Kenko Yoshida Quotes
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To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations - such is a pleasure beyond compare.
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The truth is at the beginning of anything and its end are alike touching.
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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.
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Only a boring man will always want things to match; real quality lies in irregularity―another excellent remark.
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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 room for growth. Someone once told me, "Even when building the imperial palace, they always leave one place unfinished." In both Buddhist and Confucian writings of the philosophers of former times, there are also many missing chapters.
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Leave undone whatever you hesitate to do.
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I recall the months and years I spent as the intimate of someone whose affections have now faded like cherry blossoms scattering even before a wind blew.
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There is a deep contradiction in failing to enjoy life and yet fearing death when faced with it.
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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 and devour the brain.
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What a strange demented feeling it gives me when I realize that I have spent whole days before this inkstone, with nothing better to do, jotting down at random whatever nonsensical thoughts have entered my head.
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It is a most wonderful comfort to sit alone beneath a lamp, book spread before you, and commune with someone from the past whom you have never met.
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It harms a man more to wound his heart than to hurt his body.
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If you must take care that your opinions do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking, you might just as well be alone.
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There is nothing finer than to be alone with nothing to distract you.
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It is a great error to be superior to others....It is such pride as this that makes a man appear a fool, makes him abused by others, and invites disaster. A man who is truly versed in any art will of his own accord be clearly aware of his own deficiency; and therefore, his ambition being never satisfied, he ends by never being proud.
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If man were never to fade away... 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.