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Quote by John M. Sheehan

“It is obvious to see; if the cross has lighted your way a truth explodes in our life: A truth that cries out "people conceived and brought into life by God don’t make a practice of sin. How could they?”

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John M. Sheehan

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“I am grabbed by the scruff of the neck and pitched clean out of the room. It seems that this sudden aversion stems from human disgust with those barely visible and totally insignificant insects which I harbor. A heartless and most callous attitude! How can such inconsiderate behavior possibly be justified by the presence in my coat of one or two thousand footling fleas? The answer is, of course, that Article One of those Laws of Love (by which all humans creatures regulate their lives) specifically enjoins that «ye shall love one another for so long as it serves thine individual interest.»”

Life Lessons Natsume Soseki I Am A Cat

Book:我是猫

Source: 我是猫

“How to adjust to a world in which the climax of a scene— and sometimes the central event— is going to sleep? We’re going to have to adapt, maybe even invert our sense of priority and our assumptions about what constitutes drama, as most of us foreigners have to do when traveling to Japan.”

Natsume Soseki

Book:The Gate

Source: The Gate

“For some reason I have become terribly serious since arriving here,” Sōseki wrote, in his “Letter from London,” a year after his arrival in England. “Looking and listening to everything around me, I think incessantly of the problem of ‘Japan’s future.’” Its future, then as now, involves trying to make a peace, or form a synthesis, between the ancient Chinese ideal of sitting still and watching the seasons pass, tending to social harmonies, and the new American way of pushing forward individually , convinced that tomorrow will be better than today.”

Japanese Culture Natsume Soseki

Book:The Gate

Source: The Gate

“how every character is effectively a tiny figure in a suffocating world of associations and obligations; where many an American novel might send its protagonist out into the world to make his own destiny, in Sōsuke’s Japan he cannot move for all his competing (and unmeetable) responsibilities to his aunt, his younger brother, his wife, and society itself.”

Natsume Soseki

Book:The Gate

Source: The Gate

“Sōseki is an unusually intimate writer— the public world is only his concern by implication— and in Japan (again as in the England that I know) intimacy is shown not by all that you can say to someone else, but by all that you don’t need to say.”

Natsume Soseki

Book:The Gate

Source: The Gate

“This reticence has little to do with trying to protect oneself and everything to do with trying to protect others from one’s problems, which shouldn’t be theirs; it’s one reason Japan is so confounding to foreigners, as its people faultlessly sparkle and attend to one another in in public, while often seeming passive and unconvinced of their ability to do anything decisive at home.”

Japanese Culture Natsume Soseki

Book:The Gate

Source: The Gate

“But it speaks for an inner world— and again this is evident in Murakami— that sits in a different dimension from the smooth-running, flawlessly attentive, and all but anonymous machine that keeps public order moving forward so efficiently in Japan.”

Japanese Culture Natsume Soseki

Book:The Gate

Source: The Gate

“When I came here, Porcupine was the first to treat me to ice water. To be treated by such a fellow, even if it is so trifling a thing as ice water, affects my honor. I had only one glass then and had him pay only one sen and a half. But one sen or half sen, I shall not die in peace if I accept a favor from a swindler. I will pay it back tomorrow when I go to the school. I borrowed three yen from Kiyo. That three yen is not paid yet to-day, though it is five years since. Not that I could not pay, but that I did not want to. Kiyo never looks to my pocket thinking I shall pay it back by-the-bye. Not by any means. I myself do not expect to fulfill cold obligation like a stranger by meditating on returning it. The more I worry about paying it back, the more I may be doubting the honest heart of Kiyo. It would be the same as traducing her pure mind. I have not paid her back that three yen not because I regard her lightly, but because I regard her as part of myself. Kiyo and Porcupine cannot be compared, of course, but whether it be ice water or tea, the fact that I accept another’s favor without saying anything is an act of good-will, taking the other on his par value, as a decent fellow. Instead of chipping in my share, and settling each account, to receive munificence with grateful mind is an acknowledgment which no amount of money can purchase”

Japanese Natsume Soseki Botchan

Book:Botchan

Source: Botchan

“No wonder we never see the end of war in the world. Among individuals, it is, after all, the question of superiority of the fist.”

Japanese Natsume Soseki Botchan

Book:Botchan

Source: Botchan

Quote by John M. Sheehan

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