Perfect does not mean perfect actions in a perfect world, bur appropriate actions in an imperfect one.

It is not merely the brevity by which the haiku isolates a particular group of phenomena from all the rest; nor its suggestiveness, through which it reveals a whole world of experience. It is not only in its remarkable use of the season word, by which it gives us a feeling of a quarter of the year; nor its faint all-pervading humour. Its peculiar quality is its self-effacing, self-annihilative nature, by which it enables us, more than any other form of literature, to grasp the thing-in-itself.

Think of Zen, of the Void, of Good and Evil and you are bound hand and foot. Think only and entirely and completely of what you are doing at the moment and you are free as a bird.

There is no greater difference between men than between grateful and ungrateful people.

Regarding R. H. Blyth: Two men who may be called pillars of the Western haiku movement, Harold G. Henderson and R. H. Blyth. . . .

Regarding R. H. Blyth: For translations, the best books are still those by R. H. Blyth. . . .

A thief running away like mad from a ferocious watch-dog may be a splendid example of Zen.