Quotes from Beauty and Sadness

“I suppose even a woman's hatred is a kind of love.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, quote from Beauty and Sadness

“Time passed. But time flows in many streams. Like a river, an inner stream of time will flow rapidly at some places and sluggishly at others, or perhaps even stand hopelessly stagnant. Cosmic time is the same for everyone, but human time differs with each person. Time flows in the same way for all human beings; every human being flows through time in a different way.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, quote from Beauty and Sadness

“I wonder what the retirement age is in the novel business.

The day you die.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, quote from Beauty and Sadness

“...he heard a sound that only a magnificent old bell could produce, a sound that seemed to roar forth with all the latent power of a distant world.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, quote from Beauty and Sadness

“Un dia, mientras escribia una carta, Otoko abrio el diccionario para consultar el ideograma 'pensar'. Al repasar los restantes significados (añorar, ser incapaz de olvidar, estar triste) sintio que el corazon se le encogia. Tuvo miedo de tocar el diccionario... Aun ahi estaba Oki. Innumerables palabras se lo recordaban. Vincular todo lo que veia y oia con su amor equivalia a estar viva. La conciencia de su propio cuerpo era inseparable del recuerdo de aquel abrazo.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, quote from Beauty and Sadness

“¿Pero cuánto durará esta belleza? A las mujeres nos entristece pensar en eso”
― Yasunari Kawabata, quote from Beauty and Sadness

“Her awareness of her body was inseparable from her memory of his embrace.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, quote from Beauty and Sadness

“She was afraid to touch the dictionary — Oki was even there. Innumerable words reminded her of him. To link whatever she saw and heard with her love was nothing less than to be alive. Her awareness of her body was inseparable from her memory of his embrace.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, quote from Beauty and Sadness

“She could not say why these rather inconspicuous green slopes had so touched her heart, when along the railway line there were mountains, lakes, the sea at times even clouds dyed in sentimental colors. But perhaps their melancholy green, and the melancholy evening shadows of the ridges across them, had brought on the pain. Then too, they were small, well-groomed slopes with deeply shaded ridges, not nature in the wild; and the rows of rounded tea bushes looked like flocks of gentle green sheep.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, quote from Beauty and Sadness

“Supongo que en una mujer, hasta el odio es una forma del amor.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, quote from Beauty and Sadness

“No me importa que sólo dure cinco o diez días, pero necesito a alguien que pueda hacerme olvidar completamente de mí misma.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, quote from Beauty and Sadness

“El tiempo corre de la misma manera para todos los seres humanos; pero todo ser humano flota de distinta manera en el tiempo.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, quote from Beauty and Sadness

“¡El hombre es la medicina que da vida a la mujer! Todas las mujeres tienen que consumirla.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, quote from Beauty and Sadness

“Quiero que nos abramos paso a través de nuestro destino y que flotemos sobre las aguas. El mañana siempre se nos escapa.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, quote from Beauty and Sadness

“Now that Otoko had heard about the night at Enoshima, that old love flared up ominously within her. Yet in those flames she could see a single white lotus blossom. Their love was a dreamlike flower that not even Keiko could stain.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, quote from Beauty and Sadness

“Women are odd,” he said, to extricate himself. “Two or three of them have told me they’re sure I modeled one of my characters on them. And they were complete strangers, women I’d had nothing to do with. What kind of delusion could that be?” “Lots of women are unhappy, so they console themselves with delusions.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, quote from Beauty and Sadness

“Se preguntó si era su juventud y su inocencia lo que habían dado tanta intensidad a ese amor. Quizás eso explicara su pasión ciega e insaciable. Cuando en un espasmo mordía el hombro de Oki, ni siguiera advertía la sangre que manaba de la herida.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, quote from Beauty and Sadness

“Esperar a Oki es lo mismo que esperar el pasado… El tiempo y los ríos no corren para atrás.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, quote from Beauty and Sadness

