Sei Shonagon Quotes

#1. Pleasing things: finding a large number of tales that one has not read before. Or acquiring the second volume of a tale whose first volume one has enjoyed. But often it is a disappointment.

Sei Shonagon

#2. Lighting some fine incense and then lying down alone to sleep. Looking into a Chinese mirror that's a little clouded.

Sei Shonagon

#3. A man who has nothing in particular to recommend him discusses all sorts of subjects at random as if he knew everything.

Sei Shonagon

#4. Someone who butts in when you're talking and smugly provides the ending herself. Indeed anyone who butts in, be they child or adult, is most infuriating.

Sei Shonagon

#5. There is nothing in the whole world so painful as feeling that one is not liked.

Sei Shonagon

#6. 25. Flowering trees
The blossom of the pear tree is the most prosaic, vulgar thing in the world. The less one sees this particular blossom the better ...

Sei Shonagon

#7. Sometimes a person who is utterly devoid of charm will try to create a good impression by using very elegant language; yet he only succeeds in being ridiculous.

Sei Shonagon

#8. A man you've had to conceal in some unsatisfactory hiding place, who then begins to snore.

Sei Shonagon

#9. Sarusawa Pond is a very special place, because the Emperor paid it a formal visit when he heard how one of the Palace Maidens had drowned herself there. 1 Thinking of Hitomaro's marvellous words 'her hair tangled as in sleep', there is really nothing I can add.

Sei Shonagon

#10. To wash one's hair, make one's toilet, and put on scented robes; even if not a soul sees one, these preparations still produce an inner pleasure.

Sei Shonagon

#11. In life there are two things which are dependable. The pleasures of the flesh and the pleasures of literature.

Sei Shonagon

#12. To wash your hair, apply your makeup and put on clothes that are well-scented with incense. Even if you're somewhere where no one special will see you, you still feel a heady sense of pleasure inside.

Sei Shonagon

#13. 185. It Is Getting So Dark
Whatever people may think of my book, I still regret that it ever came to light.

Sei Shonagon

#14. How ever did I pass
the time before I knew you?
I think of that past time
as now I pass each passing day
in lonely sorrow, lacking you.

Sei Shonagon

#15. Women without prospect, who lead dull earnest lives and rejoice in their petty little pseudo-pleasures, I find quite depressing and despicable.

Sei Shonagon

#16. 185. It Is Getting So Dark
I am the sort of person who approves of what others abhor and detests the things they like.

Sei Shonagon

#17. 8. The Cat Who Lived in the Palace
The cat who lived in the Palace had been awarded the head-dress of nobility and was called Lady Myobu.

Sei Shonagon

#18. A palm-leaf carriage should move slowly, or else it loses its dignity.

Sei Shonagon

#19. 27. Trees
I shall say absolutely nothing about the spindle tree.

Sei Shonagon

#20. If writing did not exist, what terrible depressions we should suffer from.

Sei Shonagon

#21. A good lover will behave just as elegantly at dawn as at any other time.

Sei Shonagon

#22. One is telling a story about old times when someone breaks in with a little detail that he happens to know, implying that one's own version is inaccurate - disgusting behavior!

Sei Shonagon

#23. If someone with whom one is having an affair keeps on mentioning some woman whom he knew in the past, however long ago it is since they separated, one is always irritated.

Sei Shonagon

#24. 30. Insects
The fly should have been included in my list of hateful things; for such an odious creature does not belong with ordinary insects ...

Sei Shonagon