His own image... was no longer the reflection of a clumsy, dirty, gray bird, ugly and offensive. He himself was a swan! Being born in a duck yard does not matter, if only you are hatched from a swan's egg.
Bio: Asai Ryōi was a Japanese writer in the early Edo period. A Buddhist priest who was at one time head of a Kyoto temple, he is held to be one of the finest writers of Kanazōshi.
