“One can even buy a so-called Religion,which is really but common morality sanctified with flowers and music. Rob the Church of her accessories and what remains behind?”

“Behold the complacent salesman retailing the Good and True.One can even buy a so-called Religion, which is really but commonmorality sanctified with flowers and music. Rob the Church of heraccessories and what remains behind? Yet the trusts thrive marvelously,for the prices are absurdly cheap,--a prayer for a ticket to heaven,a diploma for an honorable citizenship.Hide yourself under a bushelquickly, for if your real usefulness were known to the world you wouldsoon be knocked down to the highest bidder by the public auctioneer.”

“Our standards of morality are begotten of the past needs of society, but is society to remain always the same?”

“One cannot listen to different pieces of music at the same time, a real comprehension of the beautiful being possible only through concentration upon some central motive.”

“Tea ... is a religion of the art of life.”

“In joy or sadness, flowers are our constant friends.”

“Much has been said of the aesthetic values of chanoyu- the love of the subdued and austere- most commonly characterized by the term, wabi. Wabi originally suggested an atmosphere of desolation, both in the sense of solitariness and in the sense of the poverty of things. In the long history of various Japanese arts, the sense of wabi gradually came to take on a positive meaning to be recognized for its profound religious sense. ...the related term, sabi,... It was mid-winter, and the water's surface was covered with the withered leaves of the of the lotuses. Suddenly I realized that the flowers had not simply dried up, but that they embodied, in their decomposition, the fullness of life that would emerge again in their natural beauty.”