Arthur Waley

"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…"

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

"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."

"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."

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

"I would rather be dead."

"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…"

"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."