Best 12 quotes of Sei Shonagon on MyQuotes

A good lover will behave just as elegantly at dawn as at any other time.

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.

If someone with whom one is having an affair keeps on mentioning some woman whom he knew in the past, however long ago it is since they separated, one is always irritated.

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

One is telling a story about old times when someone breaks in with a little detail that he happens to know, implying that one's own version is inaccurate — disgusting behavior!

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.

There is nothing in the whole world so painful as feeling that one is not liked.

To wash one's hair, make one's toilet, and put on scented robes; even if not a soul sees one, these preparations still produce an inner pleasure.

25. Flowering trees The blossom of the pear tree is the most prosaic, vulgar thing in the world. The less one sees this particular blossom the better...

8. The Cat Who Lived in the Palace The cat who lived in the Palace had been awarded the head-dress of nobility and was called Lady Myobu.

I do wish men, when they're taking their leave from a lady at dawn, wouldn't insist on adjusting their clothes to a nicety, or fussily tying their lacquered cap securely into place. After all, who would laugh at a man or criticize him if they happened to catch sight of him on his way home from an assignation in fearful disarray, with his cloak or hunting costume all awry?

Sometimes a person who is utterly devoid of charm will try to create a good impression by using very elegant language; yet he only succeeds in being ridiculous.