Herrigel Eugen Quotes

#1. You must act as if the goal were infinitely far off.

Eugen Herrigel

#2. The hand that guides the brush has already caught and executed what floated before the mind at the same moment the mind began to form it, and in the end the pupil no longer knows which of the two-mind or hand -was responsible for the work.

Eugen Herrigel

#3. In the case of archery, the hitter and the hit are no longer two opposing objects, but are one reality.

Eugen Herrigel

#4. When you lose the power to laugh, you lose your power to think straight.

Jerome Lawrence

#5. You worry yourself unnecessarily. Put the thought of hitting right out of your mind!

Eugen Herrigel

#6. Far from wishing to awaken the artist in the pupil prematurely, the teacher considers it his first task to make him a skilled artisan with sovereign control of his craft.

Eugen Herrigel

#7. You must learn to wait properly ... By letting go of yourself, leaving yourself and everything yours behind you so decisively that nothing more is left of you but a purposeless tension

Eugen Herrigel

#8. Filmmaking is such a collaboration. At a certain point, I suppose you do have to let go and trust the people you're working with.

Madonna Ciccone

#9. The Master's warning that we should not practice anything except self-detaching immersion.

Eugen Herrigel

#10. On Sundays, I'm up at five and in the office by six. After the show, around midday, I flip the switch, and it's all family. Our kids play sports, so we're running around.

David Gregory

#11. You must learn to wait properly.

Eugen Herrigel

#12. Oh, what darkness does great prosperity cast over our minds!

Seneca.

#13. The man, the art, the work--it is all one.

Eugen Herrigel

#14. In the classic Zen in the Art of Archery, Eugen Herrigel's teacher urged him always to take his next shot unburdened by previous failures to hit the target; as he improved, his teacher urged him not to be influenced by his successes either, to stay in the present moment.

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

#15. This means that the mind or spirit is present anywhere, because it is nowhere attached to any particular place. And it can remain present because, even when related to this or that object, it does not cling to it by reflection and thus lose its original mobility.

Eugen Herrigel

#16. This, then, is what counts: a lightning reaction which has no further need of conscious observation. In this respect at least the pupil makes himself independent of all conscious purpose.

Eugen Herrigel

#17. The more a human being feels himself a self, tries to intensify this self and reach a never-attainable perfection, the more drastically he steps out of the center of being.

Eugen Herrigel

#18. Being able to wait without purpose in the state of highest tension ... without continually asking yourself: Shall I be able to manage it? Wait patiently, as see what comes - and how it comes!

Eugen Herrigel

#19. War today is such a more visible thing. We see it on television, on CNN. In 1914, war was a concept.

John Boyne

#20. I never rule anything out. I'm an entertainer. Be it presenting, singing, acting, I just do things I love.

Martine McCutcheon

#21. He grows daily more capable of following any inspiration without technical effort, and also of letting inspiration come to him through meticulous observation.

Eugen Herrigel

#22. The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the one and the further the other will recede.

Eugen Herrigel

#23. Never since the dawn of human history, as far as I can find out, did people long settled in any region give a friendly welcome to newcomers. One of the disagreeable traits of our human nature seems to be to dislike on sight people who come later than the first settlers.

Dorothy Canfield Fisher

#24. The spider dances her web without knowing there are flies that will get caught in it. The fly, dancing nonchalantly on a sunbeam gets caught without knowing what lies in store. But through both of them "It" dances. So, too, the archer hits the target without having aimed-more I cannot say.

Eugen Herrigel

#25. Don't think of what you have to do, don't consider how to carry it out!" he exclaimed. "The shot will only go smoothly when it takes the archer himself by surprise.

Eugen Herrigel

#26. Archery is still a matter of life and death to the extent that it is a contest of the archer with himself;

Eugen Herrigel

#27. Assuming that his talent can survive the increasing strain, there is one scarcely avoidable danger that lies ahead of the pupil on his road to mastery.

Eugen Herrigel

#28. Tradition is a kind of mental illness with a clear symptom of repetition

Mehmet Murat Ildan

#29. Zen Buddhism does not preach. Sermons remain words. It waits until people feel stifled and insecure, driven by a secret longing.

Eugen Herrigel

#30. The right shot at the right moment does not come because you do not let go of yourself. You do not wait for fulfillment, but brace yourself for failure.

Eugen Herrigel

#31. The effortlessness of a performance for which great strength is needed is a spectacle of whose aesthetic beauty the East has an exceedingly sensitive and grateful appreciation.

Eugen Herrigel

#32. We girls aren't supposed to fall for the good boys.We are supposed to like a bit of grit in our oyster.That's how you get a pearl, after all.

James Lovegrove