Disqualified as a human being. I had now ceased utterly to be a human being.

弱虫は、幸福をさえおそれるものです。綿で怪我をするんです。

Happiness may be something like gold dust sinking to the bottom of a river of sorrow, faintly glimmering.

Life is like a long journey carrying a heavy burden. Never hurry.

-- The founder of Japan's Tokugawa shogunate

A human life of fifty years, compared to the span beneath heaven, is nothing but a dream, an illusion.

-- The revolutionary warlord who dismantled feudal Japan's medieval order and launched the country toward unification

If the cuckoo will not sing, I shall make it want to sing.

-- The peasant who became ruler of all Japan

I would rather betray the world than let the world betray me.

-- The dominant warlord of China's Three Kingdoms era

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

-- Virginia Woolf

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.

-- Virginia Woolf