Quotes by South Korean Authors - Page 2

A man who becomes enchanted by the flower's fragrance stays only for a fleeting moment, but a man who comes because of love stays for a lifetime.
Kim Dong Hwa
Choice is the doorway to our creative power. To unleash this power, we must begin from the state of beingness.
Ilchi Lee
All brains are good brains. However, information can affect the brain in ways that can distort its functioning. When negative information has taken over the natural workings of the brain, you could say that a good brain has become a bad brain. The brain naturally distinguishes positive information from negative, but sometimes we simply lose trust in our brain, allowing outside information to run the show.
Ilchi Lee
I fully recognize there is an urgent need for constructing the _strategic we-nes-in-sameness_ and promoting the _solidarity of sameness_. The sheer realization of the inextricable interconnectedness of I-ness/me-ness and we-ness/us-ness is the round for an authentic solidarity with one another in spite of and regardless of the difference.
Namsoon Kang
The intention to be absolutely truthful and the willingness to put the benefit of all before personal benefit hold the power to change the world.
Ilchi Lee
The kind of woman whose goodness is oppressive
Han Kang
Some memories never heal. Rather than fading with the passage of time, those memories become the only things that are left behind when all else is abraded. The world darkens, like electric bulbs going out one by one. I am aware that I am not a safe person.
Han Kang
We use our minds in a way similar to how we use a scale - it tells us its worth, its value. But what if the scale has not been accurately recalibrated to zero? What if you had forgotten to remove mental and emotional baggage?
Ilchi Lee
_For what ends_ does one claim cosmopolitanism? _Whose interest_ does it serve?
Namsoon Kang
Now I know that anytime you see a “no trespassing” sign, it means you’ve got to go in and take a look.
Kyung-Sook Shin
But maybe it’s the laboring that gives you shape. Might the most fulfilling times be those spent solo at your tasks, literally immersed or not, when you are able to uncover the smallest surprises and unlikely details of some process or operation that in turn exposes your proclivities and prejudices both?
Chang-rae Lee
Don’t sanctuaries become prisons, and vice versa, foremost in the mind?
Chang-rae Lee
Nothing good will come out with lying.
Son Jae Ho
People do not necessarily know what they are doing, because our ability to comprehend even matters that concern us directly is limited – or, in the jargon, we have ‘bounded rationality’. The world is very complex and our ability to deal with it is severely limited. Therefore, we need to, and usually do, deliberately restrict our freedom of choice in order to reduce the complexity of problems we have to face. Often, government regulation works, especially in complex areas like the modern financial market, not because the government has superior knowledge but because it restricts choices and thus the complexity of the problems at hand, thereby reducing the possibility that things may go wrong.
Chang Ha-Joon
You're paved in my heart like an old road. Like the pebbles in a pebble field, dirt in dirt, dust in dust, cobwebs in cobwebs.
Kyung-Sook Shin
The issue of false consciousness is a genuinely difficult problem that has no definite solution. We should not approve of an unequal and brutal society because surveys show that people are happy. But who has the right to tell those oppressed women or starving landless peasants that they shouldn’t be happy, if they think they are? Does anyone have the right to make those people feel miserable by telling them the ‘truth’? There are no easy answers to these questions, but they definitely tell us that we cannot rely on ‘subjective’ happiness surveys to decide how well people are doing.
Ha-Joon Chang
Life is such a strange thing, she thinks, once she has stopped laughing. Even after certain things have happened to them, no matter how awful the experience, people still go on eating and drinking, going to the toilet and washing themselves - living, in other words. And sometimes they even laugh out loud. And they probably have these same thoughts, too, and when they do it must make them cheerlessly recall all the sadness they'd briefly managed to forget.
Han Kang
Red stimulates and excites your nerves, pulse rate and blood circulation, and lends energy to your entire system. When you are fatigued, lethargic or sluggish for any reason, red has an energizing influence.
