Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories Quotes

“I don't have the strength to keep writing this. To go on living with this feeling is painful beyond description. Isn't there someone kind enough to strangle me in my sleep?”
― Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories

“It is unfortunate for the gods that, unlike us, they cannot commit suicide.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories

“Yes -- or rather, it's not so much that I want to die as that I'm tired of living.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories

“I have no conscience at all -- least of all an artistic conscience. All I have is nerves.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories

“The human heart harbors two conflicting sentiments. Everyone of course sympathizes with people who suffer misfortunes. Yet when those people manage to overcome their misfortunes, we feel a certain disappointment. We may even feel (to overstate the case somewhat) a desire to plunge them back into those misfortunes. And before we know it, we come (if only passively) to harbor some degree of hostility toward them.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories

“Life is more hellish than hell itself.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories

“He disliked his own lies as much as his parents', but still he continued to lie -- boldly and cunningly. He did this primarily out of need, but also for the pathological pleasure of killing a god.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories

“I have heard unsavory rumors about you and the umbrella-maker's daughter”
― Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories

“Everyone is the same under the skin.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories

“The cable was still sending sharp sparks into the air. He could think of nothing in life that he especially desired, but those purple sparks--those wildly-blooming flowers of fire--he would trade his life for the chance to hold them in his hands."

-from "The Life of a Stupid Man”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories

“At twenty-nine, life no longer held any brightness for him, but Voltaire supplied him with man-made wings.
Spreading these man-made wings, he soared with ease into the sky. The higher he flew, the farther below him sank the joys and sorrows of a life bathed in the light of the intellect. Dropping ironies and smiles upon the shabby towns below, he climbed through the open sky, straight for the sun--as if he had forgotten about that ancient Greek who plunged to his death in the ocean when his man-made wings were singed by the sun."

-from "The Life of a Stupid Man”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories

“What especially moved him was the corpse of a child of twelve or thirteen. He felt something like envy as he looked at it, recalling such expression as “Those whom the gods love die young.” Both his sister and his half-brother had lost their houses to fire. His sister’s husband, though, was on a suspended sentence for perjury.

Too bad we didn’t all die.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories

“That’s because, in a way different from what you meant by it, you can’t trust anybody.” Major Kimura lit a new cigar and, smiling, continued in tones that were almost exultantly cheerful. “It is important—even necessary—for us to become acutely aware of the fact that we can’t trust ourselves. The only ones you can trust to some extent are people who really know that. We had better get this straight. Otherwise, our own characters’ heads could fall off like Xiao-er’s at any time.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories

“These works are handed down from teacher to pupil, from parent to child, almost without question, like DNA. They are memorized, recited, discussed in book reports, included in university entrance exams, and once the student is grown up, they become a source for quotation. They are made into movies again and again, they are parodied, and inevitably they become the object of ambitious young writers’ revolt and contempt.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories

“He often wished that he could end his awareness of his own existence,”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories

“Had he lived longer, Akutagawa might have come to realize that he was far from alone.”
― Jay Rubin, Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories

“Pillowing his head on his rose-scented skepticism,”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories

“In a word, tears like this light a modest lamp of human love amid the gathering dusk of human suffering.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories

“And so, by means both active and passive, he sought to repair the damage to his self-esteem. He tried first of all to find ways to make his nose look shorter. When there was no one around, he would hold up his mirror and, with feverish intensity, examine his reflection from every angle. Sometimes it took more than simply changing the position of his face to comfort him, and he would try one pose after another—resting his cheek on his hand or stroking his chin with his fingertips. Never once, though, was he satisfied that his nose looked any shorter. In fact, he sometimes felt that the harder he tried, the longer it looked. Then, heaving fresh sighs of despair, he would put the mirror away in its box and drag himself back to the scripture stand to resume chanting the Kannon Sutra.

