Why is she afraid?” he asked. “She’s not Anjin-san. Just a little nervous. Please excuse her. She’s never seen a foreigner close to before.” “Tell her when the moon’s full, barbarians sprout horns and fire comes out of our mouths like dragons.
Sometimes it’s wiser to give a quarry extra line – that’s how to catch a fish, neh?
So easy now that Elder Sister has explained to her what all young girls in houses are taught – that with care and meticulous acting and tears of pretended pain and fear, and the final modest telltale stains cautiously placed, a girl can, if necessary, be virgin ten times for ten different men.
Damn what you like, Pieterzoon. But don’t damn liquor. It’s the stuff of life!
Only merchants have money to waste, and what are they but parasites who create nothing, grow nothing, make nothing but feed off another’s labor?
It’s a saying they have, that a man has a false heart in his mouth for the world to see, another in his breast to show to his special friends and his family, and the real one, the true one, the secret one, which is never known to anyone except to himself alone, hidden only God knows where.
Patience means restraining yourself. There are seven emotions, Joy, anger, anxiety, adoration, grief, fear, and hate. If a man doesn’t give way to these, he’s patient. I’m not as strong as I might be but I’m patient.
All stories have a beginning, a middle and an ending, and if they’re any good, the ending is a beginning.
There is no dignity for either the sufferer or the torturer.
The search for the truth is the most important work in the whole world, and the most dangerous.
Anger is something you should only vent in front of intimates, and friends and relations. Never be angry in front of strangers because you lose face.
Love is a Christian word, Anjin-san. Love is a Christian thought, a Christian ideal. We have no word for ‘love’ as I understand you to mean it. Duty, loyalty, honor, respect, desire, those words and thoughts are what we have, all that we need.
The more I know, the more sure I am I know so little. The eternal paradox.
Only by living at the edge of death can you understand the indescribable joy of life – Shogun.
Isn’t man but a blossom taken by wind, and only the mountains and the sea and the stars and this land of the gods everlasting?
What are clouds, but an excuse for the sky? What is life, but an escape from death?
Christ, it’s so good to be alive.
God gives us intelligence to uncover the wonders of nature. Without the gift, nothing is possible.
Changi for me – of course it’s easy to be wise after the event, and to discuss it cleverly after the event – was about as near as you can get to being dead and still be alive.