Tae Yun Kim
Cosmopolitanism emphasizes and is grounded in a _singular relationality between and among people
Namsoon Kang
Walter Mignolo terms and articulates _critical cosmopolitanism, juxtaposing it with globalization, which is a process of "the homogeneity of the planet from above––economically, politically and culturally." Although _globalization from below_ is to counter _globalization from above_ from the experience and perspective of those who suffer from the consequences of _globalization from above_, cosmopolitanism differs, according to Mignolo, form these two types of globalization. Mignolo defines globalization as 'a set of designs to manage the world,' and cosmopolitanism as 'a set of projects toward planetary conviviality
Namsoon Kang
The master potter was trying to create the perfect piece each time, and he would discard even the ones with the slightest flaw. So I chose to create new forms from them, because perhaps, I don’t believe completely in that kind of perfection."To me, a piece of broken ceramic finds another piece, and they come to rely on one another. The cracks between them symbolise the wound... The work is a metaphor of the struggle of life that makes people more mature and beautiful as they overcome their sufferings.
Yeesookyung (Korean artist)
True wisdomis not borrowed knowledgeit must be basedon my own experience.That which I learn from othersis memory, not wisdom
Beopjeong
What is missing in our economic system is a central value that can encompass everything that can be transacted and used to assign the proper relative value to everything.
Ilchi Lee
In the past people only added to their minds. Now people can become complete and live in heaven if they subtract what is in their minds.
Woo Myung
Meditation need not mean sitting in a special posture. Nonetheless, we can use certain physical and mental exercises to calm the noises of the mind and body, and sensitize us to the sound of the soul.
Ilchi Lee
As for women who were pretty, intelligent, strikingly sensual, the daughters of rich families—they would only have served to disrupt my carefully ordered existence
Han Kang
For the first time, she became vividly aware of how much of her life she had spent with her husband. It had been a period of time utterly devoid of happiness and spontaneity. A time that she'd so far managed to get through only by using up every last reserve of perseverance and consideration. All of it self-inflicted.
Han Kang
Our true reality is not a limited phenomenon, existing only between birth and death. It is eternal life that exists alone, self-existent and self-sufficient, the essence of all that is, was, and ever will be throughout the universe. That is what you really are.
Ilchi Lee
When people who don't know you well admire you, they are seeing their projected illusion, not your real self.In contrast, when people who know you well respect you, it is probably because you deserve it.
Haemin Sunim
Recognizing Nothing as one's true nature, following the guidance of our conscience - having a clear distinction between absolute and relative values, and using the Earth as the external absolute scale that matches the internal absolute truthfulness.
Ilchi Lee
I still remember the moment when my gaze fell upon the mutilated face of a young woman, her features slashed through with a bayonet. Soundlessly, and without fuss, some tender thing deep inside me broke. Something that, until then, I hadn't realised was there.
Han Kang
Many of the activities we pursue, the resources we consume, and the waste products we create are the products of our desire to make our bodies a little more comfortable and carefree. Whether it’s food, exercise, music, alcohol, sex, drugs—whatever the stimulus—ultimately what we seek is a feeling of satisfaction. In the end, though, true satisfaction arises from a balance of healthy, harmonious energy. And that harmonious, balanced energy is the core of the natural healing power.
Ilchi Lee
Action is something you do purposefully with attention. If you really want something, you will use as much energy for it, and you will use it through action.
Ilchi Lee
White is associated with purity because the entire spectrum is functioning in unity. White is a healing color. White is appropriate for weddings because the unity of male and female symbolizes the unity of allness.
Tae Yun Kim
Meditation is a powerful way to enhance your attention, develop your ability to think mindfully, and to use the unlimited creative potential of your mind.
Ilchi Lee
Religion is about hospitality, solidarity, and responsibility or it is nothing at all.
Namsoon Kang
The essence of enlightenment … is a big understanding, which gives you a deep and wide perspective to see the world as a whole, and a capacity to accept with compassion all that is. 11/26
Ilchi Lee
Through Life Particles, the thoughts in your mind are the seeds of your present and future experiences that will blossom when given enough energy through action with your focused attention.
