Natsume Quotes & Sayings

If you work by reason, you grow rough-edged; if you choose to dip your oar into sentiment's stream, it will sweep you away. Demanding your own way only serves to constrain you. However you look at it, the human world is not an easy place to live.

And when its difficulties intensify, you find yourself longing to leave that world and dwell in some easier one--and then, when you understand at last that difficulties will dog you wherever you may live, this is when poetry and art are born. — Soseki Natsume

I tried instead to drown my soul in drink. I cannot say I like alcohol, but I am someone who can drink if I choose to, and I set about obliterating my heart by drinking all I could. This was a puerile way out, of course, and it very quickly led to an even greater despair with the world. In the midst of a drunken stupor, I would come to my senses and realize what an idiot I was to try to fool myself like this. Then my vision and understanding grew clear, and I sat shivering and sober. There were desolate times when even the poor disguise of drunkenness failed to work, no matter how I drank. And each time I sought pleasure in drink, I emerged more depressed than ever. — Soseki Natsume

There in the mountains, close to the delights of Nature, everything you see and hear is a joy. It is a joy unspoiled by any real discomfort. Your legs may possibly ache, or you may feel the lack of something really good to eat, but that is all. I wonder why this should be? I suppose the reason is that, looking at the landscape, it is as though you were looking at a picture unrolled before you, or reading a poem on a scroll. The whole area is yours [...]. You are free from any care or worry because you accept the fact that this scenery will help neither to fill your belly, nor add a penny to your salary, and are content to enjoy it just as scenery. This is the great charm of Nature, that it can in an instant discipline men's hearts and minds, and removing all that is base, lead them into the pure unsullied world of poetry. — Soseki Natsume

But it speaks for an inner world - and again this is evident in Murakami - that sits in a different dimension from the smooth-running, flawlessly attentive, and all but anonymous machine that keeps public order moving forward so efficiently in Japan. — Pico Iyer

Had I the time to keep a diary, I'd use that time to better effect; sleeping on the veranda. — Soseki Natsume

The call for political freedom took place long ago. The call for freedom of speech is also a thing of the past. Freedom is not a word to be used exclusively for phenomena such as this which are so easily given outward manifestation. I believe that we young men of the new age have encountered the moment in time when we must call for that great freedom, the freedom of the mind. — Soseki Natsume

The autumn leaves, arranged in two or three scarlet terraces among the pine-trees, have fallen like ancient dreams. — Soseki Natsume

Sensei would be far more unhappy without me. Why, he might not even want to go on living, without me. It may seem very conceited of me, but I do really believe that I am able to make him as happy as is humanly possible. I believe that no one else would be able to make him as happy as I can. Without this belief I would not be as contented as I am — Soseki Natsume

Secretiveness is a most mysterious matter. However well one guards a secret, sooner or later it's bound to come out. — Soseki Natsume

If whiskers establish sauciness, every cat is impudent. — Soseki Natsume

No matter how fierce was the passion that gripped him, the fact is he was paralyzed, transfixed by the contemplation of his own past. Only something so momentous as to drive from his consciousness all thoughts of before and after could have propelled him forward. And with his eyes fixed on the past, he had no choice but to continue along its trajectory. — Soseki Natsume

Anyone who sang the praises of undying love in this day and age belonged to the first rank of hypocrites in Daisuke's estimate. — Soseki Natsume

But sick or well, humans are fragile creatures, you know. There's no anticipating how or when they might die, or for what reason — Soseki Natsume

Nobody can be angry and write a Hokku at the same time. Likewise, if you are crying, express your tears in seventeen syllables and you feel happy. No sooner are your thoughts down on paper, than all connection between you and the pain which caused you to cry is severed, and your only feeling is one of happiness that you are a man capable of shedding tears. — Soseki Natsume

On a charcoal kiln a vine keeps climbing, while being burned to death. — Soseki Natsume

People may make fun of me because I'm wearing something odd, but it's still good to be alive. — Soseki Natsume

