Top 70 Okakura Kakuzo Quotes
#1. The method of drinking tea at this stage was primitive in the extreme. The leaves were steamed, crushed in a mortar, made into a cake, and boiled together with rice, ginger, salt, orange peel, spices, milk, and sometimes with onions!
Okakura Kakuzo
#2. One altar forever is preserved, that whereon we burn incense to the supreme idol,
ourselves, our god is great, and money is his Prophet! We devastate nature in order to make sacrifice to him; we boast that we have conquered Matter and forget that it is matter that has forever enslaved us.
Okakura Kakuzo
#3. [Tea-masters] have given emphasis to our natural love of simplicity, and shown us the beauty of humility. In fact, through their teachings tea has entered the life of the people.
Okakura Kakuzo
#4. Much comment has been given lately to the Code of the Samurai,
the Art of Death which makes our soldiers exult in self- sacrifice; but scarcely any attention has been drawn to Teaism, which represents so much of our Art of Life.
Okakura Kakuzo
#5. Like Art, Tea has its periods and its schools. Its evolution may be roughly divided into three main stages: the Boiled Tea, the Whipped Tea, and the Steeped Tea.
Okakura Kakuzo
#6. We boast that we have conquered Matter and forget that it is Matter that has enslaved us.
Okakura Kakuzo
#7. Have you not noticed that the wild flowers are becoming scarcer every year? It may be that their wise men have told them to depart till man becomes more human. Perhaps they have migrated to heaven.
Okakura Kakuzo
#9. In my young days I praised the master whose pictures I liked, but as my judgment matured I praised myself for liking what the masters had chosen to have me like.
Okakura Kakuzo
#10. We take refuge in pride because we are afraid to tell the truth to ourselves.
Okakura Kakuzo
#11. Perhaps we reveal ourselves too much in small things because we have so little of the great to conceal.
Okakura Kakuzo
#12. The Philosophy of Tea is not mere aestheticism in the ordinary acceptance of the term, for it expresses conjointly with ethics and religion our whole point of view about man and nature.
Okakura Kakuzo
#13. We must know the whole play in order to properly act our parts; the conception of totality must never be lost in that of the individual.
Okakura Kakuzo
#14. 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
#15. The canvas upon which the artist paints is the spectator's mind.
Okakura Kakuzo
#17. Vacuum is all potent because all containing. In vacuum alone motion becomes possible. One who could make of himself a vacuum into which others might freely enter would become master of all situations. The whole can always dominate the part.
Okakura Kakuzo
#18. The greatest pleasure he knew was to do a good action by stealth
Okakura Kakuzo
#19. It has been said that a man at ten is an animal, at twenty a lunatic, at thirty a failure, at forty a fraud, and at fifty a criminal. Perhaps he becomes a criminal because he has never ceased to be an animal.
Okakura Kakuzo
#20. In joy or sadness flowers are our constant friends.
Okakura Kakuzo
#21. Those who cannot feel the littleness of great things in themselves are apt to overlook the greatness of little things in others.
Okakura Kakuzo
#22. We must remember, however, that art is of value only to the extent that it speaks to us. It might be a universal language if we ourselves were universal in our sympathies.
Okakura Kakuzo
#23. Perfection is everywhere if we only choose to recognise it.
Okakura Kakuzo
#24. 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
#25. Approach a great painting as thou wouldst approach a great prince.
Okakura Kakuzo
#26. The ancient sages never put their teachings in systematic form. They spoke in paradoxes, for they were afraid of uttering half-truths. They began by talking like fools and ended up making their hearers wise.
Okakura Kakuzo
#28. It is not the accumulation of extraneous knowledge, but the realization of the self within, that constitutes true progress.
Okakura Kakuzo
#29. One can even buy a so-called Religion,
which is really but common morality sanctified with flowers and music. Rob the Church of her accessories and what remains behind?
Okakura Kakuzo
#30. New York City vagrant:
"What sort of 'nese are you people? Are you Chinese, or Japanese, or Javanese?"
Kakuzo Okakura responds:
"We are Japanese gentleman. But what sort of 'key are you? Are you a Yankee, or a donkey, or a monkey?
Okakura Kakuzo
#31. It has not the arrogance of wine, the self- consciousness of coffee, nor the simpering innocence of cocoa.
Okakura Kakuzo
#32. Everyone has to build anew his sky of hope and peace.
