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"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…"

"Anyone with a good classical education could learn Chinese by himself without difficulty."

"I have a theory of my own about what this art of the novel is, and how it came into being. To begin with, it does not simply consist in the author's telling a story about the adventures of some other …"

"Tripitaka stepped lightly ashore. He had discarded his earthly body; he was cleansed from the corruption of the senses, from the fleshly inheritance of those bygone years. His was now the transcendent…"

"Since the classical language has an easy grammar and limited vocabulary, a few months should suffice for the mastering of it."

"Suddenly they saw a body in the water, drifting rapidly down stream. Tripitaka stared at it in consternation. Monkey laughed. 'Don't be frightened, Master,' he said. 'That's you.' And Pigsy said, 'It'…"

"'Nothing in the world is difficult,' said the Patriarch, 'it is only our own thoughts that make things seem so.'"

"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."

"Real things in the darkness seem no realer than dreams."

"You that in far-off countries of the sky can dwell secure, look back upon me here; for I am weary of this frail world's decay."

"When translating prose dialogue one ought to make the characters say things that people talking English could conceivably say. One ought to hear them talking, just as a novelist hears his characters t…"