Memoirs of a Geisha
Arthur Golden
Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that we see ourselves as we really are.
adversity tears wind strong things
From this experience I understood the danger of focusing only on what isn't there. What if I came to the end of my life and realized that I'd spent every day watching for a man who would never come to me? What an unbearable sorrow it would be, to realize I'd never really tasted the things I'd eaten, or seen the places I'd been, because I'd thought of nothing but the Chairman even while my life was drifting away from me. And yet if I drew my thoughts back from him, what life would I have? I would be like a dancer who had practiced since childhood for a performance she would never give.
places life danger man experience thought sorrow childhood thoughts end day things performance realize give
We can never flee the misery that is within us.
misery
Hopes are like hair ornaments. Girls want to wear too many of them. When they become old women they look silly wearing even one.
women girls hopes hair silly
I don't think any of us can speak frankly about pain until we are no longer enduring it.
pain speak
geisha memoirs
He's going to be receptive to the views of other partners and to changes,.. He's a superb business lawyer. That's much more important in terms of managing a law firm and dealing with the law firm's clients.
business law important views
It's worth bearing in mind that Hamlet makes poor Danish history and that Lawrence of Arabia grossly oversimplifies the politics and cultures of the Middle East. I don't mean to say that drama should never concern itself with factual accuracy, only that a work of art must be judged by a higher standard.
politics worth work mind history art drama poor hamlet concern accuracy
Flowers that grow where old ones have withered serve to remind us that death will one day come to us all.
death day grow serve flowers
I began to feel that all the people I'd ever known who had died or left me had not in fact gone away, but continued to live on inside me just as this man's wife lived on inside him.
people death live feel wife fact inside left
The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains.
death heart hopes day hope
I cannot tell you what it is that guides us in this life; but for me, I fell toward the Chairman just as a stone must fall toward the earth. When I cut my lip and met Mr. Tanaka, when my mother died and I was cruelly sold, it was all like a stream that falls over rocky cliffs before it can reach the ocean. Even now that he is gone I have him still, in the richness of my memories.
life death earth life-lessons memories mother fall ocean richness
We human beings are only a part of something very much larger. When we walk along, we may crush a beetle or simply cause a change in the air so that a fly ends up where it might never have gone otherwise. And if we think of the same example but with ourselves in the role of the insect, and the larger universe in the role we've just played, it's perfectly clear that we're affected every day by forces over which we have no more control than the poor beetle has over our gigantic foot as it descends upon it. What are we to do? We must use whatever methods we can to understand the movement of the universe around us and time our actions so that we are not fighting the currents, but moving with them.
fate destiny
Friendship is a precious thing, Sayuri. One mustn't throw it away.
friendship
For a flicker of a moment I imagined a world completely different from the one I'd always known, a world in which I was treated with fairness, even kindness-- a world in which fathers didn't sell their daughters.
geisha hope
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