kishimoto
I’m not totally mad at you. I’m just sad. You’re all locked up in that little world of yours, and when I try knocking on the door, you just sort of look up for a second and go right back inside.
Haruki Murakami
We amass material things for the same reason that we eat - to satisfy a craving. Buying on impulse and eating and drinking to excess are attempts to alleviate stress. From observing my clients, I have noticed that when they discard excess clothing, their tummies tend to slim down, when they discard books and documents, their minds become clearer, when they reduce the number of cosmetics and tidy up the area around the sink and bath, their complexion tends to become clear and their skin smooth. -p226
Marie Kondō
In fact, that particular article of clothing has already completed its role in your life, and you are free to say, "Thank you for giving me joy when I bought you," or "Thank you for teaching me what doesn't suit me," and let it go.Every object has a different role to play. Not all clothes have come to you to be worn threadbare. It is the same with people. Not every person you meet in your life will become a close friend or lover. Some you will find hard to get along with or impossible to like. But these people, too, teach you the precious lesson of who you DO like, so that you will appreciate those special people even more.When you come across something that you cannot part with, think carefully about its true purpose in your life. You'll be surprised at how many of the things you possess have already fulfilled their role. By acknowledging their contribution and letting them go with gratitude, you will be able to truly put the things you own, and your life in order. In the end, all that will remain are the things that you really treasure..p 60-61
Marie Kondō
I can't protect you without holding a sword. I can't embrace you while holding a sword.
Tite Kubo
The space in which we live should be for the person we are becoming now. Not for the person we were in the past.
Marie Kondō
I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it’s just too much. The current’s too strong. They’ve got to let go, drift apart.
Kazuo Ishiguro