Sei Shonagon famous quotes

If someone with whom one is having an affair keeps on mentioning some woman whom he knew in the past, however long ago it is since they separated, one is always irritated.
-- Sei Shonagon

#Jealousy #Past #Long

If letters did not exist, what dark depressions would come over one! When one has been worrying about something and wants to tell a certain person about it, what a relief it is to put it all down in a letter! Still greater is one's joy when a reply arrives. At that moment a letter really seems like an elixir of life.
-- Sei Shonagon

#Dark #Worry #Joy

In life there are two things which are dependable. The pleasures of the flesh and the pleasures of literature.
-- Sei Shonagon

#Two #Literature #Flesh

Pleasing things: finding a large number of tales that one has not read before. Or acquiring the second volume of a tale whose first volume one has enjoyed. But often it is a disappointment.
-- Sei Shonagon

#Disappointment #Numbers #Firsts

A man who has nothing in particular to recommend him discusses all sorts of subjects at random as if he knew everything.
-- Sei Shonagon

#Men #Subjects #Particular

There is nothing in the whole world so painful as feeling that one is not liked.
-- Sei Shonagon

#Feelings #World #Painful

One is telling a story about old times when someone breaks in with a little detail that he happens to know, implying that one's own version is inaccurate — disgusting behavior!
-- Sei Shonagon

#Stories #Littles #Details

To wash one's hair, make one's toilet, and put on scented robes; even if not a soul sees one, these preparations still produce an inner pleasure.
-- Sei Shonagon

#Self #Hair #Soul

A good lover will behave just as elegantly at dawn as at any other time.
-- Sei Shonagon

#Good Love #Dawn #Lovers

Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.

So with truth - there is a certain moment when one can say, this is the truth and here I put a dot, a stop, and I go to another thing. A judge has to put an end to a deliberation. But for a historian, theres never an end to the past. It can go on and on and on.

What we have done in the past is not sufficient now to prepare our youth.

The experience you’ve had may be unwanted, may amount to nothing but damage and waste, but experience has substance, is factual, authoritative, lives on in your past and affects your present, whatever you attempt to do about it.

Through all the relationship stuff I've gone through in the past few years, I know there are fundamental differences in how men and women view sex and how they view their futures.

Three minutes thought would suffice to find this out; but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time.

Krishnamacharya's personal practice was always with long deep breathing and mental focus. Observe the position of his head, the lower abdomen and his mental focus. He was always concentrated on the inner alignment through breath.

If you just try long enough and hard enough, you can always manage to boot yourself in the posterior.

It's hard to say what I want my legacy to be when I'm long gone.

It's been so long and I'm lost without you, what am I gonna do? I been needin' you, wantin' you, wonderin' if you're the same and who's been with you. Is your heart still mine? I wanna cry sometimes ... I miss you.