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Lady Murasaki
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“There is a tendency among men as well as women ... so soon as they have acquired a little knowledge of some kind, to want to display it to the best advantage.”
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“Intimacy between stepchildren and stepparents is indeed proverbially difficult.”
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“You had best be quick, if you are ever going to give to me at all; life does not last forever.”
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“Go we late or soon, / More frail our lives / Than dew-drops / Hanging in the / Morning.”
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“Foolish are they indeed who trust to fortune!”
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“Some ... have imagined that by arousing a baseless suspicion in the mind of the beloved we can revive a waning devotion. But this experiment is very dangerous. Those who recommend it are confident that so long as resentment is groundless one need only suffer it in silence and all will soon be well. I have observed however that this is by no means the case.”
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“Since I heard that the mists of autumn had vanished and left desolate winter in your house, I have thought often of you as I watched the streaming sky.”
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“It is in general the unexplored that attracts us ...”
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“How strange a thing is the heart of man!”
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“... 'farewell' is a monster among words, and never yet sounded kindly in any ear. ”
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“The memories of long love gather like drifting snow, poignant as the mandarin ducks who float side by side in sleep.”
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“There is more here than meets the eye ...”
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“How swiftly the locks rust, the hinges grow stiff on doors that close behind us!”
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“Indeed, she had seen enough of the world to know that in few people is discretion stronger than the desire to tell a good story ...”
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“Beauty without color seems somehow to belong to another world.”
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“Stepmothers in books usually behave very spitefully towards the children entrusted to them. But he was now learning by his own experience that in real life this does not always happen.”
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“But unfortunately, Genji reflected, people who do not get into scrapes are a great deal less interesting than those who do.”
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“Though nought of me remains save smoke drawn out across the windless sky, yet shall I drift to thee unerringly amid the trackless fields of space.”
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“Old age is a disease from which there is no recovery but the old nun's recent attack had certainly been brought on chiefly by the fatigue of so much travelling.”
Lady Murasaki, Japanese novelist, diarist, poet
(978 - 1030)