In the woodblock prints of the Genroku period one often finds the features of a pair of lovers to be surprisingly similar, with little to distinguish the man from the woman. The universal ideal of beauty in Greek sculpture likewise approaches a close resemblance between the male and female. Might this not be one of...

No human being can be so honest as to become completely false.

The philosophy that prepares a revolution and the sentiment that underpins the philosophy have, in every case the two pillars of nihilism and mysticism.

She did not know it, but she was actually in despair at the poverty of human emotions. Was it not irrational that there was nothing to do except weep when ten people died, just as one wept for but a single person?

Procurar placer a una mujer es exponerte a cien sinsabores sin un solo beneficio.

An ugliness unfurled in the moonlight and soft shadow and suffused the whole world. If I were an amoeba, he thought, with an infinitesimal body, I could defeat ugliness. A man isn’t tiny or giant enough to defeat anything.

Her nose was perfect; her lips exquisite. Like a master placing a go stone on the board after long deliberation, he placed the details of her beauty one by one in the misty dark and drew back to savour them.

The special quality of hell is to see everything clearly down to the last detail.

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...

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.

Kazu, now that she thought of it, realized that for all her headstrong temperament, she had never loved a man younger than herself. A young man has such a surplus of spiritual and physical gifts that he is likely to be cocksure of himself, particularly when dealing with an older woman, and there is no...

The blossoms seem unusually lovely this year. There were none of the scarlet-and-white-striped curtains that are set up among the blossoming trees so invariably that one has to come to think of them as the attire of cherry blossoms; there were no bustling tea-stalls, no holiday crowds of flower-viewers, no one hawking balloons and toy...

It seemed that hell could appear day or night, at any time, at any place, simply in response to one’s thoughts or wishes. It seemed that we could summon it at our pleasure and that instantly it would appear.

Better to be caught in sudden, complete catastrophe than to be gnawed by the cancer of imagination.

I’ve known supreme happiness, and I’m not greedy enough to want what I have to go on forever. Every dream ends. Wouldn’t it be foolish, knowing that nothing lasts forever, to insist that one has a right to do something that does?[…]but, if eternity existed, it would be this moment.

Again, there were maidens who cherished the firm belief that he had come from the sea. Because within his breast could be heard the roaring of the sea. Because in the pupils of his eyes there lingered the mysterious and eternal horizon that the sea leaves as a keepsake deep in the eyes of all...

Only knowledge can turn life’s unbearableness into a weapon.

Again and again, the cicada’s untiring cry pierced the sultry summer air like a needle at work on thick cotton cloth.

How oddly situated a man is apt to find himself at age thirty-eight! His youth belongs to the distant past. Yet the period of memory beginning with the end of youth and extending to the present has left him not a single vivid impression. And therefore he persists in feeling that nothing more than a...

Possibly a man who hates the land should dwell on shore forever. Alienation and the long voyages at sea will compel him once again to dream of it, torment him with the absurdity of longing for something that he loathes.

True beauty is something that attacks, overpowers, robs, and finally destroys.

El intelecto, lejos de ser un valor cultural inofensivo, me había sido otorgado únicamente como un arma, un medio de supervivencia. Así, las disciplinas físicas que más adelanteserían tan necesarias para mi supervivencia se podían comparar en cierto sentido al modo en que una persona para quien el cuerpo ha sido el único medio de...

A father is a reality-concealing machine, a machine for dishing up lies to kids, and that isn’t even the worst of it: secretly he believes that he represents reality.

On the spur of the moment she decided to go and view the blossoms by herself in the dark night. It was a strange decision for a timid and unadventurous young woman, but then she was in a strange state of mind and she dreaded the return home. That evening all sorts of unsettling fancies...

I felt as though I owned the whole world. And little wonder, because at no time are we ever in such complete possession of a journey, down to its last nook and cranny , as when we are busy with preparations for it. After that, there remains only the journey itself, which is nothing but...

Beyond doubt it would speedily verify the proverb that a nation must ravage itself before foreigners can ravage it, a man must despise himself before others can despise him.

What transforms this world is — knowledge. Do you see what I mean? Nothing else can change anything in this world. Knowledge alone is capable of transforming the world, while at the same time leaving it exactly as it is. When you look at the world with knowledge, you realize that things are unchangeable and...

The instant that the blade tore open his flesh, the bright disk of the sun soared up and exploded behind his eyelids.

Thus in a single phrase I can define the great illusion concerning ‘love’ in this world. It is the effort to join reality with the apparition.

…Shunsuké hated the preoccupation with modern psychology that judged his casual, offhand remarks or his daily actions as betraying his identity or ideas with better clarity than did his highly polished sentences.

To put it in a rather vulgar way, I had been dreaming about love in the firm belief that I could not be loved, but at the final stage I had substituted desire for love and felt a sort of relief. But in the end I had understood that desire itself demanded for its fulfillment...

But there is no such thing as individual knowledge, a particular knowledge belonging to one special person or group. Knowledge is the sea of humanity, the field of humanity, the general condition of human existence.

…Her desire was close to that of the person who drowns himself; he does not necessarily covet death so much as what comes after the drowning—something different from what he had before, at least a different world.

They had laid the tender, down-ruffled little bird on a platter and appeared now to be pondering a way to eat out its heart without causing it distress.

To see human beings in agony, to see them covered in blood and to hear their death groans, makes people humble. It makes their spirits delicate, bright, peaceful. It’s never at such times that we become cruel or bloodthirsty. No, it’s on a beautiful spring afternoon like this that people suddenly become cruel. It’s at...

And it seemed increasingly obvious that the world would have to topple if he was to attain the glory that was rightfully his. They were consubstantial: glory and the capsized world.

Beauty is something that burns the hand when you touch it.

When I arrived at the house in the suburbs that night I seriously contemplated suicide for the first time in my life. But as I thought about it, the idea became exceedingly tiresome, and I finally decided it would be a ludicrous business. I had an inherent dislike of admitting defeat. Moreover, I told myself,...

Japanese people today think of money, just money: Where is our national spirit today? The Jieitai must be the soul of Japan. … The nation has no spiritual foundation. That is why you don’t agree with me. You will just be American mercenaries. There you are in your tiny world. You do nothing for Japan....

When one has attained a state of mind from which the evil passions of the present world have been so utterly winnowed, fear too is forgotten. Thus it was that the priest no longer could understand why Hell should exist.

Because the fact of not being understood by other people had become my only real source of pride, I was never confronted by any impulse to express things and to make others understand something that I knew.

However, as words become particularized, and as men begin – in however small a way – to use them in personal, arbitrary ways, so their transformation into art begins.

This time, Fusako was able to express herself with fluency and candor. The bold letters she had been writing week after week had granted her an unexpected new freedom.

Every man.

…In the very simplicity of her desire to punish herself appeared egoism in its purest form. Never before had this woman who seemed to think only of herself experienced an egoism so immaculate.

So far as feelings were concerned, there was no discrepancy between the very finest feeling in this world and the very worst; that their effect was the same; that no visible difference existed between murderous intent and feelings of deep compassion.

Just now I had a dream. I’ll see you again. I know it. Beneath the falls.

Count Ayakura’s abstraction persisted. He believed that only a vulgar mentality was willing to acknowledge the possibility of catastrophe. He felt that taking naps was much more beneficial than confronting catastrophes. However precipitous the future might seem, he learned from the game of kemari that the ball must always come down. There was no call...

The only people in this world I really trust are my fans – even if they do forget you so fast.

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...