D.T. Suzuki Quotes

Quotes about:

• When we start to feel anxious or depressed, instead of asking, "What do I need to get to be happy?" The question becomes, "What am I doing to disturb the inner peace that I already have?"

  D.T. Suzuki

  Inner Peace, Needs, Asking

  123 Copy quote

• The more you suffer the deeper grows your character, and with the deepening of your character you read the more penetratingly into the secrets of life. All great artists, all great religious leaders, and all great social reformers have come out of the intensest struggles which they fought bravely, quite frequently in tears and with bleeding hearts

  D.T. Suzuki

  Religious, Struggle, Heart

  99 Copy quote

• I am an artist at living - my work of art is my life.

  D.T. Suzuki

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  78 Copy quote

• Unless we agree to suffer we cannot be free from suffering.

  D.T. Suzuki

  Suffering, Agree

  57 Copy quote

• Unless it grows out of yourself no knowledge is really yours, it is only borrowed plumage.

  D.T. Suzuki

  Grows, Borrowed

  D.T. Suzuki (2007). “An Introduction to Zen Buddhism”, p.71, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  95 Copy quote

• Zen teaches nothing; it merely enables us to wake up and become aware. It does not teach, it points.

  D.T. Suzuki

  Wake Up, Doe, Teach

  86 Copy quote

• Thought creates things by slicing up reality into small bits that it can easily grasp. Thus when you are think-ing you are thing-ing. Thought does not report things, it distorts reality to create things, and as Bergson noted, "In so doing it allows what is the very essence of the real to escape." Thus to the extent we actually imagine a world of discrete and separate things, conceptions have become perceptions, and we have in this manner populated our universe with nothing but ghosts.

  D.T. Suzuki

  Real, Thinking, Essence

  79 Copy quote

• The waters are in motion, but the moon retains its serenity.

  D.T. Suzuki

  Inspiring, Moving, Heart

  21 Copy quote

• When traveling is made too easy and comfortable, its spiritual meaning is lost. This may be called sentimentalism, but a certain sense of loneliness engendered by traveling leads one to reflect upon the meaning of life, for life is after all a travelling from one unknown to another unknown.

  D.T. Suzuki

  Life, Spiritual, Loneliness

  99 Copy quote

• Emptiness which is conceptually liable to be mistaken for sheer nothingness is in fact the reservoir of infinite possibilities.

  D.T. Suzuki

  Facts, Emptiness, Infinite

  87 Copy quote

• You ought to know how to rise above the trivialities of life, in which most people are found drowning themselves.

  D.T. Suzuki

  Life Lesson, People, Rise Above

  44 Copy quote

• Eternity is the Absolute present.

  D.T. Suzuki

  Inspirational, Life, Time

  29 Copy quote

• We have two eyes to see two sides of things, but there must be a third eye which will see everything at the same time and yet not see anything. That is to understand Zen.

  D.T. Suzuki

  Eye, Two Sides, Thirds

  88 Copy quote

• Great works are done when one is not calculating and thinking.

  D.T. Suzuki

  Thinking, Done, Great Work

  42 Copy quote

• In the spiritual world there are no time divisions such as the past, present and future; for they have contracted themselves into a single moment of the present where life quivers in its true sense. The past and the future are both rolled up in this present moment of illumination, and this present moment is not something standing still with all its contents, for it ceaselessly moves on.

  D.T. Suzuki

  Spiritual, Single Mom, Moving

  46 Copy quote

• To live - is that not enough?

  D.T. Suzuki

  Enough

  D.T. Suzuki (2007). “An Introduction to Zen Buddhism”, p.54, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  35 Copy quote

• If you have attained something, this is the surest proof that you have gone astray. Therefore, not to have is to have, silence is thunder, ignorance is enlightenment.

  D.T. Suzuki

  Ignorance, Silence, Enlightenment

  74 Copy quote

• The ego-shell in which we live is the hardest thing to outgrow.

  D.T. Suzuki

  Ego, Shells, Hardest

  D.T. Suzuki (2011). “Essays in Zen Buddhism”, p.11, Souvenir Press

  24 Copy quote

• Unless we die to ourselves, we can never be alive again.

  D.T. Suzuki

  Alive, Dies

  16 Copy quote

• The truth of Zen, just a little bit of it, is what turns one's humdrum life, a life of monotonous, uninspiring commonplaceness, into one of art, full of genuine inner creativity.

  D.T. Suzuki

  Life, Art, Truth

  100 Copy quote

• Technical knowledge is not enough. One must transcend techniques so that the art becomes an artless art, growing out of the unconscious.

  D.T. Suzuki

  Art, Technique, Growing

  66 Copy quote

• The worst passion we mortals cherish is the desire to possess. Even when we know that our final destination is a hole not more than three feet square, we have the strongest craving

  D.T. Suzuki

  Passion, Squares, Feet

  14 Copy quote

• Who would then deny that when I am sipping tea in my tearoom I am swallowing the whole universe with it and that this very moment of my lifting the bowl to my lips is eternity itself transcending time and space?

  D.T. Suzuki

  Space, Tea, Swallowing

  70 Copy quote

• The truth of Zen is the truth of life, and life means to live, to move, to act, not merely to reflect.

  D.T. Suzuki

  Moving, Mean, Thinking

  D.T. Suzuki (2011). “Essays in Zen Buddhism”, p.251, Souvenir Press

  87 Copy quote

• Implicity, there should be something mysterious in every day.

  D.T. Suzuki

  Mysterious, Mystery, Should

  14 Copy quote

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