Kakuzo Okakura Quotes

“In joy or sadness flowers are our constant friends.”

“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.”

“Tea… is a religion of the art of life.”

“People are not taught to be really virtuous, but to behave properly.”

“The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Let us dream of evanescence, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things.”

“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?”

“We catch a glimpse of the great river of science which never ceases to flow in India. For India has carried and scattered the data of intellectual progress for the whole world, ever since the pre-Buddhist period when she produced the Sankhya philosophy and the atomic theory.”

“Asia is one. The Himalayas divide, only to accentuate, two mighty civilisations, the Chinese with its communism of Confucius, and the Indian with its individualism of the Vedas. But not even the snowy barriers can interrupt for one moment that broad expanse of love for the Ultimate and Universal, which is the common thought-inheritance of every Asiatic race, enabling them to produce all the great religions of the world, and distinguishing them from those maritime peoples of the Mediterranean and the Baltic, who love to dwell on the Particular, and to search out the means, not the end, of life.”

“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 social order.”

“It (Teaism) is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life.”

“Tea is a work of art and needs a master hand to bring out its noblest qualities.”