In Praise of Shadows

by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki

The quality that we call beauty, however, must always grow from the realities of life, and our ancestors, forced to live in dark rooms, presently came to discover beauty in shadows, ultimately to guide shadows towards beauty’s ends.

we find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates.

Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty.

But our thoughts do not travel to what we cannot see. The unseen for us does not exist.