Anna > Anna's Quotes

“Until I die there will be those moments, moments seeming to rise up out of the ground like Macbeth's witches, when his face will come before me, that face in all its changes, when the exact timbre of his voice and tricks of his speech will nearly burst my ears, when his smell will overpower my nostrils. Sometimes, in the days which are coming--God grant me the grace to live them-- in the glare of the grey morning, sour-mouthed, eyelids raw and red, hair tangled and damp from stormy sleep, facing, over coffee and cigarette smoke, last night's impenetrable, meaningless boy who will shortly rise and vanish like the smoke, I will see Giovanni again, as he was that night, so vivid, so winning, all of the light of that gloomy tunnel trapped around his head.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“I can see the sun, but even if I cannot see the sun, I know that it exists. And to know that the sun is there - that is living.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.”
― Susanna Clarke, Piranesi

“To say that K did not guard himself well would be an understatement. In his innocence, he put himself completely at my mercy.”
― Sōseki Natsume, Kokoro

“It’s not God that I don’t accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“No one's serious at seventeen,
When lindens line the promenades”
― Arthur Rimbaud

“What would you do," I said, "if I pushed you into the sea?" K did not move. Without looking back, he said: "That would be pleasant. Please do.”
― Natsume Soseki, Kokoro

“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.”
― Sōseki Natsume, Kokoro

“I think that if the devil does not exist, and man has therefore created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“But is it not possible that there is yet another meaning hidden behind his words?" Unfortunately, I was unable to see things clearly then: it is sad to think how blind I was.”
― Sōseki Natsume, Kokoro

“He had never disliked me, and the occasional curt greetings and aloofness were not expressions of displeasure intended to keep me at bay. I pity him now, for I realize that he was in fact sending a warning, to someone who was attempting to grow close to him, signaling that he was unworthy of such intimacy. For all his
unresponsiveness to others' affection, I now see, it was not them he despised but himself.”
― Natsume Sōseki, Kokoro

“The memory of having sat at someone's feet will later make you want to trample him underfoot.”
― Sōseki Natsume, Kokoro

“Finally, I became aware of the possibility that K had experienced loneliness as terrible as mine, and wishing to escape quickly from it, had killed himself. Once more, fear gripped my heart.”
― Natsume Sōseki, Kokoro

“Now I have neither happiness nor unhappiness.

Everything passes.

That is the one and only thing that I have thought resembled a truth in the society of human beings where I have dwelled up to now as in a burning hell.

Everything passes.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“I will not hesitate to cast upon you the shadow thrown by the darkness of human life. But do not be afraid. Gaze steadfastly into this darkness, and find there the things that will be of use to you.”
― Natsume Sōseki, Kokoro

“It’s his father’s fault,” she said unemotionally. “The Yozo we knew was so easy-going and amusing, and if only he hadn’t drunk—no, even though he did drink—he was a good boy, an angel.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“Is it not true that no two human beings understand anything whatsoever about each other, that those who consider themselves bosom friends may be utterly mistaken about their fellow and, failing to realize this sad truth throughout a lifetime, weep when they read in the newspapers about his death?”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“Disqualified as a human beings. I had now ceased utterly to be a human beings.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“From then on, however, I came to hold, almost as a philosophical conviction, the belief: What is society but an individual?”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“the more I feared people the more I was liked, and the more I was liked the more I feared them—a process which eventually compelled me to run away from everybody.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“I have frantically played the clown in order to distangle myself from these painful relationships, only to wear myself out as a result.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“It occurred to me that prison life might actually be pleasanter than groaning away my sleepless nights in hellish dread of the "realities of life" as led by human beings.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“Why some people can be smiling and laughing with their friends in one moment yet break down the moment they are alone. To the point where they are so disconnected from their own needs that they mentally refer to themselves in the third-person. And what can happen when they lack the will to break the cycle themselves or seek real support or help. The question of what truly constitutes self-worth ?”
― Dazai Osamu, No Longer Human

“I had been intimidated by the fear that if I declined something offered me, a yawning crevice would open between the other person’s heart and myself which could never be mended through all eternity”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“She must be unhappy too. Unhappy people are sensitive to the unhappiness of others.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“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

“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

“It is not you in particular that I distrust, but the whole of humanity.”
― Natsume Sōseki, Kokoro

“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

“Anyone without spiritual aspirations is a fool”
― Sōseki Natsume, Kokoro