How to adjust to a world in which the climax of a scene - and sometimes the central event - is going to sleep? We're going to have to adapt, maybe even invert our sense of priority and our assumptions about what constitutes drama, as most of us foreigners have to do when traveling to Japan. — Pico Iyer

If he let one day pass without glancing at a single page, habit led him to feel a vague sense of decay. Therefore, in the face of most intrusions, he tried to arrange it so that he could stay in touch with the printed word. There were moments when he felt that books constituted his only legitimate province. — Soseki Natsume

Admittedly, there's a certain coarseness about [businessmen]; for there's no point in even trying to be [one] unless your love for money is so absolute that you're ready to accompany it on the walk to a double suicide. For money, believe you me, is a hard mistress, and none of her lovers are let off lightly. As a matter of fact, I've just been visiting a businessman and, according to him, the only way to succeed is to practice the "triangled" technique: try to escape your obligations, annihilate your kindly feelings, and geld yourself of the sense of shame. — Soseki Natsume

Under the sun the couple presented smiles to the world. Under the moon, they were lost in thought: and so they had quietly passed the years. — Soseki Natsume

The average novel invariably reads like a detective's report. It is drab and tedious because it is never objective. — Soseki Natsume

London is a city that offers all kinds of temptations, and whenever I go for a walk I discover things that I would like to bring back as souvenirs. But my resources are very limited. I cannot buy anything, and I make a point of taking my walks a good distance from these riches. — Soseki Natsume

You may feel the human realm is a difficult place, but there is surely no better world to live in. You will find another only by going to the nonhuman; and the nonhuman realm would surely be a far more difficult place to inhabit than the human.

So if this best of worlds proves a hard one for you, you must simply do your best to settle in and relax as you can, and make this short life of ours, if only briefly, an easier place in which to make your home. Herein lies the poet's true calling, the artist's vocation. We owe our humble gratitude to all practitioners of the arts, for they mellow the harshness of our human world and enrich the human heart.

Yes, a poem, a painting, can draw the sting of troubles from a troubled world and lay in its place a blessed realm before our grateful eyes. — Soseki Natsume

Did you not come to me because you felt there was something lacking?'
'Yes. But my going to you was not the same thing as wanting to fall in love. — Soseki Natsume

There was a time when his father had looked like gold to him. Many of his seniors had looked like gold. Anybody who had attained a certain high level of education had looked like gold. Therefore, his own gold plating had been all the more painful, and he had been impatient to become solid gold himself. But once his keen eye penetrated directly to the inner layers of these other people, his efforts suddenly came to seem foolish. — Soseki Natsume

Thank you for not growing to hate humans. — Yuki Midorikawa

In Doya-sensei's view the world was a place to work for the sake of others; in Takayanagi's view the world was a place to work for his own sake. In a world where he lived for others, Doya felt no regret that no one offered a helping hand. In a world where he lived for himself, Takayanagi felt the world that cared nothing for him was cruel.

Such is the difference between one who exists for others and one who exists for himself. Such is the difference between one who leads others and one who relies on others. Such is the difference, even when both are solitary individuals. Takayanagi was not aware of these differences. — Soseki Natsume

A world where falling in love requires marrying is a world where novels require reading from beginning to end. — Soseki Natsume

He seemed to become aware of a dark, imponderable force pushing him left when he meant to go right or pulling him back when he meant to go forward. Until that moment, he
would have felt certain that his actions had never been subject to restraint
by others. He had been certain that he did whatever he did of his own
accord, that everything he said he intended to say. — Soseki Natsume

But to my questions he gave replies so vague that one could not tell whether they came from the mountains or the sea. — Soseki Natsume

Saku's figure before me looked like a morning glory drawn with one stroke of the brush. My only regret was that the drawing was not by the hand of a master. — Soseki Natsume

That's the thing about friends. Once you make them, there's nothing you can do about it.
-Natsume Hyuuga- — Tachibana Higuchi

There was a large crowd around us, and every face in it looked happy. We had little opportunity to talk until we reached the woods, where there were no flowers and no people. — Soseki Natsume

