Quotes by Sōseki Natsume

He was grand in his convictions. He would stride forward to meet his own destruction.

Desire is a frightening thing.

It seems to me that you might create any sort of character in a novel and there would be at least one person in the world just like him. We humans are simply incapable of imagining non-human actions or behavior. Its the writers fault if we dont believe in his characters as human beings.

I thought of the new stone, of my new wife, and of the newly buried white bones beneath us, and I felt that fate had made sport of us all.

He had always been a middle-of-the-road sort. He had never submitted word for word to anyones command, but neither had he passionately rebelled against anyones advice. Depending upon the interpretation, this was the posture of a schemer or the strategy of a born vacillator. If he himself had been confronted with either of these charges, he could not have avoided wondering if they might not be true. But in large part, this was to be attributed neither to artifice nor to vacillation but rather to the flexibility of his vision, which allowed him to look in both directions at once. To this day, it was precisely this capacity that had always dampened his determination to advance singlemindedly toward a particular goal. It was not unusual for him to stand paralyzed in the midst of a situation. His posture of upholding the status quo was not the result of poverty of thought, but the product of lucid judgment; but he had never understood this truth about himself until he acted upon his beliefs with inviolable courage. The situation with Michiyo was precisely a case in point.

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 Western novels, for to him they were too bald, too self indulgent, and moreover, too unsubtly rich. However they read in the original, he thought they reflected a taste that could not be translated into Japanese. Therefore, he had not the slightest intention of using imported phrases to develop his relationship with Michiyo. Between the two of them at least, ordinary words sufficed perfectly well. But the danger was of slipping from point A to point B without realizing it. Daisuke managed to stand his ground only by a hairs breadth. When he left, Michiyo saw him to the entranceway and said, Do come again, please? Its so lonely.

Your addiction to thinking will come back to haunt you.

People forget their faces when theyre busy.

There was a time when his father had looked like gold to him. Many of his seniors had looked like gold. Anybody who had attained a certain high level of education had looked like gold. Therefore, his own gold plating had been all the more painful, and he had been impatient to become solid gold himself. But once his keen eye penetrated directly to the inner layers of these other people, his efforts suddenly came to seem foolish.

No matter how full ones head might be with the image of greatness, one was useless, I found out, unless one was a worthy man first.

On the whole, all people are good, or at least theyre normal. The frightening thing is that they can suddenly turn bad when it comes to the crunch.

[T]he very color of the air in the place I was born was different, the smell of the earth was special, redolent with memories of my parents.

here was no way of knowing what path he would take from there, but in order to survive as a human being, he was sure to arrive at the fate of having to incur the dislike of other human beings. When that time came, he would probably clothe himself inconspicuously, so as not to attract attention, and beggarlike, linger about the market places of man, in search of something.

All you do is think. Because all you do is think, youve constructed two separate worlds—one inside your head and one outside. Just the fact that you tolerate this enormous dissonance—why, thats a great intangible failure already.

There is nothing more difficult than understanding human mentality. My masters present mental state is very far from clear; is he feeling angry or lighthearted, or simply seeking solace in the scribblings of some dead philosopher? One just cant tell whether hes mocking the world or yearning to be accepted into its frivolous company, whether he is getting furious over some piddling little matter or holding himself aloof from worldly things. Compared to such complexities, cats are truly simple. If we want to eat, we eat; if we want to sleep, we sleep; when we are angry, we are angry utterly; when we cry, we cry with all the desperation of extreme commitment to our grief. Thus we never keep things like diaries. For what would be the point? No doubt human beings like my two-faced master find it necessary to keep diaries in order to display in a darkened room that true character so assiduously hidden from the world. But among cats both our four main occupations (walking, standing, sitting and lying down) and such incidental activities as excreting waste are pursued quite openly. We live our diaries, and consequently have no need to keep a daily record as a means of maintaining our real characters. Had I the time to keep a diary, Id use that time to better effect; sleeping on the veranda.

He framed a question inwardly to his vanity: Will this be tougher than I thought?

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.

Ive 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 mans 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.

No matter how fierce was the passion that gripped him, the fact is he was paralyzed, transfixed by the contemplation of his own past. Only something so momentous as to drive from his consciousness all thoughts of before and after could have propelled him forward. And with his eyes fixed on the past, he had no choice but to continue along its trajectory.

Thats a good point, Professor Hirota said. But there is one thing we ought to keep in mind in the study of man. Namely, that a human being placed in particular circumstances has the ability and the right to do just the opposite of what the circumstances dictate. The trouble is, we have this odd habit of thinking that men and light both act according to mechanical laws, which leads to some stunning errors. We set things up to make a man angry, and he laughs. We try to make him laugh, and again he does the opposite, he gets angry. Either way, though, hes still a human being.Hirota had enlarged the scope of the problem again.Well, then, what youre saying is, no matter what a human being does in a particular set of circumstances, he is being natural, said the novelist at the far end of the table.Thats it, Hirota shot back. It seems to me that you might create any sort of character in a novel and there would be at least one person in the world just like him. We humans are simply incapable of imagining non-human actions or behavior. Its the writers fault if we dont believe in his characters as human beings.