Kokoro

by Natsume Sōseki

You see, loneliness is the price we have to pay for being born in this modern age, so full of freedom, independence, and our own egotistical selves."

The unpleasant feeling that I had not worked hard enough was one that I had often experienced before, though only very rarely had I ever accomplished so little as I had that summer. I was weighed down by the depressing thought that such perhaps was the normal state of things in every man's life.

And like most cowards, I suffered because I could not decide.

"The trouble with inheriting money from one's parents," he once said to my mother and to me, "is that it dulls one's wits. It's a bad thing not to have to struggle for one's living."

It seems that Okusan, in the way that women have, was apt to assume that my attitude towards money was an indication of the generosity of my heart.

It is true that everybody begins his university career cherishing great ambitions, like a man who sets out on a long journey; and that after a year or two, most students suddenly realize the slowness of their progress, and seeing that graduation is not far off, find themselves in a state of disillusionment.

The development—or the destruction—of man's body and mind depends upon external stimuli. Unless one is very careful, and unless one sees to it that the intensity of the stimuli is gradually increased, one will find too late that the body, or the mind, has atrophied.

His point of view of everything was much loftier than mine. I do not deny this. But when the loftiness is merely in one's point of view, then one is hopelessly handicapped as a human being. I decided that what he needed, above all else, was humanizing. No matter how full one's head might be with the image of greatness, one was useless, I found out, unless one was a worthy man first.

I thought that it would be an unforgivable crime to let fall even the tiniest drop of ink on a pure, spotless thing.

A woman is more happy when she is the sole object of affection—whether or not this kindness may involve injustice elsewhere does not seem to matter very much—than when she is loved for reasons which transcend particular individuals.