"He had imperfections, prejudices, limitations, but when we have recognised them all, he remains the greatest literary critic that the world has seen."

"On “the phenomenon of grace”. “For the soul arrives therebye at a certain fixed and invincible state, a state which is genuinely heroic, and from out of which the greatest deeds it ever performs are executed”."

"Le désespoir lui-même, pour peu qu'il se prolonge, devient une sorte d'asile dans lequel on peut s'asseoir et reposer."

"Gardons-nous de l'ironie en jugeant. De toutes les dispositions de l'esprit, l'ironie est la moins intelligente."

"Puisqu'il faut avoir des ennemis, tâchons d'en avoir qui nous fassent honneur."

"We shall not busy ourselves with what men ought to have admired, what they ought to have written, what they ought to have thought, but with what they did think, write, admire."

"Oratory is, after all, the prose literature of the savage."

"Criticism is the endeavour to find, to know, to love, to recommend, not only the best, but all the good, that has been known and thought and written in the world."

"The Book of History is the Bible of Irony."

"[It] is the unbroken testimony of all history that alcoholic liquors have been used by the strongest, wisest, handsomest, and in every way best races of all times."

"But dinner is dinner, a meal at which not so much to eat — it becomes difficult to eat much at it as you grow older — as to drink, to talk, to flirt, to discuss, to rejoice "at the closing of the day". I do not think anything serious should be done after it, as nothing should before breakfast."

"I wish that I could save myself constant repetition by printing across the dog's-ear place of these pages the warning, "Never judge a critic by your agreement with his likes and dislikes.”"

"Let us also once more rejoice in, and thank God for, the fact that we know nothing about Homer, and practically nothing about Shakespeare."

"In the sect – fairly large and yet unusually choice – of Austenians or Janites, there would probably be found partisans of the claim to primacy of almost every one of the novels."

"So, then, there abide these three, Aristotle, Longinus, and Coleridge."

"Historians may lie, but History cannot."

"Nothing is more curious than the almost savage hostility that Humour excites in those who lack it."

"Majorities are generally wrong, if only in their reasons for being right."

"When people cannot write good literature it is perhaps natural that they should lay down rules how good literature should be written."

"Life is fragile, yet to obstinately struggle is natural."

"In the snow outside my window I see a small green frog, one eye blinking and the other wide open, unmoving, looking at me . I know this is God."

"Life is probably a tangle of love and hate permanently knotted together."

"What is essential is whether it is perceived and not whether it exists. To exist and yet not to be perceived is the same as not exist."

"When God talks to humans he doesn’t want humans to hear his voice."

"I hadn't originally intended to do any reading, what if I did read one book more or one book less, whether I read or not wouldn't make a difference, I would still be waiting to get cremated."

"Indeed, loft aspirations produce ideas."

"It takes a full sixty years for the Cold Arrow Bamboo to go through the cycle of flowering, seeding, dying and for the seeds to sprout, grow, and flower. According to Buddhist teachings on transmigration this would be exactly one kalpa. "Man follows earth, earth follows sky, sky follows the way, the way follows nature, don’t commit actions which go against the basic character of nature, don’t commit acts which should not be committed." "Then what scientific value is there in saving the giant panda?" I ask. "It’s symbolic, it’s a sort of reassurance―people need to deceive themselves. We are preoccupied with saving a species which no longer has the capacity for survival and yet on the other hand we’re changing ahead and destroying the very environment for the survival of the human species itself.""

"The creature known as man is of course highly intelligent, he's capable of manufacturing almost anything from rumours to test-tube babies and yet he destroys two to three species every day. This is the absurdity of man."

"Realty exists only through experience, and it must be personal experience."

"They say it only takes an instant to have a dream; a dream can be compressed into hardtack."

"She says she doesn’t know what to do! But he says coldly that he knows what he wants to do, but he can’t."

"Not knowing what one is looking for is pure agony. Too much analytical thinking, too much logic, too many meanings! Life has no logic, so why does there have to be logic to explain what it means? Also, what is logic? I think I may need to break away from analytical thinking; this is the cause of all my anxieties."

"Body odour (known also as scent of the immortals) is a disgusting condition with an awful, nauseating smell."

"I came to the riverbank. The sand underfoot crunches and sounds like my grandmother sighing. She is fond of chattering endlessly, although no-one understands her. If you ask, Grandmother, what did you say? She will look up absentmindedly and, after a while, say, oh, you’re back from school? Are you hungry? There are sweet potatoes in the bamboo steamer. When she chatters it is best not to interrupt; she is talking about when she was a young woman. But if you eavesdrop from behind her chair, she seems to be saying. It’s hidden, it’s hidden, everything is hidden, everything… All these memories are making noises in the sand under your feet."

"I want to write a novel so profound that it would suffocate a fly."

"The sand murmurs that it wants to swallow everything."

"A good man never fights with a woman."

"The writer is an ordinary man, not a spokesman for the people, and that literature can only be the voice of one individual. Writing that becomes an ode to a country, the standard of a nation, the voice of a party... loses its nature—it is no longer literature. Writers do not set out to be published, but to know themselves. Although Kafka or Pessoa resorted to language, it was not in order to change the world. I, myself, believe in what I call cold literature: a literature of flight for one's life, a literature that is not utilitarian, but a spiritual self-preservation in order to avoid being stifled by society. I believe in a literature of the moment, for the living. You have to know how to use freedom. If you use it in exchange for something else, it vanishes."

"Grandfather, when you saw the tiger were you scared? Bad people scare me, not tigers. Grandfather, have you ever run into bad people? There aren’t many tigers but lots of bad people, only you can’t shoot people."

"Some distance away is a white azalea bush which stuns me with its stately beauty.____ This is pristine natural beauty. it is irrepressible, seeks no reward, and is without goal, a beauty derived neither from symbolism nor metaphor and needing neither analogies nor associations."

"The waste even in a fortunate life, the isolation even of a life rich in intimacy, cannot but be felt deeply, and is the central feeling of tragedy. And anything of value must accept this because it must not prostitute itself; its strength is to be prepared to waste itself, if it does not get its opportunity."

"To produce pure proletarian art the artist must be at one with the worker; this is impossible, not for political reasons, but because the artist never is at one with any public."

"The central function of imaginative literature is to make you realize that other people act on moral convictions different from your own."

"It is this deep blankness is the real thing strange. The more things happen to you the more you can't Tell or remember even what they were.The contradictions cover such a range. The talk would talk and go so far aslant. You don't want madhouse and the whole thing there."

"Shall I make it clear, boys, for all to apprehend, Those that will not hear, boys, waiting for the end, Knowing it is near, boys, trying to pretend, Sitting in cold fear, boys, waiting for the end?"

"Buddhists and Christians contrive to agree about death Making death their ideal basis for different ideals. The Communists however disapprove of death Except when practical."

"The man writes with such genuine passion for the books he's discussing. With so many critics you feel they're writing so people will say they're good critics."