on quotes and literature

"the labour into which a heart has poured its whole love - where will it have its say to excite and inspire, and when?"

from Snow country by Kawabata Yasunari

the sentence has its own sadness as the gentle sadness that envelops the whole novel.
just as Komako's unrequited love that has been forfeited under the name of fate from the very moment that it sprung into life
a love that will never blossom in the snow country...

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November 2014

"Which will die first? Who could give a confident answer to that question? I thought. And suppose the answer were clear. What would Sensei do? And what would his wife do? Surely the only thing either could do was to continue in the face of my father's approaching death back at home. A sense of human fragility swept over me, of the hopeless frailty of our innately superficial nature."

"Could that delicate and complex instrument that lies in the human breast ever really produce a reading that was absolutely clear and truthful, like a clock's hands pointing to numbers on its dial?" 

from Kokoro by Natsume Souseki

Kokoro has really addressed the various thoughts, aroused feelings, and depths of emotions on life, on people, on moments
it is like a kaleidoscope capturing the multi-colours of a young, growing heart

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"That fact, one might think, told how deep he had sunk into the meshes of the curse, how complete the paralysis was; but Kikuji felt the reverse, that he had escaped the curse and the paralysis. It was as if an addict had been freed of his addiction by taking the ultimate dose of a drug"

from Thousand Cranes by Kawabata Yasunari
Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker

by taking the ultimate dose of drug....
the phrase seems to stretch its echo throughout the whole passage, springs out poignantly through the mingle 'notion' of guilt and naked human feelings

a compelling and formidable comparison
only when one committed the greatest sin, one would feel free from the weighing burden of guilt and humiliation; as there is no point of turning back, and no way for cure and atonement

ultimate, supreme... we create these terms as our yearning for the greatest, highest, unreachable, matchless
something utmost and exclusive
yet, no one can really satisfactorily define the meaning, or criteria of such characteristics


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June 2011

this is from a book i've read "The reader" by Bern Schlink

"I had granted Hanna a small niche, certainly an important niche, one from which i gained something and for which I did something, but not a place in my life"

... it was just a simple line but succinct and retain all the tension of the fluctuated love, hate, denial and bitterness

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Dec 2014

The Little Prince

But seeds are invisible. They sleep deep in the heart of the earth's darkness, until some one among them is seized with the desire to awaken. Then this little seed will stretch itself and begin--timidly at first--to push a charming little sprig inoffensively upward toward the sun. If it is only a sprout of radish or the sprig of a rose-bush, one would let it grow wherever it might wish. But when it is a bad plant, one must destroy it as soon as possible, the very first instant that one recognizes it.

"The fact is that I did not know how to understand anything! I ought to have judged by deeds and not by words. She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me. I ought never to have run away from her . . . I ought to have guessed all the affection that lay behind her poor little stratagems. Flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young to know how to love her . . ."

The world of yesterday
Stefan Zweig

For I regard memory not as a phenomenon preserving one thing and losing the another merely by chance, but as a power that deliberately paces events in order or wisely omits them. Everything we forget about our own lives was really condemned to oblivion by a inner instinct long ago...

We long ago ceased believing in the religion of our fathers, their faith in the swift and enduring ascent of humanity . Having learnt our cruel lesson, we see their overhasty optimism as banal in the face of catastrophe that, with a single blow, cancelled out a thousands years of human effort. But if it was only a delusion, it was a noble and wonderful delusion that our fathers served, more humane and fruitful than today's slogan. And something in me, mysteriously and in spite of all I know and all my disappointments, cannot quite shake it off. What a man has taken into his bloodstream in childhood from the air of the time stays with him. And despite all that is dinned into my ears daily, all the humiliation and trial that I myself and countless of my companion in misfortune has experienced, I cannot quite deny the belief of my youth that in spite of everything, events will take a turn for the better. Even from the abyss of horror in which we try to feel our way today, half-blind, our hearts distraught and shattered, I look up again and again to the ancient constellations that shone on my childhood, comforting myself with the inherited confidence that, some day, this relapse will　appear only an interval in the eternal rhythm of progress onward and upward. 

As you might be able to find out for yourself, these lines are written in one of the darkest time in mankind history, when violence and death roamed the Earth and robbed thousands of lives in the two World war. Compared to people living in that period, we, certainly are in a whole lot better situation. But right now, two thoughts are rivaling in my head.
This is how a human with sense feel in time of chaos where all and everything he could place his faith crumbles, where all sacred grounds of belief vanishes into thin air and nothing but doubts, disgust, horror and despair avails. Nothing is more frightening than the present. Yet, there, his hope and unyielding faith that that horrid time is just an interval in history. I cant help but admiring that faith. Though we are not facing human devastating destruction to that level, we are aware that we are living in a period where nothing remains 'secured', 'eternal' and 'guaranteed', or at least to me, it seems so.Things are ever so transcendent and momentary.
Another thought is that in my wildest imagination, who could ever ensure that an even more horrifying and pulverizing destruction is not making its way to the world we are living?
And yet, human are still too engrossed in game of power and territory. It sounds all too stupid in the face of death and destruction to me though.

What on earth could be of more value than life?

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March 2015

Far from the madding crowd
Thomas Hardy

He had just reached the time of life at which 'young' is ceasing to be the prefix of 'man' in speaking of one. He was at the brightest period of masculine growth, for his intellect and his emotions were clearly separated: he had passed the time during which the influence of youth indiscriminately mingles them in the character of impulse, and he had not yet arrived at the stage wherein they become united again, in the character of prejudice, by the influence of a wife and family. In short, he was twenty-eight and a bachelor.

This is how Thomas Hardy describes a man of twenty-eight years old at that period.
Twenty-eight seems to be the gate separating the world of adulthood, the entrance to calmness and wisdom, with a definite sense of self-worthy and unbiased opinion of things firmly grounded and nurtured.

As an adult of 28 nowadays, I wonder if this standard still stands true? or is the difference in the independence level between the East and the West does make it appearance here?

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this is a post I will revisit once in a while to update on quotes
the act of writing really places me on different stands and calms my impatient self... more than i thought

@ picture: a rainy autumn day - Arashiyama - Kyoto '2012