“Wistaria sprays, as they trail in the breeze, suggest softness, gentleness, reticence. Disappearing and then appearing again in the early summer greenery, they have in them that feeling for the poignant beauty of things long characterized by the Japanese as mono no aware.”
Japan, the Beautiful and Myself (1969)
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Yasunari Kawabata44
Japanese author, Nobel Prize winner 1899–1972Related quotes
“I have suggested that behind almost all myth lies the mono-plot of the game of hide-and-seek.”
Alan Watts (1915–1973) British philosopher, writer and speaker
The Two Hands of God : The Myths of Polarity (1963), p. 29
“Summer bachelors like summer breezes, are never as cool as they pretend to be.”
Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Two: The Palace of the Summerland
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist
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Isadora Duncan (1877–1927) American dancer and choreographer
As quoted in Modern Dancing and Dancers (1912) by John Ernest Crawford Flitch, p. 105.
Context: To seek in nature the fairest forms and to find the movement which expresses the soul of these forms — this is the art of the dancer. It is from nature alone that the dancer must draw his inspirations, in the same manner as the sculptor, with whom he has so many affinities. Rodin has said: "To produce good sculpture it is not necessary to copy the works of antiquity; it is necessary first of all to regard the works of nature, and to see in those of the classics only the method by which they have interpreted nature." Rodin is right; and in my art I have by no means copied, as has been supposed, the figures of Greek vases, friezes and paintings. From them I have learned to regard nature, and when certain of my movements recall the gestures that are seen in works of art, it is only because, like them, they are drawn from the grand natural source.
My inspiration has been drawn from trees, from waves, from clouds, from the sympathies that exist between passion and the storm, between gentleness and the soft breeze, and the like, and I always endeavour to put into my movements a little of that divine continuity which gives to the whole of nature its beauty and its life.
Sei Shonagon (966–1025) Japanese author and a court lady
Source: The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon (1002), p. 109
“… now and then a giggling trail of mermaids appeared in our wake. We fed them oatmeal.”
Tove Jansson book The Exploits of Moominpappa
Source: Moominpappa's Memoirs