The spirit of Japanese poetry Quotes

“Life is no quest of longevity and days:
Where are the flowers a hundred years old?”
― Yoné Noguchi, The spirit of Japanese poetry

“The real test for poets is how far they resist their impulse to utterance, or, in another word, to the publication of their own work—not how much they have written, but how much they have destroyed. To live poetry is the main thing, and the question of the poems written or published is indeed secondary.”
― Yoné Noguchi, The spirit of Japanese poetry

“I come always to the conclusion that the English poets waste too much energy in "words, words, words.”
― Yoné Noguchi, The spirit of Japanese poetry

“The Hokku poet's chief aim is to impress the readers with the high atmosphere in which he is living.”
― Yoné Noguchi, The spirit of Japanese poetry

“Vagueness is often a virtue; a god lives in a cloud; truth cannot be put on one's finger-tip. The darkness of night is beauty; that is only another view of the light of day.”
― Yoné Noguchi, The spirit of Japanese poetry

“When one knows that the things useless are the things most useful under different circumstances (to give one example: a little stone lazy by a stream, which becomes important when you happen to hear its sermon), he will see that the aspect of uselessness in poetry is to be doubly valued since its usefulness is always born from it like the day out of the bosom of night”
― Yoné Noguchi, The spirit of Japanese poetry

“I have no quarrel with one who emphasizes the immediate necessity of joining the hand of poetry and life; however, I wish to ask him the question what he means by the word life.”
― Yoné Noguchi, The spirit of Japanese poetry

“The Western poet would be better off by parting from Christianity, social reform, and what not. I think it is time for them to live more of the passive side of Life and Nature; so as to make the meaning of the whole of them perfect and clear, to value the beauty of inaction so as to emphasise action, to think of Death so as to make Life more attractive.”
― Yoné Noguchi, The spirit of Japanese poetry

“The things useless are the things most useful under different circumstances (to give one example: a little stone lazy by a stream, which becomes important when you happen to hear its sermon), he will see that the aspect of uselessness in poetry is to be doubly valued since its usefulness is always born from it like the day out of the bosom of night.”
― Yoné Noguchi, The spirit of Japanese poetry

“The real test for pots is how far they resist their impulse to utterance, or, in another word, to the publication of their own work—not how much they have written, but how much they have destroyed. To live poetry is the main thing, and the question of the poems written or published is indeed secondary.”
― Yoné Noguchi, The spirit of Japanese poetry