59 Quotes by Murasaki Shikibu

Real things in the darkness seem no realer than dreams.

En asuntos de arte la modestia no es una virtud.

Well, we never expected this!" they all say. "No one liked her. They all said she was pretentious, awkward, difficult to approach, prickly, too fond of her tales, haughty, prone to versifying, disdainful, cantankerous, and scornful. But when you meet her, she is strangely meek, a completely different person altogether!"How embarrassing! Do they really look upon me as a dull thing, I wonder? But I am what I am.

Nothing can be well learned that is not agreeable to one’s natural taste.

He felt her there beside him, just as she had always been on evenings like this when he had called for music, and when her touch on her instrument, or her least word to him, had been so much her own; except that he would have preferred even to this vivid dream her simple reality in the dark.

Women are by nature blithely content to allow others to deceive them. You know full well these tales have only the slightest connection to reality, and yet you let your heart be moved by trivial words and get so caught up in the plots that you copy them out without giving a thought to the tangled mess your hair has become in this humid weather.

How is it that a little incident like this suddenly comes back to one, whereas something that moved one deeply at the time can simply be forgotten with the passage of the years?

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.

There is much to be said for cherry blossoms, but they seem so flighty. They are so quick to run off and leave you. And then just when your regrets are the strongest the wisteria comes into bloom, and it blooms on into the summer. There is nothing quite like it. Even the color is somehow companionable and inviting.