Murasaki Shikibu Quotes

Real things in the darkness seem no realer than dreams.

Beauty without colour seems somehow to belong to another world.

There is more here than meets the eye.

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.

Intimacy between stepchildren and stepparents is indeed proverbially difficult.

It is in general the unexplored that attracts us.

There is a tendency among men as well as women ... so soon as they have acquired a little knowledge of some kind, to want to display it to the best advantage.

farewell' is a monster among words, and never yet sounded kindly in any ear.

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

People who do not get into scrapes are a great deal less interesting than those who do.

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

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.

There are as many sorts of women as there are women.

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.

Ceaseless as the interminable voices of the bell-cricket, all night till dawn my tears flow.

Though the body moves, the soul may stay behind.

Some ... have imagined that by arousing a baseless suspicion in the mind of the beloved we can revive a waning devotion. But this experiment is very dangerous. Those who recommend it are confident that so long as resentment is groundless one need only suffer it in silence and all will soon be well. I have observed however that this is by no means the case.

A night of endless dreams, inconsequent and wild, is this my life; none more worth telling than the rest.

Autumn is no time to lie alone

No penance can your hard heart find save such as you long since have taught me to endure

The wood-carver can fashion whatever he will. Yet his products are but toys of the moment, to be glanced at in jest, not fashioned according to any precept or law. When times change, the carver too will change his style and make new trifles to hit the fancy of the passing day. But there is another kind of artist, who sets more soberly about his work, striving to give real beauty to the things which men actually use and to give to them the shape which tradition has ordained. This maker of real things must not for a moment be confused with the maker of idle toys.

Stepmothers in books usually behave very spitefully towards the children entrusted to them. But he was now learning by his own experience that in real life this does not always happen.

The memories of long love gather like drifting snow, poignant as the mandarin ducks who float side by side in sleep.

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.

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.

How strange a thing is the heart of man!

In few people is discretion stronger than the desire to tell a good story.

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.

Foolish indeed are those who trust to fortune.

It is indeed in many ways more comfortable to belong to that section of society whose action are not publicly canvassed and discussed

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.