To the Spring Equinox and Beyond Quotes

“Saku's figure before me looked like a morning glory drawn with one stroke of the brush. My only regret was that the drawing was not by the hand of a master.”
― Sōseki Natsume, To the Spring Equinox and Beyond

“(Keitaro) también los observaba a ambos directamente, pero nunca vio nada que fuera más allá de una simple relación de primos. Sin embargo, en algún rincón de su mente predominaba su primera imagen de ellos dos como pareja. Para Keitaro, un hombre joven soltero y una mujer joven sin un brazo masculino al que aferrarse constituían una especie de deformidad, un desajuste respecto a la naturaleza misma. El vínculo que unía a Sunaga y a Chiyoko nacía de su propia percepción, de una exigencia moral de solucionar lo antes posible ese desajuste del estado natural de las cosas.”
― Sōseki Natsume, To the Spring Equinox and Beyond

“The perplexity in his mind came not from the fear that once having drawn a losing lottery ticket, he would sink into depths from which he would not be able to emerge, but rather from the unconscious working of his idle thought that whatever the outcome, it would not ultimately affect him that much. Like a person who reads a book while feeling drowsy yet who tries to catch the clear meaning of the letters without making a conscious effort to resist that drowsiness, Keitaro was worried that the egg of prompt resolution warming in his rather easygoing bosom would not hatch properly. Under the pretext that he had to free himself from his own irresolution, he tried to fan secretly the flame of his own love of curiosity.”
― Natsume Sōseki, To the Spring Equinox and Beyond

“No matter how bright and clear the skies above him, he said he felt as if he were
undergoing the torment of an imprisonment coming from every direction. Trees, houses,
people walking along the street, all these were clearly visible to him, yet he constantly
felt as if he alone had been put into a glass cage, separated from direct contact with the
outside world until his pain became so excruciating that he felt he was suffocating.
After hearing the talk, Keitaro had suspected that the man had been victimized by a
kind of neurosis, and with this reflection Keitaro gave no further concern to such a state
of mind. But when he thought it over during these several days of worrisome idleness,
he found some resemblances between himself—who had never once experienced the
delight of completing anything—and the feelings of this religious man before he became
a monk. Of course, since his own suffering was incomparably trivial and of an entirely
different nature, he did not have to make the kind of great decision that the religious
teacher had to make. If only he had learned how to brace himself a little more, how to
exert himself just a bit, he might have been able to be more satisfied with himself,
whether his aims were attained or not.”
― Natsume Sōseki, To the Spring Equinox and Beyond