Okakura Kakuzo
#33. One cannot listen to different pieces of music at the same time, a real comprehension of the beautiful being possible only through concentration upon some central motive.
Okakura Kakuzo
#34. 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
#35. Nothing is real to us but hunger, nothing sacred except our own desires.
Okakura Kakuzo
#36. He only who has lived with the beautiful can die beautifully.
Okakura Kakuzo
#37. Modern ideograph Cha was coined, evidently a corruption of the classic Tou.
Okakura Kakuzo
#38. We are ever brutal to those who love and serve us in silence, but the time may come when, for our cruelty, we shall be deserted by these best friends of ours.
Okakura Kakuzo
#39. The name of the artist is more important to them than the quality of the work ... People criticize a picture by their ear
Okakura Kakuzo
#40. What dire consequences to humanity lie in the contemptuous ignoring of Eastern problems!
Okakura Kakuzo
#41. In religion the Future is behind us. In art the Present is the eternal.
Okakura Kakuzo
#42. In art vanity is equally fatal to sympathetic feeling, whether on the part of the artist or the public.
Okakura Kakuzo
#43. Why do men and women like to advertise themselves so much? Is it not but an instinct derived from the days of slavery?
Okakura Kakuzo
#44. It needed the genius of the Tang dynasty to emancipate Tea from its crude state and lead to its final idealization.
Okakura Kakuzo
#45. The primeval man in offering the first garland to his maiden thereby transcended the brute. He became human in thus rising above the crude necessities of nature. He entered the realm of art when he perceived the subtle use of the useless.
Okakura Kakuzo
#46. People are not taught to be really virtuous, but to behave properly.
Okakura Kakuzo
#47. Fain would we remain barbarians, if our claim to civilization were to be based on the gruesome glory of war.
Okakura Kakuzo
#48. 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
#49. Yet we allow our historical sympathy to override our aesthetic discrimination. We offer flowers of approbation when the artist is safely laid in his grave.
Okakura Kakuzo
#50. For life is an expression, our unconscious actions the constant betrayal of our innermost thought.
Okakura Kakuzo
#51. The observance of communal traditions involves a constant sacrifice of the individual to the state.
Okakura Kakuzo
#52. True beauty could be discovered only by one who mentally complete the incomplete.
Okakura Kakuzo
#53. For Teaism is the art of concealing beauty that you may discover it, of suggesting what you dare not reveal. It is the noble secret of laughing at yourself, calmly yet thoroughly, and is thus humour itself,
the smile of philosophy.
Okakura Kakuzo
#54. The seeker for perfection must discover in his own life the reflection of the inner light.
Okakura Kakuzo
#55. The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings.
Okakura Kakuzo
#56. In the liquid amber within the ivory porcelain, the initiated may touch the sweet reticence of Confucius, the piquancy of Laotse, and the ethereal aroma of Sakyamuni himself.
Okakura Kakuzo
#57. Taoism was an active power during the Shin dynasty, that epoch of Chinese unification from which we derive the name China.
Okakura Kakuzo
#58. Shrine after shrine has crumbled before our eyes; but one altar if forever preserved, that whereon we burn incense to the supreme idol,-ourselves.
Okakura Kakuzo
#59. Tea is more than an idealization of the form of drinking; it is a religion of the art of life.
Okakura Kakuzo
#60. Nothing is more hallowing than the union of kindred spirits in art. At the moment of meeting, the art lover transcends himself.
Okakura Kakuzo
#61. 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
#62. With tea amused the evening, with tea solaced the midnight, and with tea welcomed the morning.
Okakura Kakuzo
#63. One master defines Zen as the art of feeling the polar star in the southern sky. Truth can be reached only through the comprehension of opposites.
Okakura Kakuzo
#64. Let us dream of evanescence, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things.
Okakura Kakuzo
#65. A man without tea in him is incapable of understanding truth and beauty.
Okakura Kakuzo
#67. 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
#68. It has been said that man at ten is an animal, at twenty a lunatic, at thirty a failure, at forty a fraud, and at fifty a criminal.
Okakura Kakuzo
#69. He catches a glimpse of Infinity, but words cannot voice his delight, for the eye has no tongue.
Okakura Kakuzo
#70. Welcome to thee,
O sword of eternity!
Through Buddha
And through Daruma alike
Thou hast cleft thy way.
Okakura Kakuzo
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