"Think not that I have come in quest of common flowers; but rather to bemoan the loss of one whose scent has vanished from the air."

“I have not used rhyme, because what is really, in the long run, of most interest to American readers is what the poems say; and if one uses rhyme, it is impossible not to sacrifice sense to sound.”

“I would rather be dead.”

“A team of horses cannot overtake a word that has left the mouth.”

“Though the snow-drifts of Yoshino were heaped across his path, doubt not that whither his heart is set, his footsteps shall tread out their way.”

“Ceaseless as the interminable voices of the bell-cricket, all night till dawn my tears flow.”

“To the European poet the relation between man and woman is a thing of supreme importance and mystery. To the Chinese, it is something commonplace, obvious—a need of the body, not a satisfaction of the emotions.”