Quotes by Sseki Natsume

“Living as I do with human beings, the more that I observe them, the more I am forced to conclude that they are selfish.”

“There was nothing so very unfamiliar about the excitement she was feeling, and yet it felt always like a new excitement. It was, in other words, a perennially unfamiliar feeling.”

“He seemed to become aware of a dark, imponderable force pushing him left when he meant to go right or pulling him back when he meant to go forward. Until that moment, hewould have felt certain that...”

“It was Daisuke's conviction that all morality traced its origins to social realities. He believed there could be no greater confusion of cause and effect than to attempt to conform social reality t...”

“Words are not meant to stir the air only: they are capable of moving greater things.”

“Novelists congratulate themselves on their creation of this kind of character or that kind of character, and readers pretend to talk knowingly about character, but all it amounts to is that the wri...”

“Your brother is a sensitive person. Aesthetically, ethically, and intellectually he is in fact hypersensitive. As a result, it would seem that he was born only to torture himself. He has none of th...”

“It is painfully easy to define human beings. They are beings who, for no good reason at all, create their own unnecessary suffering.”

“He had always been a middle-of-the-road sort. He had never submitted word for word to anyone's command, but neither had he passionately rebelled against anyone's advice. Depending upon the interpre...”

“Daisuke was of course equipped with conversation that, even if they went further, would allow him to retreat as if nothing had happened. He had always wondered at the conversations recorded in West...”

“To tell you the truth, I used to consider it a disgrace to be found ignorant by other people. But now, I find that I am not ashamed of knowing less than others, and I'm less inclined to force mysel...”

“If he let one day pass without glancing at a single page, habit led him to feel a vague sense of decay. Therefore, in the face of most intrusions, he tried to arrange it so that he could stay in to...”

“I am a lonely man," he said again that evening. "And is it not possible that you are also a lonely person? But I am an older man, and I can live with my loneliness, quietly. You are young, and it m...”

“The memory of having sat at someones feet will later make you want to trample him underfoot. Im trying to fend off your admiration for me, you see, in order to save myself from your future contempt...”

“There was a large crowd around us, and every face in it looked happy. We had little opportunity to talk until we reached the woods, where there were no flowers and no people.”

“Your addiction to thinking will come back to haunt you.”

“I am a lonely man,' Sensei said. 'And so I am glad that you come to see me. But I am also a melancholy man, and so I asked you why you should wish to visit me so often.”

“Over the wintry forest, winds howl in rage with no leaves to blow.”

“That Seigo could go into geisha houses, accept luncheon invitations, drop in at the Club, see people off at Shimabashi, meet them at Yokohama, run out to Oiso to humor the eldersthat he could put i...”

“People forget their faces when they're busy.”