The second way he dealt with his problem was to keep a vigilant eye out for other people’s noses. Many public events took place at the Ike-no-o temple—banquets to benefit the priests, lectures on the sutras, and so forth. Row upon row of monks’ cells filled the temple grounds, and each day the monks would heat up bath water for the temple’s many residents and lay visitors, all of whom the Naigu would study closely. He hoped to gain peace from discovering even one face with a nose like his. And so his eyes took in neither blue robes nor white; orange caps, skirts of gray: the priestly garb he knew so well hardly existed for him. The Naigu saw not people but noses. While a great hooked beak might come into his view now and then, never did he discover a nose like his own. And with each failure to find what he was looking for, the Naigu’s resentment would increase. It was entirely due to this feeling that often, while speaking to a person, he would unconsciously grasp the dangling end of his nose and blush like a youngster.

And finally, the Naigu would comb the Buddhist scriptures and other classic texts, searching for a character with a nose like his own in the hope that it would provide him some measure of comfort. Nowhere, however, was it written that the nose of either Mokuren or Sharihotsu was long. And Ryūju and Memyoō, of course, were Bodhisattvas with normal human noses. Listening to a Chinese story once, he heard that Liu Bei, the Shu Han emperor, had long ears. “Oh, if only it had been his nose,” he thought, “how much better I would feel!”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories

“The people of Ike-no-o used to say that Zenchi Naigu was lucky to be a priest: no woman would ever want to marry a man with a nose like that. Some even claimed it was because of his nose that he had entered the priesthood to begin with. The Naigu himself, however, never felt that he suffered any less over his nose for being a priest. Indeed, his self-esteem was already far too fragile to be affected by such a secondary fact as whether or not he had a wife.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories

“As rumor had said, he found several corpses strewn carelessly about the floor. Since the glow of the light was feeble, he could not count the number. He could only see that some were naked and others clothed. Some of them were women, and all were lolling on the floor with their mouths open or their arms outstretched showing no more signs of life than so many clay dolls. One would doubt they had ever been alive, so eternally silent they were.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories

“At thirty-five, he was walking through a pinewood with the spring sun beating down on it. He was recalling, too, the words he had written a few years earlier: “It is unfortunate for the gods that, unlike us, they cannot commit suicide.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories

“Why do you attack the present social system? Because I see the evils that capitalism has engendered. Evils? I thought you recognized no difference between good and evil. How do you make a living, then? He engaged thus in dialogue with an angel—an angel in an impeccable top hat.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories

“إن سمو الحياة يصل ذروته في أكثر لحظات الإلهام قربًا من القلب، والإنسان
سيجعل حياته جديرة بأن تعاش إذا رفع بوجهه عاليًا نحو السماء المتشحة بالنجوم
متجاوزاً الاهتمامات الدنيوية المظلمة لهذة الحياة، ليعكس على صقال زبدها البللوري
سنا بدر لم يطل بعد.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories

“This is all for the sake of the House,” he told himself, but behind his resolve he sensed, indistinctly, a certain effort at self-vindication, and the awareness hovered there like a barely perceptible halo around the moon.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories

“Shinsuke still remembers the stink of varnish from the used desk they bought him. Actually, with its green baize surface and shiny silver-colored drawer pulls, the desk had a nice, neat look to it at first glance, but the cloth was worn thin, and the drawers never opened smoothly. This piece of furniture was not so much a desk as a symbol of the entire household, a symbol of the constant struggle to keep up appearances.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories

“Yet even a desolate life can reveal a world of beauty when viewed through a mist of tears. O-Kimi would take refuge in the tears of artistic ecstasy to escape the persecutions of everyday life.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories

“He put a cigarette in his mouth and was striking a match when he collapsed face-down on his desk and died. It was a truly disappointing way to die. Fortunately, however, society rarely offers critical comment regarding the way a person dies. The way a person lives is what evokes criticism.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories

“The witness examined the head and, smelling the blood, expressed his satisfaction to the swordsman: “An excellent cut.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories

“Strangulation would be too harsh a punishment,” he said. “Ordering him to slit his belly open like a true samurai would be another matter, however.” Shuri looked at Usaemon with mocking eyes. Then he gave two or three hard shakes of his head. “No, that animal doesn’t deserve seppuku. Strangle him! Strangle him!”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories