#principles

In Japan, a number of time-honored everyday activities (such as making tea, arranging flowers, and writing) have traditionally been deeply examined by their proponents. Students study how to make tea, perform martial arts, or write with a brush in the most skillful way possible to express themselves with maximum efficiency and minimum strain. Through this efficient, adroit, and creative performance, they arrive at art. But if they continue to delve even more deeply into their art, they discover principles that are truly universal, principles relating to life itself. Then, the art of brush writing becomes shodo—the “Way of the brush”—while the art of arranging flowers is elevated to the status of kado—the “Way of flowers.” Through these Ways or Do forms, the Japanese have sought to realize the Way of living itself. They have approached the universal through the particular. ↗

— H.E. Davey

#budo #do #efficiency #flowers #ikebana

One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any moan, however much we have suffered from him. ↗

— Socrates

#injustice

Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour ... If at my convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#doctrine #ethics #law #morality #principles

Life is indeed terribly complicated—to a man who has lost his principles. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#simplicity #life

Ours is the age of substitutes: instead of language, we have jargon: instead of principles, slogans: and, instead of genuine ideas, bright ideas. ↗

— Eric Bentley

#bright #genuine #ideas #instead #jargon

Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed. ↗

— Mark Twain

#except #force #principles #real #well-fed

So now is the time, more than ever, for those who truly value all the principles of democracy, especially including dissent, to be the most forceful in speaking up, standing up and speaking out. ↗

— Jim Hightower

#dissent #especially #ever #forceful #including

For I firmly believe that Jewish life, indeed any communal life, can only be organized according to democratic principles. ↗

— Theodore Bikel

#any #believe #communal #democratic #firmly

When a battle for suffrage is conducted, it should only be conducted according to socialist principles, and therefore with the demand of universal suffrage for women and men. ↗

— Clara Zetkin

#battle #conducted #demand #men #only

Great ambition is the passion of a great character. Those endowed with it may perform very good or very bad acts. All depends on the principles which direct them. ↗

— Napoleon Bonaparte

#ambition #bad #character #depends #direct