Arthur Waley: Thing

Arthur Waley was British academic. Explore interesting quotes on thing.
Arthur Waley: 42   quotes 0   likes

“To hope for [immortality],' said the Patriarch, 'would be like trying to fish the moon out of the water.'
'There you go again!' said Monkey. 'What pray do you mean by fishing the moon out of the water?'
'When the moon is in the sky,' said the Patriarch, 'it is reflected in the water. It looks just like a real thing, but if you try to catch hold of it, you find it is only an illusion.”

Arthur Waley

Source: Translations, Monkey: Folk Novel of China (1942), Ch. 2 (p. 22)

Hope , Fish , Water

“I have a theory of my own about what this art of the novel is, and how it came into being. To begin with, it does not simply consist in the author's telling a story about the adventures of some other person. On the contrary, it happens because the storyteller's own experience of men and things, whether for good or ill—not only what he has passed through himself, but even events which he has only witnessed or been told of—has moved him to an emotion so passionate that he can no longer keep it shut up in his heart.”

Arthur Waley

Source: Translations, The Tale of Genji (1925–1933), Ch. 25: 'The Glow-Worm'

Men , Art , Passion , Heart

“When translating prose dialogue one ought to make the characters say things that people talking English could conceivably say. One ought to hear them talking, just as a novelist hears his characters talk.”

Arthur Waley

"Notes on Translation", in The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 202, No. 5 (November 1958), p. 109

People

“Real things in the darkness seem no realer than dreams.”

Arthur Waley

Source: Translations, The Tale of Genji (1925–1933), Ch. 1: 'Kiritsubo'

Dreams

“Nothing in the world is difficult,' said the Patriarch, 'it is only our own thoughts that make things seem so.”

Arthur Waley

Source: Translations, Monkey: Folk Novel of China (1942), Ch. 2 (p. 26)

World

“To the European poet the relation between man and woman is a thing of supreme importance and mystery. To the Chinese, it is something commonplace, obvious—a need of the body, not a satisfaction of the emotions.”

Arthur Waley

A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1919), Introduction, p. 18

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