natalia > natalia's Quotes

“I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again 'I know that that’s a tree', pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell him: 'This fellow isn’t insane. We are only doing philosophy.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty

“Be not defeated by the rain, Nor let the wind prove your better.
Succumb not to the snows of winter. Nor be bested by the heat of summer.

Be strong in body. Unfettered by desire. Not enticed to anger. Cultivate a quiet joy.
Count yourself last in everything. Put others before you.
Watch well and listen closely. Hold the learned lessons dear.

A thatch-roof house, in a meadow, nestled in a pine grove's shade.

A handful of rice, some miso, and a few vegetables to suffice for the day.

If, to the East, a child lies sick: Go forth and nurse him to health.
If, to the West, an old lady stands exhausted: Go forth, and relieve her of burden.
If, to the South, a man lies dying: Go forth with words of courage to dispel his fear.
If, to the North, an argument or fight ensues:
Go forth and beg them stop such a waste of effort and of spirit.

In times of drought, shed tears of sympathy.
In summers cold, walk in concern and empathy.

Stand aloof of the unknowing masses:
Better dismissed as useless than flattered as a "Great Man".

This is my goal, the person I strive to become.”
― Kenji Miyazawa, 雨ニモマケズ [Ame ni mo Makezu]

“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 have no right to call myself one who knows. I was one who seeks, and I still am, but I no longer seek in the stars or in books; I'm beginning to hear the teachings of my blood pulsing within me. My story isn't pleasant, it's not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

“All those hands that I’ve shaken, all those brilliant smiles exchanged, all those boring conversations, how could I just let a wind blow through my skirt and scatter these people into nothingness and indifference?”
― Sanmao, Stories of the Sahara

“Why do I know I exist if I also know I will not? Why was I given access to logical space and the mathematical structure of the world? Just to lose them when my body is destroyed? Why do I wake up in the night with the thought that I will die, why do I sit up, drenched in sweat, and scream and slap myself and try to suppress the thought that I will disappear for all eternity, that I will never be again, to the end of time? Why will the world end with me? We age: we stand quietly in line with those condemned to death. We are executed one after the other in a sinister extermination camp. We are first stripped of our beauty, youth, and hope. We are next wrapped in the penitential robe of illness, weariness, and decay. Our grandparents die, our parents are executed in front of us, and suddenly time gets short, you suddenly see your reflection in the axeblade.

And only then do you realize you are living in a slaughterhouse, that generations are butchered and swallowed by the earth, that billions are pushed down the throat of hell, that no one, absolutely no one escapes. That not one person that you see coming out of the factory gates in a Mélies film is still alive. That absolutely everyone in an eighty-year-old sepia photograph is dead. That we all come into this world from a frightening abyss without our memories, that we suffer unimaginably on a speck of dust, and that we then perish, all in a nanosecond, as though we had never lived, as though we had never been.”
― Mircea Cărtărescu, Solenoid

“What's in a name? That is what we ask ourselves in childhood when we write the name that we are told is ours.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“Not one person in a hundred knows how to be silent and listen, no, nor even to conceive what such a thing means. Yet only then can you detect, beyond the fatuous clamour, the silence of which the universe is made.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

“The way I must enter
leads through darkness to darkness-
O moon above the mountain's rim,
please shine a little further
on my path,”
― Izumi Shikibu, The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan

“I wonder why
the rain that falls from black clouds
shines like silver.

I wonder why
the silkworm that eats green mulberry leaves
is so white.

I wonder why
the moonflower that no one tends
blooms on its own.

I wonder why
everyone I ask
about these things
laughs and says,
That's just how it is”
― Misuzu Kaneko, Are You an Echo?: The Lost Poetry of Misuzu Kaneko

“The sound of the Gion Shoja temple bells echoes the impermanence of all things; the color of the sala flowers reveals the truth that to flourish is to fall. The proud do not endure, like a passing dream on a night in spring; the mighty fall at last, to be no more than dust before the wind.”
― Helen Craig McCullough, The Tale of the Heike

“Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“Probablemente de todos nuestros sentimientos el único que no es verdaderamente nuestro es la esperanza. La esperanza le pertenece a la vida, es la vida misma defendiéndose.”
― Julio Cortázar, Hopscotch

“Let my body dwell in poverty, and my hands be as the hands of the toiler; but let my soul be as a temple of remembrance where the treasures of knowledge enter and the inner sanctuary is hope.”
― George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

“I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Al cambiar el ángulo del chorro de agua se podía ver un arcoíris en el porche: los siete colores de la luz. Normalmente son invisibles, aunque un simple chorro de agua basta para que aparezcan, la luz siempre está ahí, pero los colores siempre se esconden. Debe de haber millones de cosas así en el mundo. Existen, pero ocultas, y no podemos verlas. Algunas se muestran tras un pequeño cambio: otras tras la larga y difícil búsqueda de científicos exploradores. Me pregunto si habrá algo escondido esperando a que yo lo descubra".”
― Kazumi Yumoto, The Friends

“When I think how sometimes people can be brave enough to overcome any fear, any hardship, it gives me a feeling I can hardly describe. To charge right at the things that are painful and difficult, break through to the other side, and take pleasure in that - don't you think that's truly fantastic? The greater the suffering, the greater the joy in overcoming it.”
― Genzaburo Yoshino, How Do You Live?

