Sōseki Natsume Quotes

Desire is a frightening thing.

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

That K was hesitant in love does not mean that his love was in any sense lukewarm. He was unable to move, despite the violence of his emotion. And since the impact of his new emotion was not so great...

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 unreserve...

We who are born into this age of freedom and independence and the self must undergo this loneliness. It is the price we pay for these times of ours.

There, sitting cross-legged on the floor, he stared absently at his legs. They began to look strange. They no longer seemed to grow from his trunk at all, but rather, completely unconnected, they spra...

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

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.

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.

The memory of having sat at someone’s feet will later make you want to trample him underfoot. I’m trying to fend off your admiration for me, you see, in order to save myself from your future contempt....

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...

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 elders—that he could put in...

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

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 hi...

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.

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

It's like the frog that tried to outdo the cow...see, the consequences are reflected in each of us as individuals. A people so oppressed by the West have no mental leisure, they can't do anything wort...

It’s so unrewarding, being a woman.

People may make fun of me because I’m wearing something odd, but it’s still good to be alive.

Reflection may be essential to a scholar, but it’s taboo in social intercourse.