Yoshida Kenkō Quotes

There's no escaping it-the world is full of lies. It is safest always to accept what one hears as if it were utterly commonplace and devoid of interest.

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 was the sky.

Hello! Sorry I’m not home, but I have gone to rescue my friends who were captured by Bowser! - Super Mario World

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 know of death, but they do not expect it of a sudden, and it comes upon them unawares. So, though the dry flats extend far out, soon the tide comes and floods the beach.

Things which seem in poor taste: too many personal effects cluttering up the place where one is sitting; too many brushes in an ink-box; too many Buddhas in a family temple; too many stones and plants in a garden; too many children in a house; too many words on meeting someone; too many meritorious deeds recorded in a petition. Things which are not offensive, no matter how numerous: books in a book cart, rubbish in a rubbish heap.

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 a distant past you have never known.

Leave undone whatever you hesitate to do.

One should write not unskilfully in the running hand, be able to sing in a pleasing voice and keep good time to music; and, lastly, a man should not refuse a little wine when pressed upon him.

I find it insufferable too the way people spread word about the latest novelties and make a fuss over them. I am charmed by the man who remains unaware of such fashions until they have become quite an old story to everyone else.

If a man strictly observe the rules of his way, and keep a rein on himself, then no matter what way it be, he will be a scholar of renown and be a teacher of multitudes.

If man were never to fade away like the dews of Adashino never to vanish like the smoke over Toribeyama, but lingered on forever in the world, how things would lose their power to move us! The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty. Consider living creatures- none lives so long a man. The May fly waits not for the evening, the summer cicada knows neither spring nor autumn. What a wonderfully unhurried feeling it is to live even even a single year in perfect serenity.

Bishop Köyu said (it seems to me very admirably), 'It is only a person of poor understanding who wishes to arrange things in complete sets. It is incompleteness that is desirable.' In everything regularity is bad. To leave a thing unfinished gives interest, and makes for lengthened life. They say that even in building the [imperial] palace an unfinished place is always left. In the writings of the ancients, inner and outer [Buddhist and non-Buddhist], there are many missing chapters and parts.

They flock together like ants, hurry east and west, run north and south. Some are mighty, some humble. Some are aged, some young. They have places to go, houses to return to. At night they sleep, in the morning get up. But what does all this activity mean ? There is no ending to their greed for long life, their grasping for profit.

A bystander... remarked, '...One day of life is weightier than ten thousand pieces of gold. ...It is not because they do not fear death, but because they forget the nearness of death that men do not rejoice in life. One may say that he has grasped the true principle who is unconcerned with the manifestation of life or death.' When he said this people scoffed at him more than ever.

The truth is at the beginning of anything and its end are alike touching.