It's a shame that an education just gives people the means to chop logic — Soseki Natsume

There, sitting cross-legged on the floor, he stared absently at his legs. They began to look strange. They no longer seemed to grow from his trunk at all, but rather, completely unconnected, they sprawled rudely before him. When he got this far, he realized something he had never noticed before - that his legs were unbearably hideous. With hair growing unevenly and blue streaks running rampant, they were terribly strange creatures. — Soseki Natsume

Even the greatest of painters cannot produce, however strenuously he exerts himself in pursuit of variety, more than 12 or 13 individual masterpieces. So it is natural that mankind should marvel at God's astonishing and singlehanded achievement in the production of people. — Soseki Natsume

What this feeling produced was, quite simply, a keen awareness of the nature of human sin. That is what sent me back each month to K's grave. It is also what lay behind the nursing of my dying mother-in-law, and what bade me treat my wife so tenderly. There were even times when I longed for some stranger to come along and flog me as I deserved. At some stage this feeling transformed into a conviction that it should be I who hurt myself. And then the thought struck me that I should not just hurt myself but kill myself. At all events, I resolved that I must live my life as if I were already dead. — Soseki Natsume

I am an honest man by nature, but as I live in society I try not to arouse anyone's resentment and sometimes I am compelled to lie in this endeavour. As soon as honesty becomes compatible with daily social life, I will stop telling such lies. — Soseki Natsume

From then on, my thesis hung over me like a curse, and with bloodshot eyes, I worked like a madman. — Soseki Natsume

Knowing that it is the earth we tread, we learn to tread carefully, lest it be rent open. Realizing that it is the heavens that hang above us, we come to fear the echoing thunderbolt. The world demands that we battle with others for the sake of our own reputation, and so we undergo the sufferings bred of illusion. While we live in this world with its daily business, forced to walk the tightrope of profit and loss, true love is an empty thing, and the wealth before our eyes mere dust. — Soseki Natsume

Anyone without spiritual aspirations is a fool — Soseki Natsume

I'll worry about tomorrow tomorrow. — Soseki Natsume

I am not as hard as I seem. For the right person, I too could shed a few tears. — Soseki Natsume

There was nothing so very unfamiliar about the excitement she was feeling, and yet it felt always like a new excitement. It was, in other words, a perennially unfamiliar feeling. — Soseki Natsume

You'd better watch out - life can be dangerous. — Soseki Natsume

Even bigger than Japan is the inside of your head. — Soseki Natsume

In spite of my contempt for women, however, I found it impossible to be contemptuous of Ojosan. It seemed that reason was powerless in her presence. My love for her was close to piety. You may think it strange that I should use this word, with its religious connotation, to describe my feeling towards a woman. But even now I believe--and I believe it very strongly--that true love is not so far removed from religious faith. Whenever I saw Ojosan's face, I felt that I had myself become beautiful. Whenever I thought of her, I felt a new sense of dignity welling up inside me. If this incomprehensible thing that we call love can either bring out the sacred in man or, in its lowest form, merely excite one's bodily passions, then surely my love was of the highest kind. I am not saying that I was not like other men. I am made of flesh too. But my eyes which gazed at her, and my mind which held thoughts of her, were innocent of bodily desire. — Soseki Natsume

Into the field of
Yellow flowers
The red setting sun! — Soseki Natsume

My hand may slip from lack of practice, but I do not believe my clumsy writing derives from an agitated mind. — Soseki Natsume

When he heard that Sanshiro was going to school forty hours a week, his eyes popped. "You idiot! Do you think it would 'satisfy' you to eat what they serve at your rooming house ten times a day?"
"What should I do?" Sanshiro pleaded.
"Ride the streetcar," Yojiro said.
Sanshiro tried to find Yojiro's hidden meaning, without success.
"You mean a real streetcar?" he asked.
Yojiro laughed uncontrollably. "Get on the streetcar and ride around Tokyo ten or fifteen times. After a while it will just happen by itself- you will become satisfied.
"Why?"
"Why? Well, look at it this way. Your head is alive, but if you seal it up inside dead classes, you're lost. Take it outside and get the wind into it. Riding the streetcar is not the only way to get satisfaction, of course, but it's the first step, and the easiest. — Soseki Natsume

