Shusaku Endo Quotes & Sayings

The sound of darkness was certainly intricately linked to the sense of being alone but unrelated to this was the sound of the palpitations of men and women experiencing the sense of utter solitude. There was no doubt about it. This was a sound audible only on evenings such as this. — Shusaku Endo

When you suffer, I suffer with you. To the end I am close to you. — Shusaku Endo

A man who wields a pen has to be accountable to society. — Shusaku Endo

If we did not believe that truth is universal, why should so many missionaries endure these hardships? It is precisely because truth is common to all countries and all times that we call it truth. If a true doctrine were not true alike in Portugal and Japan we could not call it true. — Shusaku Endo

We'll shake, we'll shake the tree of dreams,
That solitary tree of dreams
In the centre of the verdant field. — Shusaku Endo

When you sail, don't
Pull up the anchor weeping.
Be a man, do it laughing ... — Shusaku Endo

Every weakness contains within itself a strength. — Shusaku Endo

Man is a strange being. He always has a feeling somewhere in his heart that whatever the danger he will pull through. It's just like when on a rainy day you imagine the faint rays of the sun shining on a distant hill. — Shusaku Endo

but our Lord was not silent. Even if he had been silent, my life until this day would have spoken of Him. — Shusaku Endo

A person never knows their own true face. Everybody thinks that the phoney, posed social mask they wear is their real face. — Shusaku Endo

I became a Catholic against my will. — Shusaku Endo

When you were still here, Isobe thought, death seemed so far removed from me. It was as though you stood with both arms outstretched, keeping death from me. But now that you're gone, suddenly it seems right here in front of me. — Shusaku Endo

Trample! Trample! It is to be trampled on by you that I am here. — Shusaku Endo

Yet one priest remaining in this country has the same significance as a single candle burning in the catacombs. — Shusaku Endo

What emotion had filled the breast of Christ when he ordered away the man who was to betray him for thirty pieces of silver. Was it anger? or resentment? Or did these words arise from his love? If it was anger, then at this instant Christ excluded from salvation this man alone of all the men in the world; and then our Lord allowed one man to fall into eternal damnation. But it could not be so. Christ wanted to save even Judas. If not, he would have never made him one of his disciples. And yet why did Christ not stop him when he began to slip from the path of righteousness? This was a problem I had not understood even as a seminarian......If it is not blasphemous to say so, I have the feeling that Judas was no more than the unfortunate puppet for the glory of that drama which was the life and death of Christ. — Shusaku Endo

Over the years I have forged intimate familial ties with these characters, who are reflections of a portion of myself. Consequently, even a character who appeared only once in a short story waits now in the wings, concealed by the curtain, for his next appearance on-stage. Not one of them has ever broken free of his familial ties with me and disappeared for ever - at least, not within the confines of my heart. — Shusaku Endo

No matter what the circumstances, no man can completely escape from vanity. — Shusaku Endo

The seeds of salvation are buried in every act of evil. — Shusaku Endo

Lord, why are you silent? Why are you always silent ... ? — Shusaku Endo

But pity was not action. It was not love. Pity, like passion, was no more than a kind of instinct. — Shusaku Endo

The important thing in this life is to link your sadness to the sadness of others. — Shusaku Endo

Desolation would not be the proper word to describe his feelings now; it was more the sense of emptiness he imagined he might feel standing all alone on the surface of the moon. — Shusaku Endo

Prayer does nothing to alleviate suffering. — Shusaku Endo

I did pray. I kept on Praying. But prayer did nothing to alleviate their suffering. — Shusaku Endo

Sin, he reflected, is not what it is usually thought to be; it is not to steal and tell lies. Sin is for one man to walk brutally over the life of another and to be quite oblivious of the wounds he has left behind. — Shusaku Endo

True religion should be able to respond to the dark melodies, the faulty and hideous sounds that echo from the heart of men. — Shusaku Endo

I tell you the truth - for a long, long time these farmers have worked like horses and cattle; and like horses and cattle they have died. The reason our religion has penetrated this territory like water flowing into dry earth is that it has given this group of people a human warmth they never previously knew. For the first time they have met men who treated them like human beings. It was the human kindness and charity of the fathers that touched their hearts. — Shusaku Endo

I don't want to die in darkness any thicker than this. I want to bring some kind of resolution in my life. — Shusaku Endo

If I have trust in Catholicism, it is because I find in it much more possibility than in any other religion for presenting the full symphony of humanity. The other religions have almost no fullness; they have but solo parts. Only Catholicism can present the full symphony. And unless there is in that symphony a part that corresponds to Japan ... it cannot be a true religion. — Shusaku Endo

The priest raises his foot. In it he feels a dull, heavy pain. This is no mere formality. He will now trample on what he has considered the most beautiful thing in his life, on what he has believed most pure, on what is filled with the ideals and the dreams of man. — Shusaku Endo

The reason why darkness terrifying for us, he reflected, is that there remains in us the instinctive fear the primitive man had when there was as yet no light. — Shusaku Endo

In order to pile weakness upon weakness he was trying to drag others along the path that he himself had walked. — Shusaku Endo

We priests are in some ways a sad group of men. Born into the world to render service to mankind, there is no one more wretchedly alone than the priest who does not measure up to his task. — Shusaku Endo

The earth is not just for the clever and the strong. — Shusaku Endo

They were martyred. But what a martyrdom! I had long read about martyrdom in the lives of the saints--how the souls of the martyrs had gone home to Heaven, how they had been filled with glory in Paradise, how the angels had blown trumpets. This was the splendid martyrdom I had often seen in my dreams. But the martyrdom of the Japanese Christians I now describe to you was no such glorious thing. What a miserable and painful business it was! — Shusaku Endo

Christ did not die for the good and beautiful. It is easy enough to die for the good and beautiful; the hard thing is to die for the miserable and corrupt. — Shusaku Endo

There are neither the strong nor the weak. Can anyone say that the weak do not suffer more than the strong? — Shusaku Endo

People are linked together by enmity than by love. — Shusaku Endo

Christianity, to be effective in Japan, must change. — Shusaku Endo

But the scrawny, powerless man with his arms outstretched on the cross had at some point reclaimed Otsu. Still, that doesn't change the fact that I won. With startling rapacity God had merely picked up a man I discarded. — Shusaku Endo

To be a saint or a man of too good a nature in today's pragmatic world, with everyone out to get the other fellow, was equivalent to being a fool, wasn't it? — Shusaku Endo

At the core of her senseless actions, she vaguely perceived that she yearned for something. A something that would provide her with a sure sense of fulfillment. But she could not fathom what that something might be. — Shusaku Endo

What do I want to say? I myself do not quite understand. Only that today, when for the glory of God Mokichi and Ichizo moaned, suffered and died, I cannot bear the monotonous sound of the dark sea gnawing at the shore. Behind the depressing silence of this sea, the silence of God....the feeling that while men raise their voices in anguish God remains with folded arms, silent. — Shusaku Endo