Quotes of famous people in Japanese and Chinese calligraphy

There is something about quotes that people like. Perhaps it is their amazing power of defining and summarising our paths, our goals, things we like and do not like, and so on. Those quotes assist us in expressing thoughts or wishes that, sometimes, we have troubles with compressing them into a smaller package, vocabularistically speaking.

This new project of mine aims at gathering quotations and sayings of people from any ethnic, cultural, or historical environment, and putting their words on paper by means of Chinese or Japanese characters. The power of Far Eastern calligraphy resides in the complexity of the message of the brush strokes (or even pen / ballpen strokes, as you can see in this particual movie, below). Kanji or hanzi (or other writing systems, such as Japanese kana) can convey the emotions of the writer very well.

The line flows down fromthe top of the page to the bottom like water. It can be a violent mouintain creek with many rapid curves and strokes, or a gently meandring stream thorugh a wide valley. It can be a roaring waterfall crushing anything in its path, or a still lake embracing the warm rays of lazy sun, setting down.

The script can be refined like mature clerical script (八分隷) or small seal script (小篆), where stokes are premeditated and they seem to be designed. It can be wild like cursive script (草書), or uneasy and illusively careless like ancient clerical script (古隷), to give only a few examples. Then, each of those has its variations. The ink is the limit.

The quote in this movie is by Albert Schweitzer, an extremely talented man, who was a German theologian, pholosopher, physician, and a musician. It reads: "Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful." Albert Schweitzer

Japanese translation:
成功は幸福の鍵ではない。幸福が成功の鍵なのだ。自分のやっていることが好きなら、きっと成功するだろう。

My path to happiness is marked by ink and brush. The day I had realised it, I was born again. I wish you will find yours.