The proverbial philosophy of a people helps us to understand more about them than any other kind of literature.

Perhaps there is an idea among Japanese students that one general difference between Japanese and Western poetry is that the former cultivates short forms and the latter longer ones, gut this is only in part true.

There was very little suicide among the men of the North, because every man considered it his duty to get killed, not to kill himself; and to kill himself would have seemed cowardly, as implying fear of being killed by others

In order to comprehend the beauty of a Japanese garden, it is necessary to understand - or at least to learn to understand - the beauty of stone.

As a result, the highly civilized man can endure incomparably more than the savage, whether of moral or physical strain. Being better able to control himself under all circumstances, he has a great advantage over the savage.

One of the great defects of English books printed in the last century is the want of an index.

But I confess that "my mind to me a kingdom is" - not! Rather it is a fantastical republic, daily troubled by more revolutions than ever occurred in South America.