shvmv > shvmv's Quotes

“Essentially, people live in one of two ways. Either they live in awareness of their own worthlessness, or they live in their awareness of the worthlessness of the world. Two ways. Either you allow your value to be absorbed by the world, or you chisel away at the world's value and make it your own. Which should take precedence, the value of the world your own value?”
― NisiOisiN, Zaregoto, Book 1: The Kubikiri Cycle

“To accept the world as boring or accept oneself as boring? Which is really more agreeable? There's bound to be some amount of ambiguity and uncertainty.”
― NisiOisiN, Zaregoto, Book 1: The Kubikiri Cycle

“Um, where are we headed now?"

"Heaven. Or maybe Hell. I forget."

"They're totally different."

"Yup, totally different. They're complete opposites. So we're bound to end up at one of them.”
― NisiOisiN, Zaregoto, Book 1: The Kubikiri Cycle

“If we turn a blind eye to the fact that your opinion is entirely wrong, you're quite right.”
― NisiOisiN, Zaregoto, Book 1: The Kubikiri Cycle

“If anybody asked me why I was alive, I’d probably say just in case. That’s about the only reason people have, and that goes for me, you, and everybody.”
― NisiOisiN, Zaregoto, Book 1: The Kubikiri Cycle

“It’s not that I was afraid to die, though. I was afraid of not having enough time to live. Ending without knowing what I wanted to know. Dying while having things I didn’t know, that would’ve been unacceptable.”
― NisiOisiN, Zaregoto, Book 1: The Kubikiri Cycle

“It was at this period that Drogo realised how far apart men are whatever their affection for each other, that if you suffer the pain is yours and yours alone, no one else can take upon himself the least part of it; that if you suffer it does not mean that others feel pain even though their love is great: hence the loneliness of life.”
― Dino Buzzati, The Tartar Steppe

“What a terrible mistake, thought Drogo, perhaps everything is like that — we think there are beings like ourselves around us and instead there is nothing but ice and stones speaking a strange language; we are on the point of greeting a friend but our arm falls inert, the smile dies away because we are completely alone.”
― Dino Buzzati, The Tartar Steppe

“Twenty-two months are a long time and a lot of things can happen in them- there is time for new families to be formed, for babies to be born and even begin to talk, for a great house to rise where once there was only a field, for a beautiful woman to grow old and no one desire her any more, for an illness- for a long illness- to ripen (yet men live on heedlessly), to consume the body slowly, to recede for short periods as if cured, to take hold again more deeply and drain away the last hopes; there is time for a man to die and be buried, for his son to be able to laugh again and in the evening take the girls down the avenues and past the cemetery gates without a thought. But it seemed as if Drogo’s existence had come to a halt. The same day, the same things, had repeated themselves hundreds of times without taking a step forward. The river of time flowed over the Fort, crumbled the walls, swept down dust and fragments of stone, wore away the stairs and the chain, but over Drogo it passed in vain- it had not yet succeeded in catching him, bearing him with it as it flowed.”
― Dino Buzzati, The Tartar Steppe

“Everything goes by — men, the seasons, the clouds, and there is no use clinging to the stones, no use fighting it out on some rock in midstream; the tired fingers open, the arms fall back inertly and you are still dragged into the river, the river which seems to flow so slowly yet never stops.”
― Dino Buzzati, The Tartar Steppe

“Because it may be fine to die in the open, with one’s body still young and healthy amidst the triumphant echoes of the bugles; but it is a sadder fate to die of wounds in a hospital ward after long sufferings, and it is more melancholy still to meet one’s end in one’s bed at home in the midst of fond laments, dim lights and medicine bottles. But nothing is more difficult than to die in some strange, indifferent spot, in the characterless bed of an inn, to die there old and worn and leave no one behind in the world.”
― Dino Buzzati, The Tartar Steppe

“But at a certain point we turn round, almost instinctively,
and see that a gate has been bolted behind us, barring our way back (...)
Then we understand that time is passing and that one day or another the road must come to an end.”
― Dino Buzzati, The Tartar Steppe

“The page is slowly turned, falls over to join the others, the ones already finished. It is still only a thin layer. Those still to be read are inexhaustible in comparison. But it is always another page finished, a portion of your life.”
― Dino Buzzati, The Tartar Steppe

“And yet the winds of time were blowing; heedless of mankind they blew to and fro in the world preying upon beauty; and no one could escape them, not even children so newly born as to be still unnamed.”
― Dino Buzzati, The Tartar Steppe

“What if he were an ordinary man who has been rightfully allotted no more than a mediocre destiny?”
― Dino Buzzati, Il deserto dei Tartari

“Only his step awoke her – not that it was loud, for Giovanni went on tiptoe. There was no special reason for it, except that he was her son.”
― Dino Buzzati, The Tartar Steppe

“I've learned how to be content," said the major, as he realized what Giovanni was thinking. "Year after year I've learned how to desire less and less.”
― Dino Buzzati, Il deserto dei Tartari

“They had reached the top of a hill. Drogo turned back to look at the city against the light. Plumes of smoke were rising from roofs. He saw his own house in the distance. He identified the window of his room. It was probably open; the women were tidying up. They would strip the bed, put things away in the closet, then bolt the shutters. For months and months no one would enter, except for the patient dust and on sunny days faint streaks of light. There, shut up in darkness, would lie the little world of his boyhood. His mother would preserve it so that on his return he would find everything the same, enabling him to remain a boy in that room, even after his long absence. She was no doubt deluding herself; she believed she could preserve intact a happiness that had vanished forever, holding back the flight of time, so that when doors and windows were reopened at her son's return, things would revert to the way they were before.”
― Dino Buzzati, Il deserto dei Tartari

“She looked at him with what remained of her love.”
― Dino Buzzati, The Stronghold

“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 at the same time are constantly being transformed.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“Yet how strange a thing is the beauty of music! The brief beauty that the player brings into being transforms a given period of time into pure continuance; it is certain never to be repeated; like the existence of dayflies and other such short-lived creatures, beauty is a perfect abstraction and creation of life itself. Nothing is so similar to life as music.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“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 a moment like this, don't you think, while one's vaguely watching the sun as it peeps through the leaves of the trees above a well-mown lawn? Every possible nightmare in the world, every possible nightmare in history, has come into being like this.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“The past does not only draw us back to the past. There are certain memories of the past that have strong steel springs and, when we who live in the present touch them, they are suddenly stretched taut and then they propel us into the future.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“For clearly it is impossible to touch eternity with one hand and life with the other.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“Other people must be destroyed. In order that I might truly face the sun, the world itself must be destroyed....”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“As usual, it occurred to me that words were the only thing that could possibly save me from this situation. This was a characteristic misunderstanding on my part. When action was needed, I was absorbed in words; for words proceeded with such difficulty from my mouth that I was intent on them and forgot all about action. It seemed to me that actions, which are dazzling, varied things, must always be accompanied by equally dazzling and equally varied words.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“I was born with gloomy nature. I do not think I have ever known what it is to be cheerful and at ease.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“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.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“Let the darkness that is in my heart become equal to the darkness of the night that surrounds those innumerable lights!”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“Only knowledge can turn life's unbearableness into a weapon.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion