Yoshida Kenko Quotes

19 quotes in 301 categories

• Are we to look at cherry blossoms only in full bloom, the moon only when it is cloudless? To long for the moon while looking…
• On a moonlit night, after a snowfall, or under cherry blossoms, it adds to our pleasure if, while chatting at our ease, we bring forth…
• Ambition never comes to an end.
• Blossoms are scattered by the wind and the wind cares nothing but the blossoms of the heart no wind can touch.
• To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations - such is…
• One should write not unskillfully in the running hand, be able to sing in a pleasing voice and keep good time to music; and, lastly,…
• A certain recluse, I know not who, once said that no bonds attached him to this life, and the only thing he would regret leaving…
• If life were eternal, all interest and anticipation would vanish. It is uncertainty which lends it fascination.
• You should never put the new antlers of a deer to your nose and smell them. They have little insects that crawl into the nose…
• Leave undone whatever you hesitate to do.
• The hour of death waits for no order. Death does not even come from the front. It is ever pressing on from behind. All men…
• The pleasantest of all diversions is to sit alone under the lamp, a book spread out before you, and to make friends with people of…
• In everything, no matter what it may be, uniformity is undesirable. Leaving something incomplete makes it interesting, and gives one the feeling that there is…
• The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty
• If you imagine that once you have accomplished your ambitions you will have time to turn to the Way, you will discover that your ambitions…
• The truth is at the beginning of anything and its end are alike touching.
• Though a man excels in everything, unless he has been a lover his life is lonely, and he may be likened to a jewelled cup…
• Life's most precious gift is uncertainty.

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