59 Quotes by Murasaki Shikibu


  • Author Murasaki Shikibu
  • Quote

    What need have I for a palace? Rather to lie with you where the weeds grow thick.

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  • Author Murasaki Shikibu
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    People make a great deal of the flowers of spring and the leaves of autumn, but for me a night like this, with a clear moon shining on snow, is the best – and there is not a trace of color in it. I cannot describe the effect it has on me, weird and unearthly somehow. I do not understand people who find a winter evening forbidding.

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  • Author Murasaki Shikibu
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    When the young Prince turned three, the court observed the ceremony of the donning of his first trousers.

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  • Author Murasaki Shikibu
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    It is very unkind of you to feel this way. Any woman should properly yield, it seems to me, even a complete stranger, because that is the way of the world... All I desire is solace from the flood of memories that overwhelms me.

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  • Author Murasaki Shikibu
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    When in my present lonely lot, I feel my past has not been free From sins which I remember not, I dread more, what to come, may be.

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  • Author Murasaki Shikibu
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    My dwelling is but a rustic cottage, but still I should like you to see, at least, the pretty mountain streamlet which waters my garden.

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  • Author Murasaki Shikibu
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    There is a time for everything; and all people, but more especially women, should be constantly careful to watch circumstances, and not to air their accomplishments at a time when nobody cares for them. They should practise a sparing economy in displaying their learning and eloquence, and should even, if circumstances require, plead ignorance on subjects with which they are familiar.

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  • Author Murasaki Shikibu
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    She was gentle and sedate as usual, but evidently absent and preoccupied. Her eyes rested on the dew lying on the grass in the garden, and her ears were intent upon the melancholy singing of the autumn insects. It was as if we were in a real romance.

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