Ori > Ori's Quotes

“The power of letters is immeasurable. Use them with care».”
― Izumi Kyōka

“True beauty is something that attacks, overpowers, robs, and finally destroys.”
― Yukio Mishima

“The living world is a dream. The nocturnal dream is reality.”
― Rampo Edogawa

“Art, according to him, was the revolt of humans against nature. It was none other than the expression of a human being’s dissatisfaction with the way things are and his desire to imprint his own individual personality upon nature.”
― Edogawa Rampo, Strange Tale of Panorama Island

“In days gone by I never repented of my acts. I was sorry always only for what I didn’t do. Professions I did not choose; adventures which I dared not have (in spite of the chances I had to have them, to be sure); various experiences with which I did not meet.”
― Atsushi Nakajima, Light, wind, and dreams: an interpretation of the life and mind of Robert Louis Stevenson

“The secrets inside her mind are like flowers in a garden at nighttime, filling the darkness with perfume.”
― Fumiko Enchi, Masks

“She was like a large white flower bathed in light, magnificent in her isolation.”
― Fumiko Enchi, Masks

“Just as there is an archetype of woman as the object of man's eternal love, so there must be an archetype of her as the object of his eternal fear, representing, perhaps, the shadow of his own evil actions.”
― Fumiko Enchi, Masks

“A faint tear wet Meiko's eye, so slight a bit of moisture that it passed unseen by Yasuko. Yet all the anguish of which she never spoke was compressed into that single drop”
― Fumiko Enchi, Masks

“To his mind there were four kinds of beautiful skin. The first he likened to porcelain: finely grained and flawless in sheen, but marked by a hardness and chill. The second he compared to snow: duller and more coarsely grained, with a deep whiteness and an inner warmth and softness that belied its cold surface. Next was what he called the textile look, what others called silken; this was the complexion most prized by Japanese women, yet it had no virtue in Mikamé’s eyes beyond a flat, smooth prettiness. To be supremely beautiful, he thought, a woman’s skin had to glow with the internal life-force of spring’s earliest buds unfolding naturally in the sun. But city women, too clever with makeup, lost that perishable, flowerlike beauty at a surprisingly early age—and rare indeed was the woman past twenty-five whose skin had kept the freshness of youth.”
― Fumiko Enchi, Masks

“It’s no game. Believe me, she is a woman of far greater complexity than you—or anyone—realize. The secrets inside her mind are like flowers in a garden at nighttime, filling the darkness with perfume. Oh, she has extraordinary charm. Next to that secret charm of hers, her talent as a poet is really only a sort of costume.”
― Fumiko Enchi, Masks

“There. You see? You’re already a pawn in her hands.” She paused. “But you’re not the only one. I am too. I can’t escape after all. The more I want to, the more impossible it is. It’s awful; it’s as if my own will were paralyzed”
― Fumiko Enchi, Masks

“We spend our lives crafting masks to fit the roles we are expected to play, but in doing so, we lose sight of who we truly are.”
― Fumiko Enchi, Masks

“Shyness emanated from his dark features; he seemed a good-hearted sort.”
― Fumiko Enchi, Masks

“Gently, I open
the door to eternal
mystery, the flowers
of my breasts cupped,
offered with both my hands.”
― Akiko Yosano

“The little lamb's eyes,
desperate for forest water,
must resemble mine.
O you whose love I long for,
how can you understand me?”
― Akiko Yosano, River of Stars: Selected Poems

“My shiny black hair
fallen into disarray,
a thousand tangles,
like a thousand tangled thoughts
about my love for you.”
― Akiko Yosano, River of Stars: Selected Poems

“The first candle will, of course, burn out in time. But before this happens, the light from it will be passed on to another candle, and then to another, so that though the candles may change, the light will burn forever, like the light on a Buddhist altar. As the candles change, so will the way in which two people love each other; yet their love, like the light, need never go out.”
― Naoya Shiga, A Dark Night's Passing

“Time flows in the same way for all human beings; every human being flows through time in a different way.”
― Yasunari Kawabata

“The creation of man whom God in his foreknowledge knew doomed to sin was the awful index of God's omnipotence. For it would have been a thing of trifling and contemptible ease for Perfection to create mere perfection. To do so would, to speak truth, be not creation but extension. Separateness is identity and the only way for God to create, truly create, man was to make him separate from God Himself, and to be separate from God is to be sinful. The creation of evil is therefore the index of God's glory and His power. That had to be so that the creation of good might be the index of man's glory and power. But by God's help. By His help and in His wisdom.”
― Robert Penn Warren

“I would always rather be happy than dignified.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you — and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal — as we are!”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.”
― Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

“I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“If all the world hated you and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved of you and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I am not an angel,' I asserted; 'and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me - for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Reader, I married him.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilised by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre