Top 52 Murasaki Shikibu Quotes
#2. People who do not get into scrapes are a great deal less interesting than those who do.
Murasaki Shikibu
#3. At a guess I see that you may indeed be he: the light silver dew brings to clothe in loveliness a twilight beauty flower.
Murasaki Shikibu
#4. You are here to remind me of someone I long for, and what is it you long for yourself? We must have been together in an earlier life, you and I.
Murasaki Shikibu
#5. Did not we vow that we would neither of us be either before or after the other even in travelling the last journey of life? And can you find it in your heart to leave me now?
Murasaki Shikibu
#6. My dwelling is but a rustic cottage, but still I should like you to see, at least, the pretty mountain streamlet which waters my garden.
Murasaki Shikibu
#7. The number of those who have nothing to recommend them and of those in whom nothing but good can be found is probably equal
Murasaki Shikibu
#10. The world know it not; but you, Autumn, I confess it: your wind at night-fall stabs deep into my heart
Murasaki Shikibu
#11. Let us be sure that the lady of our choice possesses certain tangible qualities that we admire; and if in other ways she falls short of our ideal, we must be patient and call to mind those qualities that first induced us to begin our courting.
Murasaki Shikibu
#13. Your coldness serves to emphasize my own inadequacy, and makes me feel that the best solution might be to expire.
Murasaki Shikibu
#14. Why do you grieve so uselessly? Every uncertainty is the result of a certainty. There is nothing in this world really to be lamented.
Murasaki Shikibu
#15. No art or learning is to be pursued halfheartedly ... and any art worth learning will certainly reward more or less generously the effort made to study it.
Murasaki Shikibu
#16. In few people is discretion stronger than the desire to tell a good story.
Murasaki Shikibu
#17. Would that, like the smoke of the watch-fires that mounts and vanishes at random in the empty sky, the smouldering flame of passion could burn itself away
Murasaki Shikibu
#18. I leave you, to go the road we all must go. The road I would choose, if only I could, is the other.
Murasaki Shikibu
#20. It is very easy to criticize others but far more difficult to put one's own principles into practice, and it is when one forgets this truth, lauds oneself to the skies, treats everyone else as worthless, and generally despises others, that one's own character is clearly revealed.
Murasaki Shikibu
#21. One ought not to be unkind to a woman merely on account of her plainness, any more than one had a right to take liberties with her merely because she was handsome
Murasaki Shikibu
#23. Life is full of uncertainties, perhanps one day some unforeseen circumstance would bring her into his life once more
Murasaki Shikibu
#24. I wish you could understand me, but of course it is not the way of this world that we are ever completely understood.
Murasaki Shikibu
#25. Even those people who have no sorrow of their own often feel melancholy from the circumstances in which they are placed.
Murasaki Shikibu
#26. It is indeed in many ways more comfortable to belong to that section of society whose action are not publicly canvassed and discussed
Murasaki Shikibu
#28. The memories of long love gather like drifting snow, poignant as the mandarin ducks who float side by side in sleep.
Murasaki Shikibu
#29. In a certain reign there was a lady not of the first rank whom the emperor loved more than any of the others. The grand ladies with high ambitions thought her a presumptuous upstart, and lesser ladies were still more resentful. Everything she did offended someone.
Murasaki Shikibu
#31. Ceaseless as the interminable voices of the bell-cricket, all night till dawn my tears flow.
Murasaki Shikibu
#32. No penance can your hard heart find save such as you long since have taught me to endure
Murasaki Shikibu
#34. How much the more in judging of the human heart should we distrust all fashionable airs and graces, all tricks and smartness, learnt only to please the outward gaze
Murasaki Shikibu
#35. [F]ew people have never hurt anyone or been guilty of any serious lapse [...]
Murasaki Shikibu
#36. What need have I for a palace? Rather to lie with you where the weeds grow thick.
Murasaki Shikibu
#37. She was gentle and sedate as usual, but evidently absent and preoccupied. Her eyes rested on the dew lying on the grass in the garden, and her ears were intent upon the melancholy singing of the autumn insects. It was as if we were in a real romance.
Murasaki Shikibu
#38. Now the end has come, and I am filled with sorrow that our ways must part: the path I would rather take is the one that leads to life.
Murasaki Shikibu
#40. Who has told you that the fruit belies the flower? For the fruit you have not tasted, and the flower you know but by report.
Murasaki Shikibu
#41. It is useless to talk with those who do not understand one and troublesome to talk with those who criticize from a feeling of superiority. Especially one-sided persons are troublesome. Few are accomplished in many arts and most cling narrowly to their own opinion.
Murasaki Shikibu
#42. It is very unkind of you to feel this way. Any woman should properly yield, it seems to me, even a complete stranger, because that is the way of the world.... All I desire is solace from the flood of memories that overwhelms me.
Murasaki Shikibu
#43. If like the leaf of the wisteria through which the sun darts his rays transparently you give your heart to me, I will no longer distrust you
Murasaki Shikibu
#44. I have a theory of my own about what the art of the novel is, and how it came into being ... It happens because the storyteller's own experience ... has moved him to an emotion so passionate that he can no longer keep it shut up in his heart.
Murasaki Shikibu
#45. Beauty without colour seems somehow to belong to another world.
Murasaki Shikibu
#46. with local administration. These ladies are often very attractive, and are not seldom introduced at Court and enjoy high favor." "And successes depend
Murasaki Shikibu
#47. A night of endless dreams, inconsequent and wild, is this my life; none more worth telling than the rest.
Murasaki Shikibu
#48. You that in far-off countries of the sky can dwell secure, look back upon me here; for I am weary of this frail world's decay.
Murasaki Shikibu
#49. In the mountains the cherry trees were in full bloom, and the farther he went, the lovelier the veils of mist became, until for him, whose rank so restricted travel that all this was new, the landscape became a source of wonder.
Murasaki Shikibu
#51. Old age is a disease from which there is no recovery but the old nun's recent attack had certainly been brought on chiefly by the fatigue of so much travelling.
Murasaki Shikibu
#52. When in my present lonely lot, I feel my past has not been free From sins which I remember not, I dread more, what to come, may be.
Murasaki Shikibu
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