Natsume Sōseki Quotes

The average novel invariably reads like a detective's report. It is drab and tedious because it is never objective.

Words are not meant to stir the air only: they are capable of moving greater things.

Use your intellect to guide you, and you will end up putting people
off. Rely on your emotions, and you will forever be pushed around.
Force your will on others, and you will live in constant tension. There
is no getting around it - people are hard to live with.

Watch birth and death:
The lotus has already
Opened its flower.

To tell you the truth, I used to consider it a disgrace to be found ignorant by other people. But now, I find that I am not ashamed of knowing less than others, and I'm less inclined to force myself to read books. In short, I have grown old and decrepit.

(on his thought on excessive nationalism) ...the country was no doubt very important, but that there was no need at all to act the clown by talking about it all the time, as if one were completely possessed by it.

It is painfully easy to define human beings. They are beings who, for no good reason at all, create their own unnecessary suffering.

Until then I had floated at random, like a rootless aquatic plant, relying entirely on the opinions of others.