Arthur Waley Quotes

A team of horses cannot overtake a word that has left the mouth.

I have not used rhyme, because what is really, in the long run, of most interest to American readers is what the poems say; and if one uses rhyme, it is impossible not to sacrifice sense to sound.

If the Government gets hold of you they'll flog you to death; if the Buddhists get hold of you they'll starve you to death.

I would rather be dead.

It is in general the unexplored that attracts us.

Since the classical language has an easy grammar and limited vocabulary, a few months should suffice for the mastering of it.

'Master, we can start now; I have killed them all.'
'I am very sorry to hear it,' said Tripitaka. 'One has no right to kill robbers, however violent and wicked they may be. The most one may do is to bring them before a magistrate. It would have been quite enough in this case if you had driven them away. Why kill them? You have behaved with a cruelty that ill becomes one of your sacred calling.'
'If I had not killed them,' said Monkey, 'they would have killed you.'
'A priest,' said Tripitaka, 'should be ready to die rather than commit acts of violence.'

Anyone with a good classical education could learn Chinese by himself without difficulty.

Anything whatsoever may become the subject of a novel, provided only that it happens in this mundane life and not in some fairyland beyond our human ken.

There was a rock that since the creation of the world had been worked upon by the pure essences of Heaven and the fine savours of Earth, the vigour of sunshine and the grace of moonlight, till at last it became magically pregnant and one day split open, giving birth to a stone egg, about as big as a playing ball. Fructified by the wind it developed into a stone monkey, complete with every organ and limb.

To the European poet the relation between man and woman is a thing of supreme importance and mystery. To the Chinese, it is something commonplace, obvious—a need of the body, not a satisfaction of the emotions.

'Insensate groom! What crime is there that you have not committed? You have stolen peaches and stolen wine, upset the high feast, purloined Lao Tzu's elixir, and then taken more wine for your banquet here. You have piled up sin upon sin; do you not realize what you have done?' 'Quite true,' said Monkey, 'all quite true. What are you going to do about it?'

You that in far-off countries of the sky can dwell secure, look back upon me here; for I am weary of this frail world's decay.

Tripitaka stepped lightly ashore. He had discarded his earthly body; he was cleansed from the corruption of the senses, from the fleshly inheritance of those bygone years. His was now the transcendent wisdom that leads to the Further Shore, the mastery that knows no bounds.

I have a theory of my own about what this art of the novel is, and how it came into being. To begin with, it does not simply consist in the author's telling a story about the adventures of some other person. On the contrary, it happens because the storyteller's own experience of men and things, whether for good or ill—not only what he has passed through himself, but even events which he has only witnessed or been told of—has moved him to an emotion so passionate that he can no longer keep it shut up in his heart.