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Top Kobo Abe Quotes

Browse top 39 most favorite famous quotes and sayings by Kobo Abe.

Favorite Kobo Abe Quotes

1. "The future is forever a projection of the present." ~ Kōbō Abe
2. "It was as if, without realizing it, I had been completely disarmed by her legs." ~ Kōbō Abe
3. "It is manifestly pregnant and has a bulging white belly heavy with its load of kittens." ~ Kōbō Abe
4. "If from the beginning you always believed that a ticket was only one-way, then you wouldn't have to try so vainly to cling to the sand like an oyster to a rock." ~ Kōbō Abe
5. "If there were no risk of a punishment, a getaway would lose the pleasure." ~ Kōbō Abe
6. "Animal smell is beyond philosophy." ~ Kōbō Abe
7. "I rather think the world is like sand. The fundamental nature of sand is very difficult to grasp when you think of it in its stationary state. Sand not only flows, but this very flow is the sand." ~ Kōbō Abe
8. "Only the happy ones return to contentment. Those who were sad return to despair." ~ Kōbō Abe
9. "People like me who lack something are liable to become spiteful critics." ~ Kōbō Abe
10. "So nothing will ever be written down again. Perhaps the act of writing is necessary only when nothing happens." ~ Kōbō Abe
11. "Certainly sand was not suitable for life. Yet, was a stationary condition absolutely indispensable for existence? Didn't unpleasant competition arise precisely because one tried to cling to a fixed position? If one were to give up a fixed position and abandon oneself to the movement of the sands, competition would soon stop. Actually, in the deserts flowers bloomed and insects and other animals lived their lives. These creatures were able to escape competition through their great ability to adjust--for example, the man's beetle family. While he mused on the effect of the flowing sands, he was seized from time to time by hallucinations in which he himself began to move with the flow." ~ Kōbō Abe
12. "It was perhaps relief and confidence stemming from the opportunity to tempt you into being my accomplice, however indirectly, in the lonely work of producing the mask. For me, whatever you may say, you are the most important "other person." No, I do not mean it in a negative sense. I meant that the one who must first restore the roadway, the one whose name I had to write on the first letter, was first on my list of "others." (Under any circumstances, I simply did not want to lose you. To lose you would be symbolic of losing the world.)" ~ Kōbō Abe
13. "Without the threat of punishment, there is no joy in flight." ~ Kōbō Abe
14. "In seeing there is love, in being seen there is abhorrence. One grins, trying to bear the pain of being seen. But not just anyone can be someone who only looks. If the one who is looked at looks back, then the person who was looking becomes the one who is looked at." ~ Kōbō Abe
15. "This crazy, blind beating of wings caused by man-made light... this irrational connection between spiders, moths and light. If a law appeared without reason, like this, what would one believe in?" ~ Kōbō Abe
16. "Could having a face be such an important requirement? Was being seen the cost of the right to see?" ~ Kōbō Abe
17. "The suffering of being imprisoned rests in the fact that it is impossible, at any time, to escape from oneself." ~ Kōbō Abe
18. "Defeat begins with the fear that one has lost." ~ Kōbō Abe
19. "But for some reason I have not yet become a fish. - The Box Man, p.36" ~ Kōbō Abe
20. "When I look at small things, I think I shall go on living: drops of rain, leather gloves shrunk by being wet...When I look at something too big, I want to die: the Diet Building, or a map of the world..." ~ Kōbō Abe
21. "Loneliness was an unsatisfied thirst for illusion." ~ Kōbō Abe
22. "The most frightening thing in the world is to discover the abnormal in that which is closest to us." ~ Kōbō Abe
23. "One could not do without repetition in life, like the beating of the heart, but it was also true that the beating of the heart was not all there was to life." ~ Kōbō Abe
24. "Suddenly a sorrow the color of dawn welled up in him. They might as well lick each other's wounds. But they would lick forever, and the wounds would never heal, and in the end their tongues would be worn away." ~ Kōbō Abe
25. "Still, the one who best understands the significance of light is not the electrician, not the painter, not the photographer, but the man who lost his sight in adulthood. There must be the wisdom of deficiency in deficiency, just as there is the wisdom of plenty in plenty." ~ Kōbō Abe
26. "Being free always involves being lonely." ~ Kōbō Abe
27. "You don't need me. What you really need is a mirror. Because any stranger is for you simply a mirror in which to reflect yourself. I don't ever again want to return to such a desert of mirrors." ~ Kōbō Abe
28. "Something whose connection with human experience we cannot grasp is bound to be frightening." ~ Kōbō Abe
29. "There wasn't a single item of importance [in the newspaper]. A tower of illusion, all of it, made of illusory bricks and full of holes. If life were made up only of imporant things, it really would be a dangerous house of glass, scarcely to be handled carelessly. But everyday life was exactly like the headlines. And so everybody, knowing the meaninglessness of existence, sets the centre of his compass at his own home." ~ Kōbō Abe
30. "And again, the dark street. The dark, dark street. The women out shopping for the evening meal of course, and baby carriage and the silver bicycle were already painted out by the darkness; most of the commuters too were already in place in their filing-drawer houses. A half-forsaken chasm of time ...." ~ Kōbō Abe
31. "His expression hardened. It was unpleasant to have feelings that he had been at pains to check aroused to no purpose" ~ Kōbō Abe
32. "A keener interest in trinkets of self-adornment than in people is a symptom of alienation." ~ Kōbō Abe
33. "Más que de la mujer, el hombre tiende a enamorarse de los fragmentos y detalles de las cosas." ~ Kōbō Abe
34. "Of course, according to one theory a mask is apparently the expression of an extremely metaphysical aspiration to give oneself a kind of transcendental disguise, for the mask is not simply something compensatory." ~ Kōbō Abe
35. "Injuries to the body, especially the face, are not treated simply as problems of form. We should rather speak of themas belonging in the province of mental hygiene. Otherwise, who whould willingly devote his efforts to cosmetic work?" ~ Kōbō Abe
36. "Suicide is an escape from life. What is life? An escape from death. This means that each of us must die twice. There is the death waiting us ahead, and the death that comes pursuing us from behind. Your trouble is that you're confused, Once you are free at least from the death that comes pursuing you, you can relax and enjoy life as you go along." ~ Kōbō Abe
37. "The fish you don't catch is always the biggest." ~ Kōbō Abe
38. "The only way to go beyond work is through work. It is not that work itself is valuable; we surmount work by work. The real value of work lies in the strength of self-denial." ~ Kōbō Abe
39. "Do you shovel to survive, or survive to shovel?" ~ Kōbō Abe

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Today's Quote

All that ye potentially possess can…be manifested only as a result of your own volition."Bahá'u'lláh"
Author: Bahá U Lláh

What Did Kōbō Abe Talk About?

Wit
Thin
Los
Ten
Use
Here
Con
Self
Son
Lie
Per
Hen
Ally
Thou
Ape
Tan
Ear
Simply
Pain
Act
Used
Win
Ours
Lose
End
Owe
Wing
Mean
Again
Pen
Able
Escape
Light
Rest
Cause
Bee
Ways

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