Too Many Accomplishments Make No Accomplishments

多芸は無芸 (tagei wa mugei): many accomplishments are no accomplishment. 芸 is an art or an accomplishment, something one is trained in, and 無芸 is its negative; the line is built as a contradiction, and the contradiction is the point: the proverb says that many skills add up to nothing. It is a modern proverb. Its first printing is 1906, in a Kyoto scholar's essay on proverbs made by antithesis, and in 1918 a Japanese-English dictionary set Jack of all trades and master of none beside it, where it has stayed. Behind it stand older Japanese sayings of the same thought, eight crafts, seven poverties, and beside it a line from a Chinese Aesop printed in Tokyo in 1876: a hundred arts are not as good as one art perfected.

This beautiful calligraphy is the perfect gift for the person that may be easily sidetracked. This is an elegant reminder to keep focused on what is truly important.