Murasaki Shikibu Quotes

Japanese novelist and poet970–1100 10 quotes

Murasaki Shikibu was a Japanese novelist, poet and lady-in-waiting at the Imperial court in the Heian period. She is best known as the author of The Tale of Genji, widely considered one of the world's first novels, written in Japanese between about 1000 and 1012.

Murasaki Shikibu is a descriptive name, and her personal name is unknown, though she may have been Fujiwara no Kaoruko, who is mentioned in a 1007 court diary as an imperial lady-in-waiting. Heian women were traditionally excluded from learning Chinese, the written language of government, but raised in her learned father's household, she showed an early talent for the Chinese classics and became fluent. The Tale of Genji and The Diary of Lady Murasaki are her most quoted works in our library.
Most quoted works
  • The Tale of Genji 8
  • The Diary of Lady Murasaki 2
Japanese novelist and poet

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.

— The Tale of Genji

Japanese novelist and poet

You are here to remind me of someone I long for, and what is it you long for yourself? We must have been together in an earlier life, you and I.

— The Tale of Genji

Japanese novelist and poet

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.

— The Tale of Genji

Japanese novelist and poet

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

— The Tale of Genji

Japanese novelist and poet

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?

— The Tale of Genji

Japanese novelist and poet

There is much to be said for cherry blossoms, but they seem so flighty. They are so quick to run off and leave you. And then just when your regrets are the strongest the wisteria comes into bloom, and it blooms on into the summer. There is nothing quite like it. Even the color is somehow companionable and inviting.

— The Tale of Genji

Japanese novelist and poet

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

Japanese novelist and poet

i wish you could understand me, but of course it is not the way of this world that we are ever completely understood.

Japanese novelist and poet

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.

— The Tale of Genji