Shusaku Endo Quotes

Pain is the question mark turned like a fishhook in the human heart.

Who is to decide which is the grimmer sight: withered hearts, or empty skulls?

In the depths of every heart, there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the lights, the music, and revelry above may cause us to forget their existence, and the buried ones, or prisoners whom they hide. But sometimes, and oftenest at midnight, those dark receptacles are flung wide open. In an hour like this, when the mind has a passive sensibility, but no active strength; when the imagination is a mirror, imparting vividness to all ideas, without the power of selecting or controlling them; then pray that your grieves may slumber, and the brotherhood of remorse not break their chain.

Attempting to satisfy the passions that rage inside us and the longings that motivate us, we invent spirituality, lean on political solutions, create new villains, turn our backs on Jesus, and blame a thousand tyrannies- but we never come to terms with the source of the problem deep within the heart and inclination of every human being.

I really believe that all of us have a lot of darkness in our souls. Anger, rage, fear, sadness. I don't think that's only reserved for people who have horrible upbringings.

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again.

I feel that if I kept it secret it might grow in my mind (as poisonous things grow in the dark) and take its place with the other terrible thoughts that gnaw me

people themselves are full of tunnels: winding, dark spaces and caverns; impossible to know all the places inside of them. Impossible even to imagine.

I know,' said Erin, and described how she'd lately felt depressed in a new and scary way, which Paul also had felt lately and described as a sadness-based fear, immune to tone and interpretation, as if not meant for humans - more visceral than sadness, but unlike fear because it decreased heart rate and impaired the senses, causing everything to seem 'darker.

And as the ax bites into the wood, be comforted in the fact that the ache in your heart and the confusion in your soul means that you are still alive, still human, and still open to the beauty of the world, even though you have done nothing to deserve it.

What was it in the human heart that made you despise a man because he loved you?

Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love—but sometimes it was so hard to love. Sometimes my heart was sinking so fast with anger, desolation and weariness, I was afraid it would sink to the very bottom of the Pacific and I would not be able to lift it back up.

It's very painful for us to feel we deserve a life. That's the toughest thing. That we deserve to have a life. That can take a lifetime.

The prospect of an early death sits differently upon each person. In some it gifts maturity far outweighing their age and experience: calm acceptance blossoms into a beautiful nature and soft countenance. In others, however, it leads to the formation of a tiny ice flint in their heart. Ice that, though at times concealed, never properly melts. Rose, though she would have liked to be one of the former, knew herself deep down to be one of the latter.

I do not believe anyone can be perfectly well, who has a brain and a heart

My heart beats, echoes into the cold streets where nightmares and darkness begin to meet.

love being such, or such, the normal corners of your heart will never guess how much my wonderful jealousy is dark

In the depths of every heart there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the lights, the music, and the revelry above may cause us to forget their existence.

There are only two things that pierce the human heart. One is beauty. The other is affliction.

The pathos of life is worse than the tragedy.

And much it grieved my heart to think What man has made of man.

At the approach of danger two voices speak with equal force in the heart of man: one very reasonably tells the man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of avoiding it and the other, even more reasonable, says that it is too painful and harassing to think of the danger... better to turn aside from the painful subject till it has come, and to think of what is pleasant. In solitude a man generally yields to the first voice; in society to the second.

I do not know what the heart of a rascal may be, but I know what is in the heart of an honest man; it is horrible.

Governments will rise, and governments will fall, and man will do evil to man, and all we can do is turn our hearts to good.

The human heart is a dark forest.