There was a time when his father had looked like gold to him. Many of his seniors had looked like gold. Anybody who had attained a certain high level of education had looked like gold. Therefore, his own gold plating had been all the more painful, and he had been impatient to become solid gold himself. But once his keen eye penetrated directly to the inner layers of these other people, his efforts suddenly came to seem foolish.

— Sōseki Natsume

There was nothing so very unfamiliar about the excitement she was feeling, and yet it felt always like a new excitement. It was, in other words, a perennially unfamiliar feeling.

— Sōseki Natsume

[T]he very color of the air in the place I was born was different, the smell of the earth was special, redolent with memories of my parents.

— Sōseki Natsume

Tokyo is bigger than Yamamoto. And Japan is bigger than Tokyo. And even bigger than Japan... Even bigger than Japan is the inside of your head. Don't ever surrender yourself ― not to Japan, not to anything. You may think that what you're doing is for the sake of the nation, but let something take possession of you like that, and all you do is bring it down.

— Sōseki Natsume

To tell you the truth, I used to consider it a disgrace to be found ignorant by other people. But now, I find that I am not ashamed of knowing less than others, and I'm less inclined to force myself to read books. In short, I have grown old and decrepit.

— Sōseki Natsume

Use your intellect to guide you, and you will end up putting people off. Rely on your emotions, and you will forever be pushed around. Force your will on others, and you will live in constant tension. Therein no getting around it—people are hard to live with.

— Sōseki Natsume

Watch birth and death:The lotus has already Opened its flower.

— Sōseki Natsume

We who are born into this age of freedom and independence and the self must undergo this loneliness. It is the price we pay for these times of ours.

— Sōseki Natsume

When I was a student, there wasn't a single thing we did that was unrelated to others. It was all for the Emperor, or parents, or the country, or society—everything was other-centered, which means that all educated men were hypocrites. When society changed, this hypocrisy ceased to work, and as a result, self-centeredness was gradually imported into thought and action, and egoism became enormously over-developed. Instead of the old hypocrites, now all we've got are out-and-out rogues. Do you see what I mean by that?

— Sōseki Natsume

Words are not meant to stir the air only: they are capable of moving greater things.

— Sōseki Natsume