The Temple Of The Golden Pavilion Quotes
"It is the first sound that I have trouble in uttering. This first sound is like a key to the door that separates my inner world from the world outside, and I have never known that key to turn smoothly in its lock."
"The reality that is waiting for me is not a fresh reality. When finally I reach the outer world after all my efforts, all that I find is a reality that has instantly changed color and gone out of focus—a reality that has lost the freshness that I had considered fitting for myself, and that gives off a half-putrid odor."
"To know that looking (the act, that is, of looking at someone, as one ordinarily does, without any special awareness) was such a proof of the rights of those who are alive, and that this looking could also be an expression of cruelty—all this came to me now as a vivid experience."
"Observing this perfect little image of the Golden Temple within the great temple itself, I was reminded of the endless series of correspondences that arise when a small universe is placed in a large universe and a smaller one in turn placed inside the small universe."
"Other birds fly through the air, but this golden phoenix was flying eternally through time on its shining wings. Time struck those wings. Time struck those wings and floated backwards."
"But now and again a gust of wind would suddenly blow the rain against the desolate rocks. Then the white rocks became as black as if a great spray of ink had been blown against them."
"For this temple had been constructed by unrest, it had been built by numerous dark-hearted owners who had one general in their midst."
"Finally I have come to live beside you, Golden Temple! It doesn't have to be at once, but please make friends with me sometime and reveal your secret to me."
"All the same, it seemed most strange to me, as time after time I stood gazing up at the Golden Temple with my hand resting on the broom, that this building should really be existing before me."
"I knew instinctively that this boy would not love the Golden Temple as I did. For my attachment to the temple was entirely rooted in my own ugliness."
"Having spoken, I wondered why I so much enjoyed provoking doubts in the minds of others."
"Like the young man's wrinkled shirt, my life was wrinkled."
"Getting up is known as the 'opening of the rules.'"
"Each day my signal for waking up was the sound of the bell rung by the priest."
"The fact remained that the Golden Temple was in danger of soon being burned down in an air raid."
"The surrounding hills with their red pines were mantled in the cry of the cicadas."
"The war ended. All that I was thinking about, as I listened in the factory to the Imperial Rescript announcing the termination of hostilities, was the Golden Temple."
"The greatest trap of all lay in the fact that the Superior had told the Deacon not to mention the matter to me."
"Otani University represented a turning-point in my life."
"Beauty such as this could cut me off from life and protect me from life."
"The more that the surrounding noise increased, the more the Golden Temple acted like a filter that transforms muddy into clear water."
"For me, beauty must be of something of this nature."
"The uselessness of beauty, the fact that it changed absolutely nothing—it was this that Kashiwagi loved."
"If beauty could be something like this for me too, how light would my life become!"
"The entire composition of the park had lost its harmony."
"The fact of not being understood by others had been my sole source of pride since my early youth."
"Assuming that the meaning of those actions which we direct at life is that we may pledge devotion to a certain instant and make that instant stand still, then perhaps the Golden Temple was fully aware of this and had for a time suspended its usual attitude of indifference towards me."
"In the end, it did not matter where I was headed. The name of the place had no meaning. I was inspired by courage—a nearly immoral courage—to confront whatever lay ahead."
"The world outside me cooled down in parts, then was reheated. Everything appeared as suggestions or portents of the vast unknown I had entrusted myself to."
"Ever since my childhood, ‘Maizuru’ had become a term for a sea that cannot be seen, a foreboding of the sea."
"I was filled with scorn for the Superior and a desire to mock him for his hypocrisy. Yet, a sense of regret slowly tempered my feelings."
"I was only looking at the river. In the middle, a great island surrounded by bamboo, prostrating itself before the wind."
"It was intolerable to be understood through the crude understanding of others. For my words were of a different nature."
"As I approached the unknown, my spirits, once cheerful, were now drawn into memories of the dead. Perhaps the only humans I could love were those no longer alive."
"The sea subsided conically and abruptly from the beach, moving step by step toward the single meaning that had flashed through my mind."
"Here was the source of all my unhappiness, all my gloomy thoughts, the origin of all my ugliness and all my strength. It was a wild sea."
"Everything was imbued with agitation and immobility, with a dark, ever-moving force, with the coagulated feeling of metal."
"It is when one is sitting on a well-mowed lawn on a beautiful spring afternoon...that cruelty suddenly springs up within us."
"Here I could be self-sufficient. Here I was not threatened by anything."
"Far from containing the idea, I myself was wrapped up in it."
"Mortal things like human beings cannot be eradicated; indestructible things like the Golden Temple can be destroyed."
"My lowest marks were in Japanese, for which I received the grand total of forty-two."
"Beauty is your most deadly enemy? What a change to hear that from you!"
"What transforms the world is-knowledge. Do you see what I mean? Nothing else can change anything in this world."
"I realized that my stomach was going to dream. It was going to dream about sweet bread and bean-jam wafers."
"He had an economy of means to create enormous myths—his novels are compressed visions."
"To look ordinary is by far the best thing. People aren't suspicious of you then, you see."
"Only thus will ye attain deliverance. Only thus will ye escape the trammels of material things and become free."
"Everything would be performed in front of those eyes. In front of those unseeing eyes of a dead witness."
"The desire to be understood by others had so far never occurred to me, but now I wished that Father Zenkai alone would understand me."
"All of a sudden my whole body was infused with strength. One part of my mind still kept on telling me that it was now futile to perform this deed, but my new-found strength had no fear of futility."
"Perhaps beauty was both these things. It was both the individual parts and the whole structure, both the Golden Temple and the night that wrapped itself about the Golden Temple."
"The beauty of the Golden Temple was unsurpassed. And I knew now where my great weariness had come from."
"The past does not only draw us back to the past. There are certain memories of the past that have strong steel springs and, when we who live in the present touch them, they are suddenly stretched taut and then they propel us into the future."
"I felt like a man who settles down for a smoke after finishing a job of work. I wanted to live."