Quotes from Sh?saku End?

Prayer does nothing to alleviate suffering.

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

The seeds of salvation are buried in every act of evil.

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.

Trample! It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world. It was to share men's pain that I carried my cross.

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.

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

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.

People are linked together by enmity than by love.

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.

And yet, rather than this I know that my Lord is different from the God that is preached in the churches.

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

The wisdom of peasants shows itself in their ability to pretend that they are fools.

His only solace and support was in the thought of that other man who had also tasted fear and trembling. And then there was joy in the thought that he was not alone.

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!

Stupefied he gazed at the old man who, naïve as a child, returned his glance still rubbing his hands. How could he have recognized one who so utterly betrayed all his expectations? The man whom Valignano had called a devil, who had made the missionaries apostatize one by one--until now he had envisaged the face of this man as pale and crafty. But here before his very eyes sat this understanding, seemingly good, meek man.

Not all men are handsome and strong. There are some who are cowards from birth. There are some who are weak by nature. There are even some who cry easily. But for such a man, a man both weak and cowardly, to bear the burden of his weakness and struggle valiantly to live a beautiful life-- that's what I call great. The reason I'm so fond of Gaston is not because he has a strong will or a good head. Rather it's because, weakling and coward that he is, he keeps on fighting in his own way.

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.

Qué tratas de hacer ahora? Bautizar a unos hombres que no creen en el Señor para tu propio beneficio es un pecado y una profanación. Y también un acto de arrogancia mediante el cual cargas al Señor con los pecados de hombres sin fe mediante el sacramento del bautismo.

Siapa pun bisa tertarik oleh yang cantik-cantik dan memesona. Tetapi bisakah ketertarikan semacam itu disebut cinta kasih? Cinta kasih sejati sanggup menerima manusia-manusia yang kotor dan compang-camping.

Ne mogu da podnesem monotoni zvuk sumornog mora, ?utanje Boga... saznanje da dok ljudi glasno pate - Bog ostaje skrštenih ruku, nem.

For the first time in her life Tomoe came to the realization that there are fools and fools. A man who loves others with an open-hearted simplicity, who trusts others, no matter who they are, even if he is deceived or even betrayed-- such a man in the present-day world is bound to be written off as a fool. And so he is. But not just an ordinary fool. He is a wonderful fool. He is a wonderful fool who will never allow the little light which he sheds along man's way to go out.

Es verdad que guardaba silencio, pero se le quedaba mirando con una mirada transida de ternura. Parecía querer decir: «Cuando tú sufres, Yo sufro a tu lado. Estaré a tu lado hasta el final».

To help others is the way of Buddha and the teaching of Christianity - in this point the two religions are the same. What matters is weather or not you walk the path of truth. That is not God. It is like a butterfly caught in a spider's web. At first it is certainly a butterfly, but the next day only the externals, the wings and the trunk, are those of a butterfly; it has lost it's true reality and has become a skeleton.