Japanese Art Quotes

“Beauty can transform the fragments of a lost heart into poetry, reconstruct it spiritually, and reimagine brokenness into a new reality. Just as in Kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing pottery by embracing its breaks rather than attempting to conceal them, we celebrate its history and acclaim its imperfections. (“Absence of Beauty is like Hell“)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Kintsugi is a Japanese art, that takes broken pottery and delicately places it back together by sealing the cracks with gold lacquer. I found myself admiring the metaphor it represents.
It reminded me of you.
Maybe you feel like you are broken inside, maybe you’re worried that you will disappoint me. Just like this pottery, life will never be perfect, but it can be beautiful. But we have to choose to see the beauty of it, not despite it’s cracks or imperfections but because of it.

I get that you may not want to show me the side of you that’s less than perfect, but don’t you see?
I don’t want perfect. Perfect is overrated.
All I want is you.
All that you are.
Exactly as you are.
I want you to know that I will wait for you, for as long as it takes.
Take your time. (but not too long)”
― Elicia Roper, All That You Are: a heartwarming and emotional novel

“The entrenched interests of the regional nobility prevented the proper functioning of a government built upon ethical practice. While high-minded scholars often called for reforms, their memoranda carried little weight with an idle aristocracy.”
― Joan Stanley-Baker, Japanese Art

“This book by Dr. Yasuda, while ostensibly about haiku, in reality penetrates deeply into the totality of this living spirit of Japan. It deals with those aspects which have produced and maintained haiku into the present day. The important key to understanding comes with the realization that in Japanese art one strives always for the absolute. Of the absolute there is no question of degree; it is either attained or lost. Most often, to be sure, it is not attained, but it is the constant striving toward and awareness of that high goal which gives strength and vitality to this living aesthetic spirit which has so impressed me in Japan.

(Robert B. Hall, Foreword, p. x)”
― Kenneth Yasuda, Japanese Haiku: Its Essential Nature, History, and Possibilities in English

“They practice zazen-put simply, seated meditation-but also to all aspects of their daily lives.”
― Albert Liebermann, Ganbatte!: The Japanese Art of Always Moving Forward