Tag Archives: Epigrams

FIVE WISE LINES [December 2025]

Posted on by
Reply
William Blake painting of Urizen praying to the world he created, an illustration from "Song of Los."
William Blake:
Urizen prays to the world he created (1795)
Song of Los

I must create a system
or be enslaved by another man’s…

william blake; Jerusalem: The emanation of the great albion

Saying Yoga exists to make one more flexible
is like saying that it exists to wring farts out of one’s body,
both will happen — neither is the primary objective.

Me

He that is without sin among you,
let him first cast a stone at her…

JESUS; John 8:7

The best government is that which governs least.

Henry david thoreau, Civil Disobedience

Gods always behave like the people who make them…

zora neale hurston; Tell my horse

FIVE WISE LINES [September 2025]

Posted on by
Reply

The aim of introduction is to conceal a person’s identity.

George Mikes, How To Be an Alien

From the beginning our philosophers have tried to teach us how to die,
and our poets have taught us that to contemplate death
is to learn to live.

Jonathan weiner, Long for this world

Nothing is harder to see into than people’s natures.

Zhuge liang [a.k.a. Kongming], The WAy of the General

To know how to eat is to know how to live.

Auguste Escoffier

Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.

Mark twain

FIVE WISE LINES [August 2025]

Posted on by
Reply

Life has become immeasurably better
since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously.

Hunter s. Thompson

If asked the nature of cha no yu*
Say it’s the sound of wind blow pines
In a painting.

Sen Sotan

*”Tea ceremony” in Japanese.

All rivers flow to the ocean.
Flow and let others flow too.

Sri ramakrishna quoted by Will durant

He who makes a beast of himself
gets rid of the pain of being a man.

Samuel johnson

…The Edge… There is no honest way to explain it
because the only people who really know where it is
are the ones who have gone over.

Hunter s. Thompson, Hell’s Angels

FIVE WISE LINES [July 2025]

Posted on by
Reply

There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.

Josh billings

Everything in the universe is a jug
filled to the brim with wisdom and beauty.

Rumi, Masnavi

Poetry is what gets lost in translation.

Robert frost

“Travel and tell no one, live a true love story and tell no one,
live happily and tell no one, people ruin beautiful things.”

Kahlil gibran

Not all those who wander are lost.

J.r.r. Tolkien, The lord of the rings

FIVE WISE LINES [May 2025]

Posted on by
Reply

It is a happy talent to know how to play.

Ralph waldo emerson

Just living is not enough… one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.

Hans christian andersen

Don’t abandon kindness, mercy, and sympathy in an emergency.

Qiānzì wén [千字文], Ch. 3

Logic will take you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

albert Einstein

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.

Henry david thoreau

FIVE WISE LINES [March 2025]

Posted on by
1

Would the world ever have been made if its maker had been afraid of making trouble?

george bernard shaw, PygMalion

Refrain from talk of others’ shortcomings; don’t rest on your strengths.
[罔谈彼短; 靡恃己长.]

Thousand Character classic [千字文]

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

george bernard shaw, Man and superman

A child is the most reliable measure of time. His daily growth is proof of your daily ageing and decline. The child’s gains are your losses, and the closer a child gets to anything, the farther you withdraw, as though you were tied to one another on opposite spokes of a wheel and the wheel, without your noticing it, turns. Dawn for the child is dusk for you.

Otar chiladze, A Man was going down the road

We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

George bernard shaw, Pygmalion

FIVE WISE LINES FROM WILLIAM JAMES [Feb. 2025]

Posted on by
Reply

Our view of the world is truly shaped
by what we decide to hear.

The greatest weapon against stress
is our ability to choose
one thought over another.

The art of being wise is
the art of knowing what to overlook.

We have grown literally afraid to be poor.
We despise anyone who elects to be poor
in order to simplify and save his inner life.

Whenever two people meet,
there are really six people present.
There is each man as he sees himself,
each man as the other person sees him,
and each man as he really is.

NOTABLE MENTIONS:

We may be in the Universe as dogs and cats
are in our libraries, seeing the books
and hearing the conversation,
but having no inkling of the meaning of it all.

My experience is what I agree to attend to.

FIVE WISE LINES [January 2025]

Posted on by
Reply

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, does not go away.”

Philip k. dick

“The Wu and the Yue peoples hate each other. But in the same boat in a storm, they work together like left and right hands.”

SunZi in The ART of War

“Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life – and travel – leaves marks on you. Most of the time, those marks – on your body or on your heart – are beautiful. Often, though, they hurt.”

anthony bourdain

What allows great kings and generals to win, more frequently than ordinary men, is foreknowledge.
Foreknowledge cannot be attained by spirits or deduced or calculated.”

Sunzi in The ART of war

“Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

T. S. Eliot

FIVE WISE LINES [November 2024]

Posted on by
Reply

Inspiration enters at the border between hard work and laziness.

Lu juren in “Poets’ jade splinters” [Trans. by Barnstone and Ping in The ART Of Writing]

I will not own anything that will one day be a valuable antique.

Miyamoto musashi in “My way of walking alone” [Dokkōdō] (Trans. by Teruo machida)

A house full of gold and jade can’t be guarded.

Laozi in the DAo De jing [Ch. 9]

Writing is a struggle between presence and absence.

Lu ji in The ART of Writing [Trans. by Barnstone and ping]

The best leaders remain unknown; the next best are praised; the next best are feared, and the worst are mocked.

Laozi in dAo de Jing [Ch.17]

FIVE WISE LINES [October 2024]

Posted on by
1

If any thing is sacred the human body is sacred

walt whitman; Leaves of grass; “I sing the body electric”

Strong in their softness are the sprays of the wisteria creeper;
The pine in its hardness is broken by the weak snow.

Saying of Master Jukyo as Translated by Trevor Leggett in Zen and the Ways

When there is mutual ignorance, confidence indeed is king.

Trevor leggett; Zen and the Ways

Do not see the gate and think it is the house. The house is something which is reached by passing through and going beyond the gate.

YAgyu Munenori’s Art of War (As translated by trevor leggett in Zen and the ways)

Students of the Ways must see clearly that in an untrained man the intellect is like a barrister. It argues clearly and logically, but the aim is not truth, but to reach a predetermined conclusion.

Trevor Leggett; Zen and the Ways