Yoshida Kenko 兼好
c. 1330 · late Kamakura Japan
Are we to look at blossoms only in full bloom, at the moon only when it is cloudless?
花は盛りに、月は隈なきをのみ見るものかは。Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness), section 137
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Ma Zhiyuan 馬致遠
late 13th century · Yuan China
A withered vine, an old tree, crows at dusk. A small bridge, flowing water, a house. An ancient road, the west wind, a lean horse. The evening sun goes down in the west, and a heartbroken man is at the end of the world.
枯藤老樹昏鴉，小橋流水人家，古道西風瘦馬。
夕陽西下，斷腸人在天涯。To the tune "Sky-Clear Sand": autumn thoughts
Liu Yuxi 劉禹錫
c. 810 · Tang China · In his years of demotion
Since ancient times people have met autumn with sorrow at its loneliness. I say an autumn day is better than a spring morning. In the clear sky one crane climbs, parting the clouds, and carries my poem with it up into the blue.
自古逢秋悲寂寥，我言秋日勝春朝。
晴空一鶴排雲上，便引詩情到碧霄。"Autumn Song," the first poem, in the Complete Tang Poems
Su Shi 蘇軾
1073 · Song China · Xi Shi was a famous beauty of the ancient state of Yue
The water gleams and ripples: clear weather is just right. The hills are veiled in mist: rain is wonderful too. If I were to compare West Lake to the beauty Xi Shi, light make-up or heavy, either suits her well.
水光瀲灧晴方好，山色空濛雨亦奇。
若把西湖比西子，淡粧濃抹總相宜。"Drinking on the Lake: Clear at First, Then Rain"
Pliny the Younger Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus
c. AD 107 · Roman Empire
The chariot races were on, a kind of show that does not hold me in the least. Nothing new, nothing varied, nothing that it is not enough to have seen once. So I wonder all the more that so many thousands of grown men should be so childishly eager, again and again, to see horses running and men standing in chariots.
Circenses erant, quo genere spectaculi ne levissime quidem teneor. Nihil novum nihil varium, nihil quod non semel spectasse sufficiat. Quo magis miror tot milia virorum tam pueriliter identidem cupere currentes equos, insistentes curribus homines videre.Letters 9.6
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