/lit/ - Literature

>>18316158
Sei Shonagon's Makura no Sōshi.

>In life there are two things which are dependable. The pleasures of the flesh and the pleasures of literature.

>Pleasing things: finding a large number of tales that one has not read before. Or acquiring the second volume of a tale whose first volume one has enjoyed. But often it is a disappointment.

>In spring it is the dawn that is most beautiful. As the light creeps over the hills, their outlines are dyed a faint red and wisps of purplish cloud trail over them. In summer the nights. Not only when the moon shines, but on dark nights too, as the fireflies flit to and fro, and even when it rains, how beautiful it is! In autumn, the evenings, when the glittering sun sinks close to the edge of the hills and the crows fly back to their nests in threes and fours and twos; more charming still is a file of wild geese, like specks in the distant sky. When the sun has set, one's heart is moved by the sound of the wind and the hum of the insects. In winter the early mornings. It is beautiful indeed when snow has fallen during the night, but splendid too when the ground is white with frost; or even when there is no snow or frost, but it is simply very cold and the attendants hurry from room to room stirring up the fires and bringing charcoal, how well this fits the season's mood! But as noon approaches and the cold wears off, no one bothers to keep the braziers alight, and soon nothing remains but piles of white ashes.

>A man who has nothing in particular to recommend him discusses all sorts of subjects at random as if he knew everything.

>I am the sort of person who approves of what others abhor and detests the things they like.

>To wash your hair, apply your makeup and put on clothes that are well-scented with incense. Even if you’re somewhere where no one special will see you, you still feel a heady sense of pleasure inside.

>Letters are commonplace enough, yet what splendid things they are! When someone is in a distant province and one is worried about him, and then a letter suddenly arrives, one feels as though one were seeing him face to face. Again, it is a great comfort to have expressed one's feelings in a letter even though one knows it cannot yet have arrived. If letters did not exist, what dark depressions would come over one! When one has been worrying about something and wants to tell a certain person about it, what a relief it is to put it all down in a letter! Still greater is one's joy when a reply arrives. At that moment a letter really seems like an elixir of life.

>How ever did I pass
>the time before I knew you?
>I think of that past time
>as now I pass each passing day
>in lonely sorrow, lacking you.

>If writing did not exist, what terrible depressions we should suffer from.

>Someone who butts in when you're talking and smugly provides the ending herself. Indeed anyone who butts in, be they child or adult, is most infuriating.

>>18072127
>Pillow Book?
Yes.

*blocks your path*

>>7222593
Good choice, but I'm going to go with Sei Shōnagon.