“Con todo, no podía reprimir los vívidos recuerdos de aquella pasión, su cuerpo se ponía tenso y comenzaba a temblar. Por fin la tensión se aflojaba y una deliciosa sensación de plenitud recorría sus miembros. Su amor del pasado había vuelto a la vida.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, quote from Beauty and Sadness

“Con el correr del tiempo, el recuerdo de aquel abrazo se fue purificando dentro de Otoko; fue dejando de ser algo físico para convertirse en algo espiritual. Ahora ella ya no era pura y sin duda Oki tampoco lo era. Y sin embargo, su antiguo abrazo, tal como lo veía ahora, parecía puro. Aquel recuerdo —en el que ella intervenía y no intervenía, que parecía real e irreal— era una visión sagrada, una visión sublimada del abrazo de antaño.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, quote from Beauty and Sadness

“¿Por qué florecía aquel loto en medio de una hoguera? ¿Por qué no se marchitaba?”
― Yasunari Kawabata, quote from Beauty and Sadness

“La conciencia de su propio cuerpo era inseparable del recuerdo de aquel abrazo.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, quote from Beauty and Sadness

“A no ser por la mirada melancólica de sus ojos, cuando pensaba en Oki, nadie habría advertido su tristeza. Y hasta esa ocasional sombra sólo contribuía a acentuar su belleza.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, quote from Beauty and Sadness

“El tiempo pasó. Pero el tiempo se divide en muchas corrientes. Como en un río, hay una corriente central rápida en algunos sectores y lenta, hasta inmóvil, en otros. El tiempo cósmico es igual para todos, pero el tiempo humano difiere con cada persona. El tiempo corre de la misma manera para todos los seres humanos; pero todo ser humano flota de distinta manera en el tiempo. Al aproximarse a los cuarenta, Otoko se preguntaba si el hecho de que Oki siguiera dentro de ella significaba que esa corriente del tiempo se había estancado, en lugar de seguir su curso. ¿O acaso la imagen que ella conservaba de él había flotado con ella a través del tiempo como una flor que avanza aguas abajo? Ella ignoraba cómo había flotado su propia imagen en la corriente de Oki. No podía haberla olvidado; pero, sin duda, el tiempo había corrido de manera diferente para él. Las corrientes del tiempo nunca son iguales para dos personas, ni siquiera cuando son amantes.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, quote from Beauty and Sadness

“Siempre recordaré que estuve en tus brazos frente a una antigua sepultura, en una mañana como ésta. Es muy extraño que una tumba cree un recuerdo”
― Yasunari Kawabata, quote from Beauty and Sadness

“Siempre recordaré que estuve en tus brazos frente a una antigua sepultura, en una mañana como ésta. Es muy extraño que una tumba cree un recuerdo.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, quote from Beauty and Sadness

“Supongo que en una mujer, hasta el odio es una forma del amor”
― Yasunari Kawabata, quote from Beauty and Sadness

“Timpul se scurge la fel pentru toti, dar fiecare curge diferit in timp.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, quote from Beauty and Sadness

“Two middle-aged American couples came back from the dining car and, as soon as they could see Mt. Fuji, past Numazu, stood at the windows eagerly taking photographs. By the time Fuji was completely visible, down to the fields at its base, they seemed tired of photographing and had turned their backs to it. The”
― Yasunari Kawabata, quote from Beauty and Sadness

About the author

Popular quotes

“They’d given me a blowtorch. Idiots.”
― Laura Thalassa, quote from The Vanishing Girl

“He’d start things up, have a bit of fun, and then, in the end, have his ass handed to him by that Great Big Dick in the Sky. ”
― quote from What Would Satan Do?

“It would be very unjust to say that you deserted me, but that I was deserted, and sometimes terribly so, is true.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Diaries of Franz Kafka

“The bullies who instilled that hatred were never made to account. I think they should. I think they should because he died that day, too.”
― Sandra Brown, quote from Mean Streak

“Hope was based on the unknown, and I liked knowing things. Like that I was going to fail. Failure had better odds. ”
― Nami Mun, quote from Miles from Nowhere

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.