Kokoro

by Natsume Sōseki

perhaps it is because I have decided that no matter how many books I may read, I shall never be a very much better man than I am now.

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. According to doctors, there is nothing that requires more attention than the human stomach. Give it nothing but gruel, and you will apparently find one day that it has lost the power to digest anything else.

He was unable to move, despite the violence of his emotion. And since the impact of his new emotion was not so great as to allow him to forget himself, he was forced to look back and remind himself of what his past had meant. And in doing so he could not but continue along the path that he had so far followed.