Quotes About Reflection

My unhappiness stemmed entirely from my own vices, and I had no way of fighting anybody.

I know that I am liked by other people, but I seem to be deficient in the faculty to love others. (I should add that I have very strong doubts as to whether even human beings really possess this faculty.)

Even now it comes as a shock if by chance I notice in the street a face resembling someone I know however slightly, and I am at once seized by a shivering violent enough to make me dizzy.

She lay down beside me, Towards dawn she pronounced for the first time the word "death." She too seemed to be weary beyond endurance of the task of being a human being; and when I reflected on my dread of the world and its bothersomeness, on money, the movement, women, my studies, it seemed impossible that I could go on living. I consented easily to her proposal.

In the present world, the most beautiful thing is a victim.

I want to love everyone', I thought, almost tearfully. If you stare at the sky, it changes little by little. Gradually it turns bluish. [..] I had never seen anything as beautiful as the translucent leaves and grass. Gently, I reached out to the touch of the grass.

It occurred to me that prison life might actually be pleasanter than groaning away my sleepless nights in hellish dread of the "realities of life" as led by human beings.

Whenever I let the slightest thing make me forget myself, I can't help but be disappointed

Did you cry?" "No. I didn't cry ... I just kept thinking that when human beings get that way, they're no good for anything.

I'm going somewhere where there aren't any women.

I suddenly wondered whether Mother might not actually be happy now, whether the sensation of happiness might not be something like faintly glittering gold sunken at the bottom of the river of sorrow. The feeling of that strange pale light when once on as exceeded all the bounds of unhappiness - if that can be called a sensation of happiness, the Emperor, my mother, and even I myself may be said to be happy now.

Real thought takes courage more than intelligence.

I can't even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being.

A man crushed by reality puts on a show of endurance. If that's beyond your comprehension, dear reader, then you and I will never understand each other. Life's a farce, so we might as well make it a good one. But real life is a realm that I may never reach. The best that I can hope for is to loiter in the memory of these four days, so steeped with empathy. Four days that count more than five or ten years of my life. Four days that count more than a lifetime.

I wonder if I have actually been happy. People have told me, really more times than I can remember, ever since I was a small boy, how lucky I was, but I have always felt as if I were suffering in hell.

This year I am twenty-seven. My hair has become much greyer. Most people would take me for over forty.

I have frantically played the clown in order to disentangle myself from these painful relationships, only to wear myself out as a result.

I should like to record that as I manipulated the peeling lacquer chopsticks to eat my jelly, I felt unbearably lonely.

Even now, I barely have the strength to reread what I've written.

No less than myself, though in a different way, he was entirely removed from the activities of the human beings of the world. We were of one species if only in that we were both disoriented.

Sometimes happiness arrives one night too late.

Isn't it said that memories only grow more beautiful with time?

I also like to take my glasses off and look at people. The faces around me, all of them, seem kind and pretty and smiling. What's more, when my glasses are off, I don't ever think about arguing with anyone at all, nor do I feel the need to make snide remarks. All I do is just blankly stare in silence.

Most drinkers are lonely men, isolated in their own homes. To ask whether they drink because they're isolated or isolated because the rest of the family disapprove of their drinking would be like clapping and trying to decide which hand made the sound—it can only lead to a lot of vain quibbling.