But when luck is running against one, nothing goes well. — Soseki Natsume

But do you imagine there's a certain type of person in the world who conforms to the idea of a 'bad person'? You'll never find someone who fits that mold neatly, you know. On the whole, 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. That's why you have to be careful. — Soseki Natsume

Leaving the person I love in danger and continuing to live on is the same as being dead.
-Hyuga, Natsume — Tachibana Higuchi

But the main reason for my immobility lay quite elsewhere. True enough, my uncle's betrayal had made me fiercely determined never to be beholden to anyone again - but back then my distrust of others had only reinforced my sense of self. The world might be rotten, I felt, but I at least am a man of integrity. But this faith in myself had been shattered on account of K. I suddenly understood that I was no different from my uncle, and the knowledge made me reel. What could I do? Others were already repulsive to me, and now I was repulsive even to myself. — Soseki Natsume

How deep, how recondite this seeming petty heart,
In whose recesses right and wrong lie dimmed by distance. — Soseki Natsume

To be as comfortably off as you are is, after all, the best way to be. — Soseki Natsume

It is of course true that the human creature characteristically prides itself on its self-reliance. However, it would be more exact to say that the creature, knowing it can't rely upon itself, would very much like to believe that it could and is consequently never at ease with itself until it can give a practical demonstration to some other such creature of how much it can rely upon itself. — Soseki Natsume

(on his thought on excessive nationalism) ...the country was no doubt very important, but that there was no need at all to act the clown by talking about it all the time, as if one were completely possessed by it. — Soseki Natsume

My love for her was close to piety. You may think it strange that I should use this word, with its religious connotation, to describe my feeling towards a woman. But even now I believe - and I believe it very strongly - that true love is not so far removed from religious faith. — Soseki Natsume

The artist, even when he imitates nature, always feels himself to be not a slave but a demigod. — Soseki Natsume

Reflection may be essential to a scholar, but it's taboo in social intercourse. — Soseki Natsume

I would guess that he thought and thought for at least ten years before he came up with a stupendous idea, that glory of man's inventiveness, pants. — Soseki Natsume

The poet has an obligation to dissect his own corpse and reveal the symptoms of its illness to the world. — Soseki Natsume

I don't like argumentation. You men do it a lot, don't you? You seem to enjoy it. I'm always amazed at how men can go on and on, happily passing around the empty cup of some futile discussion — Soseki Natsume

Novelists congratulate themselves on their creation of this kind of "character" or that kind of "character," and readers pretend to talk knowingly about "character," but all it amounts to is that the writers are enjoying themselves writing lies and the readers are enjoying themselves reading lies. In fact, there is no such thing as character, something fixed and final. The real thing is something that novelists don't know how to write about. Or, if they tried, the end result would never be a novel. Real people are strangely difficult to make sense out of. Even a god would have his hands full trying. — Soseki Natsume

And men who accept the burdens of regret, whether in respect of watercolors or of anything else, are not the stuff that men of the world are made of. — Soseki Natsume

Why haven't you changed?' and she said, 'Because the year I had this face, the month I wore these clothes, and the day I had my hair like this is my favourite time of all.' 'What time is that?' I asked her. 'The day we met twenty years ago,' she said. I wondered to myself, 'Then why have I aged like this?' and she told me, 'Because you wanted to go on changing, moving towards something more and more beautiful. — Soseki Natsume

here was no way of knowing what path he would take from there, but in order to survive as a human being, he was sure to arrive at the fate of having to incur the dislike of other human beings. When that time came, he would probably clothe himself inconspicuously, so as not to attract attention, and beggarlike, linger about the market places of man, in search of something. — Soseki Natsume

Where joy grows deep, sorrow must deepen; the greater one's pleasures, the greater the pain. — Soseki Natsume

The plain fact is that humans, one and all, are merely thieves at heart. — Soseki Natsume

An artist is a person who lives in the triangle which remains after the angle which we may call common sense has been removed from this four-cornered world. — Soseki Natsume

The trouble with women is that they talk too much. It would be good if human beings would keep as silent as this cat. — Soseki Natsume

To be able to muster so many complaints about one little thing - yes, you'll get ahead, that's for sure. — Soseki Natsume

There you are. It's what I've been saying all along. You have too much latitude. And that makes you extravagant. The result is, the minute you acquire something you like, you want the next thing. But when something you like gets away, you stamp your feet in chagrin."

