“السقوط في الحب امتياز خاص يُمنح لشخص يسمح له مظهره الخارجي، وفتنته الحسية، وجهله الداخلي، وافتقاره للتنظيم، وغياب إدراكه، بتشكيل نوع من الصورة الخيالية عن الآخرين.”
― Yukio Mishima, quote from The Temple of Dawn
“Better to be caught in sudden, complete catastrophe than to be gnawed by the cancer of imagination.”
― Yukio Mishima, quote from The Temple of Dawn
“On reflection, falling in love for him was not only extraordinary, but rather comical. By having closely observed Kiyoaki Matsugae, he knew full well what sort of man should fall in love.
Falling in love was a special privilege given to someone whose external, sensuous charm and internal ignorance, disorganization, and lack of cognizance permitted him to form a kind of fantasy about others. It was a rude privilege. Honda was quite aware that since his childhood, he had been the opposite of such a man.”
― Yukio Mishima, quote from The Temple of Dawn
“Life strove mightily to exile orthodoxy, hospitalize heresy, and trap humanity into stupidity. It was an accumulation of used bandages soiled with layers of blood and pus. Life was the daily changing of the bandages of the heart that made the incurably sick, young and old alike, cry out in pain.”
― Yukio Mishima, quote from The Temple of Dawn
“However, whatever frightening mask it might assume, the national spirit in its original state was of pristine whiteness. Traveling through a country like Thailand, Honda realized more clearly than ever the simplicity and purity of things Japanese, like transparent stream water
through which one could glimpse pebbles below, or the probity of Shinto rites. Honda’s life was not imbued with such spirit. Like the majority of Japanese he ignored it, behaving as though it did not exist and surviving by
escaping from it. All his life he had dodged things fundamental and artless: white silk, clear cold water, the zigzag white paper of the exorciser’s staff fluttering in the breeze, the sacred precinct marked by a torii, the gods’
dwelling in the sea, the mountains, the vast ocean, the Japanese sword with its glistening blade so pure and sharp. Not only Honda, but the vast majority of Westernized Japanese, could no longer stand such intensely native elements.”
― Yukio Mishima, quote from The Temple of Dawn
“Why should caring for others begin with the self? There is an abundance of rather vague ideas about this issue, which I am sure neuroscience will one day resolve. Let me offer my own “hand waving” explanation by saying that advanced empathy requires both mental mirroring and mental separation. The mirroring allows the sight of another person in a particular emotional state to induce a similar state in us. We literally feel their pain, loss, delight, disgust, etc., through so-called shared representations. Neuroimaging shows that our brains are similarly activated as those of people we identify with. This is an ancient mechanism: It is automatic, starts early in life, and probably characterizes all mammals. But we go beyond this, and this is where mental separation comes in. We parse our own state from the other’s. Otherwise, we would be like the toddler who cries when she hears another cry but fails to distinguish her own distress from the other’s. How could she care for the other if she can’t even tell where her feelings are coming from? In the words of psychologist Daniel Goleman, “Self-absorption kills empathy.” The child needs to disentangle herself from the other so as to pinpoint the actual source of her feelings.”
― Frans de Waal, quote from The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society
“I don’t know why I thought saving my tears for Alaska was a good idea. It was stupid as fuck. There’s no point in saving things for later if later never comes.”
― Sarah Lyons Fleming, quote from All the Stars in the Sky
“When someone who's starved of love is shown something that looks like sincere affection, is it any wonder that she jumps at it and clings to it?”
― quote from Autobiography of a Geisha
“No, I'm telling this wrong. After all a person is herself and others. Relationships chisel the final shape of one's being. I am me and you.”
― N.K. Jemisin, quote from The Obelisk Gate
“By themselves, those particles and forces don’t have the capability of supporting the psychic phenomena that so fascinated my twelve-year-old self. More important, we know that there aren’t new particles or forces out there yet to be discovered that would support them. Not simply because we haven’t found them yet, but because we definitely would have found them if they had the right characteristics to give us the requisite powers. We know enough to draw very powerful conclusions about the limits of what we can do.”
― Sean Carroll, quote from The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself
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.
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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.