“He saw the human shadows flitting through his second world. Most of them had unkempt beards. Some walked along looking at the sky, others at the ground. All wore shabby clothing. All lived in poverty. And all were serene. Closed in on every side by streetcars, they freely breathed the air of peace. The men in this world were unfortunate, for they knew nothing of the real world. But they were fortunate as well, for they had fled the Burning House of worldly suffering. Professor Hirota was in this second world. So, too, was Nonomiya. Sanshiro stood where he could understand the air of this world more or less. He could leave it whenever he wished. But to do so, to relinquish a taste he had finally begun to savor, was something he was loath to do.”

“When he heard that Sanshiro was going to school forty hours a week, his eyes popped. "You idiot! Do you think it would 'satisfy' you to eat what they serve at your rooming house ten times a day?""What should I do?" Sanshiro pleaded."Ride the streetcar," Yojiro said.Sanshiro tried to find Yojiro's hidden meaning, without success."You mean a real streetcar?" he asked.Yojiro laughed uncontrollably. "Get on the streetcar and ride around Tokyo ten or fifteen times. After a while it will just happen by itself- you will become satisfied. "Why?""Why? Well, look at it this way. Your head is alive, but if you seal it up inside dead classes, you're lost. Take it outside and get the wind into it. Riding the streetcar is not the only way to get satisfaction, of course, but it's the first step, and the easiest.”

“No matter how fierce was the passion that gripped him, the fact is he was paralyzed, transfixed by the contemplation of his own past. Only something so momentous as to drive from his consciousness all thoughts of before and after could have propelled him forward. And with his eyes fixed on the past, he had no choice but to continue along its trajectory.”

“You seem to be under the impression that there is a special breed of bad humans. There is no such thing as a stereotype bad man in this world. Under normal conditions, everybody is more or less good, or, at least, ordinary. But tempt them, and they may suddenly change. That is what is so frightening about men.”

“One may be branded foolishly honest if he takes seriously the apologies others might offer. We should regard all apologies a sham and forgiving also as a sham; then everything would be all right. If one wants to make another apologize from his heart, he has to pound him good and strong until he begs for mercy from his heart”

“Now that I thought about it, though, I realized that most people actually encourage you to turn bad. They seem to think that if you don't, you'll never get anywhere in the world. And then on those rare occasions when they encounter somebody who's honest and pure-hearted, they look down on him and say he's nothing but a kid, a Botchan. If that's the way it is, it would be better if they didn't have those ethics classes in elementary school and middle school where the teacher is always telling you to be honest and not lie. The schools might as well just go ahead and teach you how to tell lies, how to mistrust everybody, and how to take advantage of people. Wouldn't their students, and the world at large, be better off that way? Redshirt had laughed at me for being simpleminded. If people are going to get laughed at for being simpleminded and sincere, there's no hope. Kiyo never laughed at me for saying anything like what I said to Redshirt. She would have been deeply impressed by it. Compared to Redshirt, she's far and away the superior person.”

“He is totally abandoned in the way he buys book after book, never to read a single one. I wouldn't mind if he used his head and bought in moderation, but no. Whenever the mood takes him, he ambles off to the biggest bookshop in the city and brings back home as many books as chance to catch his fancy. Then, at the end of the month, he adopts an attitude of complete detachment.”