1. Citations
  2. Auteurs
  3. Arthur Waley

Arthur Waley citations

Arthur Waley est un sinologue et orientaliste britannique, traducteur de chinois mais aussi de japonais, historien, poète et auteur d'anthologies. Reconnu par Ezra Pound et très proche du Bloomsbury Group, il a reçu de nombreux prix littéraires et distinctions honorifiques, dont la dignité de commandeur de l'ordre de l'Empire britannique et l'Ordre des compagnons d'honneur. Wikipedia  

✵ 19. août 1889 – 27. juin 1966
Arthur Waley photo
Arthur Waley: 21   citations 0   J'aime

Arthur Waley: Citations en anglais

“Tripitaka stepped lightly ashore. He had discarded his earthly body; he was cleansed from the corruption of the senses, from the fleshly inheritance of those bygone years. His was now the transcendent wisdom that leads to the Further Shore, the mastery that knows no bounds.”

Help us translate this quote
Arthur Waley

Source: Translations, Monkey: Folk Novel of China (1942), Ch. 28 (p. 282)

“There was a rock that since the creation of the world had been worked upon by the pure essences of Heaven and the fine savours of Earth, the vigour of sunshine and the grace of moonlight, till at last it became magically pregnant and one day split open, giving birth to a stone egg, about as big as a playing ball. Fructified by the wind it developed into a stone monkey, complete with every organ and limb.”

Help us translate this quote
Arthur Waley

Source: Translations, Monkey: Folk Novel of China (1942), Ch. 1 (p. 11)

“Anything whatsoever may become the subject of a novel, provided only that it happens in this mundane life and not in some fairyland beyond our human ken.”

Help us translate this quote
Arthur Waley

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

“Suddenly they saw a body in the water, drifting rapidly down stream. Tripitaka stared at it in consternation. Monkey laughed. 'Don't be frightened, Master,' he said. 'That's you.' And Pigsy said, 'It's you, it's you.' Sandy clapped his hands. 'It's you, it's you,' he cried. The ferryman too joined in the chorus. 'There you go!”

Help us translate this quote
Arthur Waley

he cried. 'My best congratulations.'
Source: Translations, Monkey: Folk Novel of China (1942), Ch. 28 (p. 282)

“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.”

Help us translate this quote
Arthur Waley

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

“Ceaseless as the interminable voices of the bell-cricket, all night till dawn my tears flow.”

Help us translate this quote
Arthur Waley

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

“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.”

Help us translate this quote
Arthur Waley

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

“You that in far-off countries of the sky can dwell secure, look back upon me here; for I am weary of this frail world's decay.”

Help us translate this quote
Arthur Waley

Source: Translations, The Tale of Genji (1925–1933), Ch. 40: 'The Law'

“Master, we can start now; I have killed them all.'
'I am very sorry to hear it,' said Tripitaka. 'One has no right to kill robbers, however violent and wicked they may be. The most one may do is to bring them before a magistrate. It would have been quite enough in this case if you had driven them away. Why kill them? You have behaved with a cruelty that ill becomes one of your sacred calling.'
'If I had not killed them,' said Monkey, 'they would have killed you.'
'A priest,' said Tripitaka, 'should be ready to die rather than commit acts of violence.”

Help us translate this quote
Arthur Waley

Source: Translations, Monkey: Folk Novel of China (1942), Ch. 14 (p. 132)

“Anyone with a good classical education could learn Chinese by himself without difficulty.”

Help us translate this quote
Arthur Waley

1968 remark, quoted in Japan Quarterly, Vol. XVIII, No. 1 (January-March 1971), p. 107

“Since the classical language has an easy grammar and limited vocabulary, a few months should suffice for the mastering of it.”

Help us translate this quote
Arthur Waley

Japanese Poetry: The Uta (1919), Introduction, p. 8

“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.”

Help us translate this quote
Arthur Waley

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

“It is in general the unexplored that attracts us.”

Help us translate this quote
Arthur Waley

Source: Translations, The Tale of Genji (1925–1933), Ch. 9: 'Aoi'

“A team of horses cannot overtake a word that has left the mouth.”

Help us translate this quote
Arthur Waley

Source: Translations, Monkey: Folk Novel of China (1942), Ch. 27 (p. 266)

“I have not used rhyme, because what is really, in the long run, of most interest to American readers is what the poems say; and if one uses rhyme, it is impossible not to sacrifice sense to sound.”

Help us translate this quote
Arthur Waley

Translations from the Chinese (1941), p. 1

“Though the snow-drifts of Yoshino were heaped across his path, doubt not that whither his heart is set, his footsteps shall tread out their way.”

Help us translate this quote
Arthur Waley

Source: Translations, The Tale of Genji (1925–1933), Ch. 19: 'A Wreath of Cloud'

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

Help us translate this quote
Arthur Waley

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

“Think not that I have come in quest of common flowers; but rather to bemoan the loss of one whose scent has vanished from the air.”

Help us translate this quote
Arthur Waley

Source: Translations, The Tale of Genji (1925–1933), Ch. 41: 'Mirage'

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

Help us translate this quote
Arthur Waley

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

“I would rather be dead.”

Help us translate this quote
Arthur Waley

Response when offered the Chair in Chinese at Cambridge, as quoted in Orientalism and the Operatic World (2015) by Nicholas Tarling, p. 78

“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.”

Help us translate this quote
Arthur Waley

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