"When have I ever behaved that way?"

"Believe me, you have. You're behaving that way now. It's the price you pay for your latitude. And it's what gives me the keenest pleasure. It's the Karma principle, poverty taking its revenge on affluence. — Soseki Natsume

It's like the frog that tried to outdo the cow...see, the consequences are reflected in each of us as individuals. A people so oppressed by the West have no mental leisure, they can't do anything worthwhile. They get an education that's stripped to the bare bone, and they're driven with their noses to the grindstone until they're dizzy -- that's why they all end up with nervous breakdowns. Try talking to them -- they're usually stupid. They haven't thought about a thing beyond themselves, that day, that very instant. They're too exhausted to think about anything else; it's not their fault. Unfortunately, exhaustion of the spirit and deterioration of the body come hand-in-hand. And that's not all. The decline of morality has set in too. Look where you will in this country, you won't find one square inch of brightness. It's all pitch black. So what difference would it make... — Soseki Natsume

Men works by preference, not by logic. — Soseki Natsume

The prime fact is that all humans are puffed up by their extreme self-satisfaction with their own brute power. Unless some creatures more powerful than humans arrive on earth to bully them, there's just no knowing to what dire lengths their fool presumptuousness will eventually carry them. — Soseki Natsume

As I see it, you're always unsteady on your legs. You can't find your courage. You'll go to any length to avoid what displeases you, and you gallop after whatever you want. And why is that? There is no why; it's because you're free to. You enjoy the luxury of picking and choosing because you have the latitude. You're never pushed into a tight corner as I am, so it never occurs to you to thumb your nose at the world. — Soseki Natsume

To you it looks like I'm being devious, but all I'm doing is using human ingenuity beforehand to keep the natural order of things from going astray. That's entirely different from hatching foolish schemes that go against nature. So what if I'm being devious? Devious methods aren't bad. Only bad methods are bad. — Soseki Natsume

People really didn't change very much, he thought; they only decayed. — Soseki Natsume

But once I could look back on it in a calmer frame of mind, it struck me that his motive was surely not so simple and straightforward. Had it resulted from a fatal collision between reality and ideals? Perhaps - but this was still not quite it. Eventually, I began to wonder whether it was not the same unbearable loneliness that I now felt that had brought K to his decision. — Soseki Natsume

If a man starts a campaign on my behalf without consulting me, he's just toying with my existence. Think how much better off you'd be to have your existence ignored. At least your reputation wouldn't suffer! — Soseki Natsume

People forget their faces when they're busy. — Soseki Natsume

It's only natural for the docile creature of yesteryear to become difficult today. That's just the way people are. You can try forcing someone to remember how he felt in winter and keep shivering after summer comes, but it won't happen. A person might not be able to eat when they're sick but nobody can make they give up food for the rest of their life... The trouble with people is they think they are solid as rock. — Soseki Natsume

He saw the human shadows flitting through his second world. Most of them had unkempt beards. Some walked along looking at the sky, others at the ground. All wore shabby clothing. All lived in poverty. And all were serene. Closed in on every side by streetcars, they freely breathed the air of peace. The men in this world were unfortunate, for they knew nothing of the real world. But they were fortunate as well, for they had fled the Burning House of worldly suffering. Professor Hirota was in this second world. So, too, was Nonomiya. Sanshiro stood where he could understand the air of this world more or less. He could leave it whenever he wished. But to do so, to relinquish a taste he had finally begun to savor, was something he was loath to do. — Soseki Natsume