Ilchi Lee & Seung Heun Lee
Economics is a political argument. It is not – and can never be – a science; there are no objective truths in economics that can be established independently of political, and frequently moral, judgements. Therefore, when faced with an economic argument, you must ask the age-old question ‘Cui bono?’ (Who benefits?), first made famous by the Roman statesman and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero.
Ha-Joon Chang
When we acknowledge our greatness and start living it, when we open our hearts to the natural kindness and caring for all beings that resides within us, all these necessary transformations can begin.
Ilchi Lee
95% of economics is common sense
Ha-Joon Chang
A more truthful perception may be seen from the perspective of the whole - what we really are, beyond names, roles, education, religion and other information added to our true nature.
Ilchi Lee
Before you sleep, experience yourself as what you really are by recognizing the vast space inside you, and feeling the Energy-Consciousness, LifeParticles, overflowing through the space and through your body.
Ilchi Lee
Even everything will come to failure and seems it always like that, i’ll just start again. The biggest ability i have, is ability to keep repeat on fail.
Yong Junhyung
The moment you choose your vision, great confliction comes along. You have confliction even if you don't choose the vision. Our soul grows not by living life within a small confliction, but rather living with big conflictions inside a big vision. A soul with a vision can succeed.
Ilchi Lee
Being a critic is easy.But if the critic tries to run the operation, he soon understands that nothing is as easy as his criticisms.Criticism without a solution is merely an inflation of the critic's ego.
Haemin Sunim
When someone studies well, has a successful career, or deals with difficulties well, people think he is a wise man. However, such successes do not mean that one is wise. True wisdom is to know with the consciousness of God.
Woo Myung
When you experience being present, there is no separation between you and other things. If you feel separate, you are already out of the present and returned to your familiar land of names and concepts.
Ilchi Lee
Everyone has his or her own means of defining value.
Kyung-Sook Shin
As a phenomenon, life has a beginning and ending, but life itself doesn’t. So, which one is truly me - a phenomenon that lasts only between birth and death, or life itself that underlies all phenomena?
Ilchi Lee
One sided-love always goes with the urge of possessing.
Yu-Rang Han
Imagination might not be limitless. It's still tethered to the universe of what we know.
Chang-rae Lee
Happiness is something we create ourselves. To our eyes, the sun appears to rise in the east every day to create a brilliant morning for the earth. The sun, however, does not create the morning alone: the earth also creates it actively as it rotates every day. We shouldn't just wait for happiness, either. Happiness doesn't come when we wait for it: we make it ourselves.
Ilchi Lee
As the gift of the Creator, natural healing power is ours. That’s why no special method is needed for recovering it. There are no perfect methods, no matter how effective or powerful they may be. What is perfect is our sense of life itself.
Ilchi Lee
The musician and the listener.If this is love between two strangers watching each other from afar, that rough, burning moment when you rush in and kiss is the show.
Tablo
Man's mind is made up of illusionary pictures. Consequently, when he throws away these pictures Truth will enter into his mind, and he will know Truth to the extent of what he has discarded. This is enlightenment.
Woo Myung
By acknowledging and accepting the ultimate commonality, we can naturally and voluntarily develop the attitude of compassion and benevolence toward other people, other life-forms, and all beings. We will want to live for the good of all because we know that's the way we benefit ourselves, too.
Ilchi Lee
If people begin to use the full power of conscience in all the choices they make in their everyday life, from presidential elections to purchasing things in the grocery store, the world will change.
Ilchi Lee
It is important to realize that you are fundamentally made up of Life Particles, as is everyone else. Please realize that you, like everyone you meet, possess a MindScreen. Making use of this powerful asset will help you cultivate a healthier, happier and more peaceful life, and it will help you do the same for others.
Ilchi Lee
Even if you are alive somewhere, the absence of the other person who used to be there beside you obliterates your presence. Everything in the room, even the stars in the sky, can disappear in a second, changing one scene for another, just like in a dream.
Hwang Sok-yong