“I am half-sick of shadows,' said The Lady of Shalott.”
― Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Lady of Shalott

“privation is the cause of appetite”
― Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Selected Writings

“Mas não quero resposta, quero ficar só. Gosto muito das pessoas mas essa necessidade voraz que às vezes me vem de me libertar de todos. Enriqueço na solidão: fico inteligente, graciosa e não esta feia ressentida que me olha do fundo do espelho. Ouço duzentas e noventa e nove vezes o mesmo disco, lembro poesias, dou piruetas, sonho, invento, abro todos os portões e quando vejo a alegria está instalada em mim.”
― Lygia Fagundes Telles, As Meninas

“In the graveyard I imagine someone ...
but no one is there.

-Moonlit Night”
― Yun Dong-ju, Sky, Wind, and Stars

“and the reason I am living is
only because I am looking for what I have lost.

-The Road”
― Yun Dong-ju, Sky, Wind, and Stars

“If a person never contradicts himself, it must be that he says nothing.”
― Miguel de Unamuno

“Se tens um coração de ferro, bom proveito.
O meu, fizeram-no de carne, e sangra todo o dia.”
― José Saramago

“I know you will remember this — that nothing good ever ends. If it did, there would be no people in the world — no life at all, anywhere. And the world is full of people and full of wonderful life.”
― William Saroyan, The Human Comedy

“The arrogance to insist on her own unhappiness, her own loneliness, had always been in her, but only now did it venture to emerge; it blossomed, ran wild, smothered her. She was unredeemable and nobody should have the effrontery to redeem her…”
― Ingeborg Bachmann, The Thirtieth Year: Stories

“The Sky is full to the brim with autumn
as the season makes its way to across it.
It is as if I had no worries at all.
so I could count all the stars nestled in autumn.
Yet i cannot quite finish counting all those stars
that are settling in my heart one by one,
because mornings have a way of coming swiftly,
because tomorrow's night is still to come,
and because the fire of my heart hasn't burn out yet.
I see memories in one star
and love in another
and loneliness
my longings
and poetry in each
and Mother in another, Mother.
Mother, I am trying to call out a beautiful word for each star.
Names of the kids I shared desk with in a grade school, such foreign
girls names as Pae, Kyeong, Ok, and the girls who have become
mothers already, my poor neighbors, the doves, puppies, rabbits,
mules, roe deer, Francies Jammes and Rheiner
Maria Rilke - I call
such names of poets.
They are all so far away from me.
Just as the stars are ever distant.
And mother,
you are in North Gando which is so far away.
Longing for something I couldn't name,
I wrote my own name on this hill
which is bright with all the starlight landing,
but then I covered it up again with dirt.
True, some insects chirp through the night
because they lament their shameful names.
Yet when spring comes around to my star after winter,
even on this hill where my name is buried,
shrubs will grow thick as if boasting
like the green grass that sprouts on a grave.”
― Yun Dong-ju, Sky, Wind, and Stars

“Unable to forget, you will miss her.
Let it be, that will be a life all its own.
There will come a day when you forget.
Unable to forget, you will miss her.
So be it, just let the years pass on by.
You will one day forget some if not all.
Yet, for all that, is it not also true,
"With blood and bones yearning alike,
how can the thought ever leave you?”
― Kim So-Wol

“This time no one's looking for love
down between the sheds, the old houses, among the twittering
masts and rigging. A boat, a prau that will never sail again
puffs and snorts, thinking there's something it can catch
The drizzle brings darkness. An eagle's wings flap,
brushing against the gloom; the day whispers, swimming silkily
away to meet harbor temptations yet to come. Nothing moves
and now the sand and the sea are asleep, the waves gone.

That's all. I'm alone. Walking,
combing the cape, still choking back the hope
of getting to the end and, just once, saying the hell with it
from this fourth beach, embracing the last, the final sob.”
― Chairil Anwar, The Complete Poetry and Prose of Chairil Anwar

“There are so many different kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst.”
― Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain