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Natsume Sōseki Quotes

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“ I believe that words uttered in passion

contain a greater living truth than do
those words which express thoughts
rationally conceived. It is blood that
moves the body. Words are not meant
to stir the air only: they are capable of
moving greater things.
Natsume Soseki, Kokoro

Like · 337

“ You seem to be under the impression

that there is a special breed of bad
humans. There is no such thing as a
stereotype bad man in this world.
Under normal conditions, everybody is
more or less good, or, at least,
ordinary. But tempt them, and they
may suddenly change. That is what is
so frightening about men.
Natsume Soseki, Kokoro

Like · 277

“ I do not want your admiration now,

because I do not want your insults in
the future. I bear with my loneliness
now, in order to avoid greater
loneliness in the years ahead. You see,
loneliness is the price we have to pay
for being born in this modern age, so
full of freedom, independence, and our
own egotistical selves.
Natsume Sōseki, Kokoro

Like · 262

“ You see, loneliness is the price we have

to pay for being born in this modern
age, so full of freedom, independence,
and our own egoistical selves.
Natsume Soseki, Kokoro

Like · 131

“ It is painfully easy to define human

beings. They are beings who, for no
good reason at all, create their own
unnecessary suffering.
Natsume Sōseki, I am a Cat III
Tags: humanity, suffering

Like · 113

“ Use your intellect to guide you, and

you will end up putting people
off. Rely on your emotions, and you
will forever be pushed around.
Force your will on others, and you will
live in constant tension. There
is no getting around it—people are
hard to live with.
Natsume Sōseki
Tags: truth

Like · 84

“ Living as I do with human beings, the

more that I observe them, the more I
am forced to conclude that they are
selfish.
Natsume Sōseki, I Am a Cat
Tags: human, life-and-living, living,
observe, selfish

Like · 84

“ It is not you in particular that I

distrust, but the whole of humanity.
Natsume Sōseki, Kokoro

Like · 76

“ I often laughed, and you often gave me

a dissatisfied look, till you pressed me
to unfold my past before you as if it
were a roll of pictures. It was then I
felt respect for you. Because you
unreservedly showed me your
resolution to catch something alive in
my being, and to sip the warm blood
running in my body, by cutting my
heart. At that time, I was still living,
and did not want to die. So I rejected
your request, promising to satisfy you
some day. Now I am going to destroy
my heart myself, and pour my blood
into your veins. I shall be happy if a
new life can enter into your bosom,
when my heart has stopped beating.
Natsume Soseki, Kokoro
Tags: past

Like · 71

“ Like the first whiff of burning incense,

or like the taste of one's first cup of
saké, there is in love that moment
when all its power is felt.
Natsume Soseki, Kokoro
Tags: love

Like · 65

“ ...you don't really become a finer

person just by reading lots of books.
Natsume Sōseki, Kokoro

Like · 62

“ 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 must be difficult to accept your
loneliness. You must sometimes want
to fight it."
"But I am not at all lonely."
"Youth is the loneliest time of all.
Otherwise, why should you come so
often to my house?"
Sensei continued: "But surely, when
you are with me, you cannot rid
yourself of your loneliness. I have not
it in me to help you forget it. You will
have to look elsewhere for the
consolation you seek. And soon, you
will find that you no longer want to
visit me."
As he said this, Sensei smiled sadly.
Natsume Sōseki, Kokoro
Tags: aging, life-lesson, loneliness

Like · 58

“ Now that I thought about it, though, I

realized that most people actually
encourage you to turn bad. They seem
to think that if you don't, you'll never
get anywhere in the world. And then
on those rare occasions when they
encounter somebody who's honest and
pure-hearted, they look down on him
and say he's nothing but a kid, a
Botchan. If that's the way it is, it would
be better if they didn't have those
ethics classes in elementary school and
middle school where the teacher is
always telling you to be honest and not
lie. The schools might as well just go
ahead and teach you how to tell lies,
how to mistrust everybody, and how to
take advantage of people. Wouldn't
their students, and the world at large,
be better off that way? Redshirt had
laughed at me for being
simpleminded. If people are going to
get laughed at for being simpleminded
and sincere, there's no hope. Kiyo
never laughed at me for saying
anything like what I said to Redshirt.
She would have been deeply impressed
by it. Compared to Redshirt, she's far
and away the superior person.
Natsume Soseki, Botchan

Like · 57

“ 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
myself to read books. In short, I have
grown old and decrepit.
Natsume Soseki, Kokoro
Tags: books, ignorance, reading

Like · 53

“ I am an inconsistent creature. Perhaps

it is the pressure of my past, and not
my own perverse mind, that has made
me into this contradictory being. I am
all too well aware of this fault in
myself. You must forgive me.
Sōseki Natsume, Kokoro
Tags: human-behavior, truth

Like · 49

“ On the whole, all people are good, or

at least they're normal. The
frightening thing is that they can
suddenly turn bad when it comes to
the crunch.
Natsume Sōseki, Kokoro
Tags: human-nature

Like · 45

“ He is totally abandoned in the way he

buys book after book, never to read a
single one. I wouldn't mind if he used
his head and bought in moderation,
but no. Whenever the mood takes him,
he ambles off to the biggest bookshop
in the city and brings back home as
many books as chance to catch his
fancy. Then, at the end of the month,
he adopts an attitude of complete
detachment.
Natsume Sōseki, I Am a Cat

Like · 45

“ Approach everything rationally, and

you become harsh. Pole along in the
stream of emotions, and you will be
swept away by the current. Give free
rein to your desires, and you become
uncomfortably confined. It is not a
very agreeable place to live, this world
of ours.
Sōseki Natsume, The Three-Cornered
World

Like · 38

“ Your addiction to thinking will come

back to haunt you.
Natsume Sōseki, Light and Darkness
Tags: introspection, overthinking, self-
indulgence, thinking

Like · 38

“ All you do is think. Because all you do

is think, you've constructed two
separate worlds—one inside your head
and one outside. Just the fact that you
tolerate this enormous dissonance—
why, that's a great intangible failure
already.
Sōseki Natsume, And Then
Tags: dichotomy, inner-life, outside-
world, perception, zen

Like · 36

“ Over the wintry

forest, winds howl in rage

with no leaves to blow.

Natsume Sōseki
Tags: haiku, loneliness, winter

Like · 32

“ Watch birth and death:

The lotus has already
Opened its flower.
Natsume Soseki
Tags: death

Like · 32

“ The memory of having sat at

someone's feet will later make you
want to trample him underfoot.
Sōseki Natsume, Kokoro

Like · 30

“ Sometimes when I can no longer

endure the strain, I beg him to tell me
what is wrong with me and help me to
correct it. Then he always says that I
have nothing to correct, assuring me
that it is he who is at fault. And I
become sadder and sadder until I
weep with the desire to know my fault.
Natsume Soseki, Kokoro
Tags: fault

Like · 29

“ In the old days, a man was taught to

forget himself. Today it is quite
different: he is taught not to forget
himself and he accordingly spends his
days and nights in endless self-regard.
Who can possibly know peace in such
an eternally burning hell? The
apparent realities of this awful world,
even the beast lines of being, are all
symptoms of that sickness for which
the only cure lies in learning to forget
the self.
Natsume Sōseki, I Am a Cat

Like · 29

“ 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.
Natsume Sōseki, Kokoro
Tags: japan, japanese, japanese-
literature, loneliness

Like · 28

“ Being a man, I may fall passionately in

love with a woman someday, but I
positively assert that if I had to get
involved in a rivalry as intense as the
love itself in order to win the object of
love, I would sooner give her up by
standing aloof with my hands in my
pockets, no matter what pain or
sacrifice I might have to endure.
Others may criticize me as unmanly,
cowardly, weak-willed, or whatever.
But if the woman is one so wavering
between her suitors that she can only
be won through that kind of painful
competition, I can't regard her as
worth the bitter rivalry. It's far more
satisfying to my conscience to have the
manliness to allow my rival free play
in the field of love and for me to gaze
in loneliness at the scars of love than
to have the pleasure of embracing by
force a woman who would not
willingly give me her heart.
Natsume Sōseki

Like · 27

“ I felt for her a love that was close to

pious faith. You may find it odd that I
use a specifically religious word to
describe my feelings for a young
woman, but real love, I firmly believe,
is not so different from the religious
impulse. Whenever I saw her face, I
felt that I myself had become
beautiful.
Sōseki Natsume, Kokoro

Like · 25

“ In fact, there is no such thing as

character, something fixed and final.
The real thing is something that
novelists don’t know how to write
about. Or, if they tried, the end result
would never be a novel. Real people
are strangely difficult to make sense
out of. Even a god would have his
hands full trying. But maybe I’m
jumping to conclusions, presuming
that other people are a mess just
because I’m put together in such a
disorderly way. If so, I should
apologize.
Soseki Natsume

Like · 25

“ Desire is a frightening thing.

Natsume Sōseki, Sanshirō
Tags: desire

Like · 24

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