seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another.

It is easier to fight for our principles than it is to live up to them.

The greater the feeling of inferiority that has been experienced, the more powerful is the urge to conquest and the more violent the emotional agitation.

To be a human being means to possess a feeling of inferiority which constantly presses towards its own conquest. The greater the feeling of inferiority that has been experienced, the more powerful is the urge for conquest and the more violent the emotional agitation.

O love, O fire! once he drew
With one long kiss my whole soul through
My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew.

These people so entranced by dictionaries were outside the bounds of Nishioka’s understanding. He couldn’t even be sure they thought of their work as work. They spent huge sums of their own money on materials, ignoring the limitations of their salaries. Sometimes they stayed in the office looking up things and never even realized they had missed the last train home. They seemed filled with a mad fever. And yet you couldn’t really say they loved dictionaries, either—not given the way they studied and analyzed them with such stunning concentration. There was something almost vindictive in their obsession, as if they were going after an enemy, getting the goods on him. How could they be so wrapped up in making dictionaries? He found their obsession mysterious, with even a whiff of bad taste. And yet—if only Nishioka had something that meant as much to him as dictionaries did to Majime and the rest. Then surely he would see everything differently. He would see a world of such dazzling brightness it would hurt.