Okakura Kakuzo famous quotes

Those who cannot feel the littleness of great things in themselves are apt to overlook the greatness of little things in others.
-- Okakura Kakuzo

#Running #Greatness #Littles

The ancient sages never put their teachings in a systematic form. They spoke in paradoxes, for they were afraid of uttering half-truths. They began by talking like fools and ended by making their hearers wise.
-- Okakura Kakuzo

#Wise #Teaching #Talking

We take refuge in pride, because we are afraid to tell the truth to ourselves.
-- Okakura Kakuzo

#Truth #Pride #Telling The Truth

Tea is more than an idealization of the form of drinking; it is a religion of the art of life.
-- Okakura Kakuzo

#Life #Art #Drinking

It is not the accumulation of extraneous knowledge, but the realization of the self within, that constitutes true progress.
-- Okakura Kakuzo

#Self #Progress #Realization

Meanwhile, let us have a sip of tea. The afternoon glow is brightening the bamboos, the fountains are bubbling with delight, the soughing of the pines is heard in our kettle. Let us dream of evanescence, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things.
-- Okakura Kakuzo

#Beautiful #Dream #Tea

The art of life is a constant readjustment to our surroundings.
-- Okakura Kakuzo

#Inspirational #Life #Change

In joy or sadness, flowers are our constant friends.
-- Okakura Kakuzo

#Flower #Sadness #Garden

Let us dream of evanescence, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things.
-- Okakura Kakuzo

#Beautiful #Dream #Evanescence

Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism of the social order.
-- Okakura Kakuzo

#Beautiful #Order #Tea

Tea began as a medicine and grew into a beverage.
-- Okakura Kakuzo

#Medicine #Tea #Beverages

Tea...is a religion of the art of life.
-- Okakura Kakuzo

#Art #Tea

A man without tea in him is incapable of understanding truth and beauty.
-- Okakura Kakuzo

#Men #Understanding #Tea

Perfection is everywhere if we only choose to recognise it.
-- Okakura Kakuzo

#Perfection #Recognise

Our mind is the canvas on which the artists lay their colour; their pigments are our emotions; their chiaroscuro the light of joy, the shadow of sadness. The masterpiece is of ourselves, as we are of the masterpiece.
-- Okakura Kakuzo

#Creativity #Sadness #Artist

The canvas upon which the artist paints is the spectator's mind.
-- Okakura Kakuzo

#Artist #Mind #Canvas

The art of today is that which really belongs to us: it is our own reflection. In condemning it we but condemn ourselves.
-- Okakura Kakuzo

#Art #Reflection #Today

Tea is a work of art and needs a master hand to bring out its noblest qualities. We have good and bad teas, as we have good and bad paintings - generally the latter.
-- Okakura Kakuzo

#Art #Hands #Tea

In the worship of Bacchus, we have sacrificed too freely.... Why not consecrate ourselves to the queen of the Camelias, and revel in the warm stream of sympathy that flows from her altar? In the liquid amber within the ivory-porcelain, the initiated may touch the sweet reticence of Confucius...
-- Okakura Kakuzo

#Sweet #Queens #Ivory

The outsider may indeed wonder at this seeming much ado about nothing. What a tempest in a tea-cup! he will say. But when we consider how small after all the cup of human enjoyment is, how soon overflowed with tears, how easily drained to the dregs in our quenchless thirst for infinity, we shall not blame ourselves for making so much of the tea-cup.
-- Okakura Kakuzo

#Tea #May #Outsiders

Translation is always a treason, and as a Ming author observes, can at its best be only the reverse side of a brocade- all the threads are there, but not the subtlety of colour or design.
-- Okakura Kakuzo

#Design #Sides #Thread

Fain would we remain barbarians, if our claim to civilization were to be based on the gruesome glory of war.
-- Okakura Kakuzo

#War #Civilization #Barbarians

For life is an expression, our unconscious actions the constant betrayal of our innermost thought. Perhaps we reveal ourselves too much in small things because we have so little of the great to conceal. The tiny incidents of daily rouitine are as much a commentary of racial ideas as the highest flight of philosophy or poetry.
-- Okakura Kakuzo

#Appreciation #Betrayal #Philosophy

In Japan, I took part in a tea ceremony. You go into a small room, tea is served, and that's it really, except that everything is done with so much ritual and ceremony that a banal daily event is transformed into a moment of communion with the universe.
-- Okakura Kakuzo

#Japan #Perfection #Tea

True beauty could be discovered only by one who mentally complete the incomplete.
-- Okakura Kakuzo

#Inner Beauty #True Beauty #Incomplete