Ryūnosuke Akutagawa · 268 pages
Rating: (4.8K votes)
“I have no conscience at all -- least of all an artistic conscience. All I have is nerves.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, quote from Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories
“I have heard unsavory rumors about you and the umbrella-maker's daughter”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, quote from Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories
“He disliked his own lies as much as his parents', but still he continued to lie -- boldly and cunningly. He did this primarily out of need, but also for the pathological pleasure of killing a god.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, quote from Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories
“The human heart harbors two conflicting sentiments. Everyone of course sympathizes with people who suffer misfortunes. Yet when those people manage to overcome their misfortunes, we feel a certain disappointment. We may even feel (to overstate the case somewhat) a desire to plunge them back into those misfortunes. And before we know it, we come (if only passively) to harbor some degree of hostility toward them.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, quote from Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories
“The cable was still sending sharp sparks into the air. He could think of nothing in life that he especially desired, but those purple sparks--those wildly-blooming flowers of fire--he would trade his life for the chance to hold them in his hands."
-from "The Life of a Stupid Man”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, quote from Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories
“When I kill a man, I do it with my sword, but people like you don't use swords. You gentlemen kill with your power, with your money, and sometimes just with your words: you tell people you're doing them a favor. True, no blood flows, the man is still alive, but you've killed him all the same. I don't know whose sin is greater―yours or mine. (A sarcastic smile.)”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, quote from Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories
“I've heard you want to die," she said.
"Yes—or rather, it's not so much that I want to die as that I'm tired of living.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, quote from Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories
“Life is more hellish than hell itself.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, quote from Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories
“At twenty-nine, life no longer held any brightness for him, but Voltaire supplied him with man-made wings.
Spreading these man-made wings, he soared with ease into the sky. The higher he flew, the farther below him sank the joys and sorrows of a life bathed in the light of the intellect. Dropping ironies and smiles upon the shabby towns below, he climbed through the open sky, straight for the sun--as if he had forgotten about that ancient Greek who plunged to his death in the ocean when his man-made wings were singed by the sun."
-from "The Life of a Stupid Man”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, quote from Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories
“Everyone is the same under the skin.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, quote from Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories
“These works are handed down from teacher to pupil, from parent to child, almost without question, like DNA. They are memorized, recited, discussed in book reports, included in university entrance exams, and once the student is grown up, they become a source for quotation. They are made into movies again and again, they are parodied, and inevitably they become the object of ambitious young writers’ revolt and contempt.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, quote from Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories
“That’s because, in a way different from what you meant by it, you can’t trust anybody.” Major Kimura lit a new cigar and, smiling, continued in tones that were almost exultantly cheerful. “It is important—even necessary—for us to become acutely aware of the fact that we can’t trust ourselves. The only ones you can trust to some extent are people who really know that. We had better get this straight. Otherwise, our own characters’ heads could fall off like Xiao-er’s at any time.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, quote from Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories
“إن سمو الحياة يصل ذروته في أكثر لحظات الإلهام قربًا من القلب، والإنسان
سيجعل حياته جديرة بأن تعاش إذا رفع بوجهه عاليًا نحو السماء المتشحة بالنجوم
متجاوزاً الاهتمامات الدنيوية المظلمة لهذة الحياة، ليعكس على صقال زبدها البللوري
سنا بدر لم يطل بعد.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, quote from Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories
“وكل ما ظل فيه بلا تغيير هو لون عينيه اللتين تشبهان النجوم. واللتين مضتا تتطلعان عالياً نحو السماء.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, quote from Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories
“Life is not worth a single line of Baudelaire."
-from "The Life of a Stupid Man”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, quote from Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories
“This is all for the sake of the House,” he told himself, but behind his resolve he sensed, indistinctly, a certain effort at self-vindication, and the awareness hovered there like a barely perceptible halo around the moon.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, quote from Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories
“As rumor had said, he found several corpses strewn carelessly about the floor. Since the glow of the light was feeble, he could not count the number. He could only see that some were naked and others clothed. Some of them were women, and all were lolling on the floor with their mouths open or their arms outstretched showing no more signs of life than so many clay dolls. One would doubt they had ever been alive, so eternally silent they were.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, quote from Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
Born place: in Tokyo, Japan
Born date March 1, 1892
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“It was strange to stand there in front of the mirror and see myself like I was my own best friend, a kid wanted to hang with forever. This was a boy I could travel to the seacoasts with, a boy I'd like to meet up with in foreign cities like Calcutta and London and Brazil, a boy I could trust who also had a good sense of humor and liked smoked oysters from a can and good weed and the occasional 40 ounces of malt. If I was going to be alone for the rest of my life this was the person I wanted to be alone with.”
― Russell Banks, quote from Rule of the Bone
“Hate is the darkness, that's no good. And yet we've got to hate Fascists, and that's considered perfectly all right. How is that possible? It's because we hate them in the name of the light, I guess, whereas they hate only in the name of darkness. We hate hate itself, and for this reason our hate is better than theirs.
But that's why it's more difficult for us. For them everything is very simple, but for us it's more complicated. We've got to become a little bit like them in order to fight them so we become a little bit unlike ourselves. But they don't have that problem; they can do away with us without any qualms. We first have to do away with something inside ourselves before we can do away with them. Not them; they can simply remain themselves, that's why they're so strong. But they'll lose in the end, because they have no light in them. The only thing is, we mustn't become too much like them, mustn't destroy ourselves altogether, otherwise they'll have won in the end...”
― Harry Mulisch, quote from The Assault
“he was in his grave, alone. Somewhere I could not be.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from Alice I Have Been
“Thanks to my ridiculous, sometimes tragic, and always unsteady upbringing, I was given the gift of bone-crushing insecurity. One thing you’ll notice about people with mental problems is constant self-absorbation. I think that’s because it’s such a struggle just to be who they are, so they have a hard time getting past it.”
― Mark Oliver Everett, quote from Things The Grandchildren Should Know
“we are all so alone in what lies deepest in our souls, so unable to find the words and perhaps the courage to speak with unlocked hearts, that we do not know at all that it is the same with others.”
― Sheldon Vanauken, quote from A Severe Mercy: A Story of Faith, Tragedy and Triumph
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