Murasaki Shikibu - The Tale of Genji (1008)

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Anything whatsoever may become the subject of a novel, provided only that it happens in this mundane life and not in some fairyland beyond our human ken.

Murasaki Shikibu
Intimacy between stepchildren and stepparents is indeed proverbially difficult.

Murasaki Shikibu
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
There is a tendency among men as well as women... so soon as they have acquired a little knowledge of some kind, to want to display it to the best advantage.

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

Murasaki Shikibu
People who do not get into scrapes are a great deal less interesting than those who do.

Murasaki Shikibu
Since I heard that the mists of autumn had vanished and left desolate winter in your house, I have thought often of you as I watched the streaming sky.

Murasaki Shikibu
In few people is discretion stronger than the desire to tell a good story.

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

Murasaki Shikibu
How swiftly the locks rust, the hinges grow stiff on doors that close behind us!

Murasaki Shikibu
Beauty without colour seems somehow to belong to another world.

Murasaki Shikibu
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
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
Ceaseless as the interminable voices of the bell-cricket, all night till dawn my tears flow.

Murasaki Shikibu
Stepmothers in books usually behave very spitefully towards the children entrusted to them. But he was now learning by his own experience that in real life this does not always happen.

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

Murasaki Shikibu
'farewell' is a monster among words, and never yet sounded kindly in any ear.

Murasaki Shikibu
[The art of the novel] happens because the storyteller's own experience of men and things, whether for good or ill—not only what he has passed through himself, but even events which he has only witnessed or been told of—has moved him to an emotion so passionate that he can no longer keep it shut up in his heart.

Murasaki Shikibu