Kokoro Quotes
"It’s in the nature of things for people to die, you know. There’s no knowing when even the healthiest of us will die."
"The most moral of men will turn bad when they see money."
"I used to feel uncomfortable and ashamed whenever someone asked me a question I couldn’t answer, or when my ignorance was exposed in public somehow."
"All people are good, or at least they’re normal. The frightening thing is that they can suddenly turn bad when it comes to the crunch."
"I suppose it’s because I believe you don’t really become a finer person just by reading lots of books."
"I’m not just theorizing. It’s a fact. I’m not talking about something I’ve merely observed in others. I’m speaking from my own experience."
"If I were to actually get sick, I’d prefer it to be fatal."
"You mustn’t be so hot-headed. You’re being carried along by passion. Once the fever passes, you’ll feel disillusioned."
"I have a certain amount of money. But I’m far from wealthy. If I were, I’d build a larger house."
"Country people are actually worse, if anything, than city folk."
"I don’t even trust myself. It’s because I can’t trust myself that I can’t trust others."
"But sick or well, humans are fragile creatures, you know. There’s no anticipating how and when they might die, or for what reason."
"Words are not just vibrations in the air, they work more powerfully than that, and on more powerful objects."
"Real love, I firmly believe, is not so different from the religious impulse."
"I longed to crack open some part of K’s mind and soften him with a breath of gentler air."
"Concepts such as 'human' and other futile abstractions had all but vanished from my head."
"It seemed to me that K was handsomer and more attractive to women than I, and that my fussiness made my personality less appealing to the opposite sex."
"He was grand in his convictions. He would stride forward to meet his own destruction."
"I was delighted at how decorously she behaved. She devoted the greater part of her innate kindness to me in a way that only I would notice."
"If only I shared his knowledge of the lives of the ancients, he remarked mournfully, I wouldn’t be attacking him in this way."
"When I arrived, I flung open the lattice door, assuming he wouldn’t be there—and caught the sound of his voice within."
"He had stayed home that day because he felt unwell, he replied."
"I was not the sort of person who could ask with an easy laugh why she had run away just then; instead, the matter nagged at my mind."
"Sometimes, of course, she was bringing him mail or delivering his washing, the kind of interaction that could only be considered normal for those living under the same roof."
"But that would have defeated the very purpose for bringing him there in the first place."
"My mood quickly shifted to one of displeasure."
"The house was still and hushed, there was no sound of any voice, and after a while the early winter chill, combined with the desolate silence, began to penetrate me."
"As you descended into the valley, high buildings blocked the sun, and because drainage was poor, it was damp and muddy underfoot."
"Everyone was forced to pick their way gingerly along the long thin rut that had formed in the middle of the road."
"I was uncertain whether Ojōsan was being intentionally teasing or only innocently playful."
"To digress for a moment, it seems to me that this kind of jealousy is perhaps a necessary part of love."
"I hated the thought of marrying a woman who secretly longed for another."
"My heart had been, I now knew I had to gather my courage and fling it down before her."
"What would he be thinking in there? No sooner had the question entered my head than it began to obsess me."
"I wandered aimlessly through streets that were bright with New Year decorations."
"I could not think where to go. All possibilities now felt equally bleak."
"He gave a different reply. He simply said he didn’t feel like talking."
"I lay in the dark thinking until late in the night."
"Why had he been so astonishingly irresolute now?"