Lose the I, keep the cat

則天去私
soku.ten.kyo.shi

Literally: follow – sky – leave – private / I

Alternately: Giving up one’s egotism and selfish desires, and living in accordance with the natural order.

Notes: This phrase is attributed to Natsume Soseki, who in his later years apparently came to see it as an ideal frame of mind to approach life and/or literature.

Replacing 則 with homophone 即 is an error. The phrase may also be given a kunyomi (Japanese-style reading) as 天に則り私を去る (ten ni nottori watakushi wo saru).

I'm just kind of done, for the day at least. Sheesh.

The name of this model for glasses frames, by a company called Less Than Human.

About Confanity

I love the written word more than anything else I've had the chance to work with. I'm back in the States from Japan for grad school, but still studying Japanese with the hope of becoming a translator -- or writer, or even teacher -- as long as it's something language-related.
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