I will not hesitate to cast upon you the shadow thrown by the darkness of human life. But do not be afraid. Gaze steadfastly into this darkness, and find there the things that will be of use to you. — Soseki Natsume

No matter how full one's head might be with the image of greatness, one was useless, I found out, unless one was a worthy man first. — Soseki Natsume

His grin seemed to say, "It is, for some strange reason, considered proper to congratulate people on such occasions as this. — Soseki Natsume

The world's evaluations of an individual's social worth, like the slits in my eyeballs, change with time and circumstance. In point of fact my pupil-slits vary but modestly between broad and narrow, but mankind's judgements turn somersaults and cartwheels for no conceivable reason. — Soseki Natsume

Whenever I saw her face, I felt that I myself had become beautiful. At the mere thought of her, I felt elevated by contact with her nobility. If this strange phenomenon we call Love can be said to have two poles, the higher of which is a sense of holiness and the baser the impulse of sexual desire, this love of mine was undoubtedly in the grip of Love's higher realm. Being human, of course, I could not leave my fleshly self behind, yet the eyes that beheld her, the heart that treasured thoughts of her, knew nothing of the reek of the physical. — Soseki Natsume

The memory of having sat at someone's feet will later make you want to trample him underfoot. — Soseki Natsume

There are times when even I, a mere cat, can put two thoughts together. "Teachers have it easy. If you are born a human, it's best to become a teacher. For if it's possible to sleep this much and still to be a teacher, why, even a cat could teach" However, according to the master, there's nothing harder than a teacher's life... — Soseki Natsume

Walking up a mountain track, I fell to thinking.
Approach everything rationally, and you become harsh. Pole along in the stream of emotions, and you will be swept away by the current. Give free rein to your desires, and you become uncomfortably confined. It is not a very agreeable place to live, this world of ours. — Soseki Natsume

Knowing that it is the earth that we tread, we learn to tread carefully, lest it be rent open. Realizing that it is the heavens that hang above us, we come to fear the echoing thunderbolt. The world demands that we battle with others for the sake of our own reputation, and so we undergo the sufferings bred of illusion. While we live in this world with its daily business, forced to walk the tightrope of profit and loss, true love is an empty thing, and the wealth before our eyes mere dust. The reputation we grasp at, the glory that we seize, is surely like the honey that the cunning bee will seem sweetly to brew only to leave his sting within it as he flies. What we call pleasure in fact contains all suffering, since it arises from attachment. Only thanks to the existence of the poet and the painter are we able to imbibe the essence of this dualistic world, to taste the purity of its very bones and marrow. — Soseki Natsume

It's so unrewarding, being a woman. — Soseki Natsume

Daisuke was of course equipped with conversation that, even if they went further, would allow him to retreat as if nothing had happened. He had always wondered at the conversations recorded in Western novels, for to him they were too bald, too self indulgent, and moreover, too unsubtly rich. However they read in the original, he thought they reflected a taste that could not be translated into Japanese. Therefore, he had not the slightest intention of using imported phrases to develop his relationship with Michiyo. Between the two of them at least, ordinary words sufficed perfectly well. But the danger was of slipping from point A to point B without realizing it. Daisuke managed to stand his ground only by a hair's breadth. When he left, Michiyo saw him to the entranceway and said, "Do come again, please? It's so lonely. — Soseki Natsume

Even the works of Shakespeare might be more thoroughly appreciated if they were re-examined from unorthodox positions. Someone, once in a while, should take a good long look at Hamlet through his legs. — Soseki Natsume

If the Creator should take the line that I am born to work and not to sleep, I would agree that I am indeed born to work but I would also make the unanswerable point that I cannot work unless I also rest. — Soseki Natsume

I may be someone who was always destined to spend my life wandering aimlessly. I can't settle down. The cruel part is, I want to settle down and the world won't let me. So what choice do I have but to become a fugitive? — Soseki Natsume

You must not speak ill of other persons. After all, everyone dies when their allotted span is over. — Soseki Natsume