Shūsaku endō Quotes - QuotesSweet | quotesweet.com

Author: Shūsaku Endō
Quotes of Author: Shūsaku Endō

Shūsaku Endō _ A Life of Jesus
How did the cowardly disciples come by their sturdy faith after Jesus died? How did a man so ineffectual in this world, who had upset the dreams of his own disciples, come then to be divinized by these same disciples? These two questions forever entangle people who read the Bible, yet the biblical scholars, with their theories of form-criticism or of reductionism, hardly so much as allude to these questions.
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Shūsaku Endō _ Silence
« My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast ! I will sing and make melody ! Awake my soul ! Awake, O harp and lyre ! I will awake the dawn. » In childhood these words had always risen in his mind when he watched the wind blow over the blue sky and through the trees ; but that was a time when God was not as now an object of fear and perplexity but one who was near to the earth, giving harmony and living joy.
book-quote silence shusaku-endo
Shūsaku Endō _ Wonderful Fool
For the first time in her life Tomoe came to the realization that there are fools and fools. A man who loves others with an open-hearted simplicity, who trusts others, no matter who they are, even if he is deceived or even betrayed-- such a man in the present-day world is bound to be written off as a fool. And so he is. But not just an ordinary fool. He is a wonderful fool. He is a wonderful fool who will never allow the little light which he sheds along man's way to go out.
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Shūsaku Endō _ Foreign Studies
Just as with all interpersonal relationships in our life, we are made to suffer by those things we have chosen and, in confronting our choices, we gradually discover ourselves.
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Shūsaku Endō _ Silence
At night as he lay in bed with his eyes closed listening to the song of the turtledove in the trees, behind his closed eyelids he would pass through every scene in the life of Christ. From childhood the face of Christ had been for him the fulfillment of his every dream and ideal. The face of Christ as he preached to the crowd the Sermon on the Mount. The face of Christ as he passed over the Lake of Galilee at dusk. Even in its moments of terrble torture this face had never lost its beauty. Those soft, clear eyes which pierced to the very core of a man's being were now fixed upon him. The face that could do no wrong, utter no word of insult. When the vision of this face came before him, fear and trembling seemed to vanquish like the tiny ripples that are quietly sucked up by the sand of the seashore.
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Shūsaku Endō _ Silence
To help others is the way of Buddha and the teaching of Christianity - in this point the two religions are the same. What matters is weather or not you walk the path of truth.""That is not God. It is like a butterfly caught in a spider's web. At first it is certainly a butterfly, but the next day only the externals, the wings and the trunk, are those of a butterfly; it has lost it's true reality and has become a skeleton."
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Shūsaku Endō _ Silence
¡No! ¡No hay tal cosa!" -negaba con la cabeza-. "Si Dios no existiera, el hombre no podría soportar la monotonía de ese mar, esa frialdad siniestra...". "Pero si por un imposible... Sólo es un imposible, por supuesto..." -Ahora era otra voz la que retumbaba en un rincón profundo de mi ser- "Si, por un imposible, Dios no existiera...". Era una fantasía aterradora. Si Dios no existiera, ¡qué ridículo resultaba todo! Si no existiera, ¡qué drama tan ridículo las vidas de Ichizou y Mokichi, atados a las estacas y bañados por las olas...! ¡Qué ridículo el espejismo que vinieron persiguiendo los misioneros: tres años largos cruzando mares para llegar a este país!
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Shūsaku Endō _ Silence
The wisdom of peasants shows itself in their ability to pretend that they are fools.
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Shūsaku Endō _ Silence
Stupefied he gazed at the old man who, naïve as a child, returned his glance still rubbing his hands. How could he have recognized one who so utterly betrayed all his expectations? The man whom Valignano had called a devil, who had made the missionaries apostatize one by one--until now he had envisaged the face of this man as pale and crafty. But here before his very eyes sat this understanding, seemingly good, meek man.
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Shūsaku Endō _ Silence
They were martyred. But what a martyrdom! I had long read about martyrdom in the lives of the saints--how the souls of the martyrs had gone home to Heaven, how they had been filled with glory in Paradise, how the angels had blown trumpets. This was the splendid martyrdom I had often seen in my dreams. But the martyrdom of the Japanese Christians I now describe to you was no such glorious thing. What a miserable and painful business it was!
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Shūsaku Endō _ Wonderful Fool
Not all men are handsome and strong. There are some who are cowards from birth. There are some who are weak by nature. There are even some who cry easily. But for such a man, a man both weak and cowardly, to bear the burden of his weakness and struggle valiantly to live a beautiful life-- that's what I call great. The reason I'm so fond of Gaston is not because he has a strong will or a good head. Rather it's because, weakling and coward that he is, he keeps on fighting in his own way.
book-quote inspirational life strength
Shūsaku Endō _ Silence
Trample! It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world. It was to share men's pain that I carried my cross.
book-quote love faith