Murasaki Shikibu famous quotes

03-28-2025

Real things in the darkness seem no realer than dreams.
-- Murasaki Shikibu

#Dream #Real #Darkness
Beauty without colour seems somehow to belong to another world.
-- Murasaki Shikibu

#World #Another World #Colour
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.
-- Murasaki Shikibu

#Fashion #Real #Confused
No penance can your hard heart find save such as you long since have taught me to endure
-- Murasaki Shikibu

#Heart #Long #Penance
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
-- Murasaki Shikibu

#Heart #Air #Judging
There is more here than meets the eye.
-- Murasaki Shikibu

#Eye #Appearance
A night of endless dreams, inconsequent and wild, is this my life; none more worth telling than the rest.
-- Murasaki Shikibu

#Dream #Night #Endless
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.
-- Murasaki Shikibu

#Flower #Fruit
Foolish indeed are those who trust to fortune.
-- Murasaki Shikibu

#Inspirational #Foolish #Fortune
The memories of long love gather like drifting snow, poignant as the mandarin ducks who float side by side in sleep.
-- Murasaki Shikibu

#Memories #Sleep #First Love
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
-- Murasaki Shikibu

#Liberty #Handsome #Accounts
It is indeed in many ways more comfortable to belong to that section of society whose action are not publicly canvassed and discussed
-- Murasaki Shikibu

#Way #Action
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.
-- Murasaki Shikibu

#Country #Sky #World
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.
-- Murasaki Shikibu

#Art #Effort #Rewards
There are as many sorts of women as there are women.
-- Murasaki Shikibu
Ceaseless as the interminable voices of the bell-cricket, all night till dawn my tears flow.
-- Murasaki Shikibu

#Night #Voice #Tears
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.
-- Murasaki Shikibu

#Art #Feelings #Useless
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.
-- Murasaki Shikibu

#Art #Writing #Passionate
In few people is discretion stronger than the desire to tell a good story.
-- Murasaki Shikibu

#Gossip #People #Desire
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.
-- Murasaki Shikibu

#Book #Ambition #Reign

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