Murasaki Shikibu quotes:

In a certain reign there was a lady not of the first rank whom the emperor loved more than any of the others. The grand ladies with high ambitions thought her a presumptuous upstart, and lesser ladies were still more resentful. Everything she did offended someone.

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.

How much the more in judging of the human heart should we distrust all fashionable airs and graces, all tricks and smartness, learnt only to please the outward gaze

Intimacy between stepchildren and stepparents is indeed proverbially difficult.

Ceaseless as the interminable voices of the bell-cricket, all night till dawn my tears flow.

It is useless to talk with those who do not understand one and troublesome to talk with those who criticize from a feeling of superiority. Especially one-sided persons are troublesome. Few are accomplished in many arts and most cling narrowly to their own opinion.

Did not we vow that we would neither of us be either before or after the other even in travelling the last journey of life? And can you find it in your heart to leave me now?

Beauty without colour seems somehow to belong to another world.

Autumn is no time to lie alone

A night of endless dreams, inconsequent and wild, is this my life; none more worth telling than the rest.

Foolish indeed are those who trust to fortune.

How strange a thing is the heart of man!

It is in general the unexplored that attracts us ...

It is indeed in many ways more comfortable to belong to that section of society whose action are not publicly canvassed and discussed

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.

The memories of long love gather like drifting snow, poignant as the mandarin ducks who float side by side in sleep.

Real things in the darkness seem no realer than dreams.

The number of those who have nothing to recommend them and of those in whom nothing but good can be found is probably equal

Let us be sure that the lady of our choice possesses certain tangible qualities that we admire; and if in other ways she falls short of our ideal, we must be patient and call to mind those qualities that first induced us to begin our courting.

farewell' is a monster among words, and never yet sounded kindly in any ear.

I have a theory of my own about what the art of the novel is, and how it came into being....It happens because the storyteller's own experience...has moved him to an emotion so passionate that he can no longer keep it shut up in his heart.

In few people is discretion stronger than the desire to tell a good story.

No art or learning is to be pursued halfheartedly...and any art worth learning will certainly reward more or less generously the effort made to study it.

No penance can your hard heart find save such as you long since have taught me to endure

One ought not to be unkind to a woman merely on account of her plainness, any more than one had a right to take liberties with her merely because she was handsome

People who do not get into scrapes are a great deal less interesting than those who do.

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.

The wood-carver can fashion whatever he will. Yet his products are but toys of the moment, to be glanced at in jest, not fashioned according to any precept or law. When times change, the carver too will change his style and make new trifles to hit the fancy of the passing day. But there is another kind of artist, who sets more soberly about his work, striving to give real beauty to the things which men actually use and to give to them the shape which tradition has ordained. This maker of real things must not for a moment be confused with the maker of idle toys.

There are as many sorts of women as there are women.

There is more here than meets the eye.

Though the body moves, the soul may stay behind.

Who has told you that the fruit belies the flower? For the fruit you have not tasted, and the flower you know but by report.

You that in far-off countries of the sky can dwell secure, look back upon me here; for I am weary of this frail world's decay.

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.