Top 61 Eiji Yoshikawa Quotes
#1. It does happen, of course, that the priesthood has been on bad terms with womankind for some three thousand years. You see, Buddhism teaches that women are evil. Fiends. Messengers of hell. I've spent years immersed in the scriptures, so it's no accident that you and I fight all the time.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#2. Whether people were great or not, there was not much variety in their inner life experience. Any difference lay merely in how they dealt with common human weaknesses.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#3. True courage knows fear. It knows how to fear that which should be feared. Honest people value life passionately, they hang on to it like a precious jewel. And they pick the right time and place to surrender it, to die with dignity.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#4. If a man wanted to put the entire universe in his breast, he couldn't do it with his chest stuck out.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#5. Don't yield! Keep up your courage! The same sun looks down on all of us!
Eiji Yoshikawa
#7. A fief, the elder Hosokawa had advised, was like a castle wall built of many rocks. A rock that could not be cut to fit in comfortably with the others would weaken the whole structure, even though the rock itself might be of admirable size and quality.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#9. If the talents I was born with are the right ones, I may someday achieve my goal. If not, I may go through life being as stupid as I am now.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#10. Anywhere there is life, there are eyes. And things, too, speak to those who have ears to hear.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#11. The world is always full of the sound of waves.
The little fishes, abandoning themselves to the waves, dance and sing, and play, but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it depth?
Eiji Yoshikawa
#12. You seem to be under the misconception that if you perform one brave deed, that alone makes you a samurai. Well it doesn't! you let that one act of loyalty convince you of your righteousness. The more convinced you became, the more harm you caused yourself and everyone else.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#13. The bitter winds in February were sometimes called the First East Winds, but the longing for spring somehow made them seem more piercing.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#14. I seem to hear thousands of voices
the voices of the common folk in the marketplace
urging me to go forward and do what must be done. More is at stake now than my life. On me turns the future of the warriors. Let's not quibble longer, lest this rare opportunity slip through my fingers.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#15. Sincerity, even if it speaks with a stutter, will sound eloquent when inspired.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#16. Through his mad fancying he remembered Mokunosuke's words: "Whoever you are, you are a man after all. You are no cripple with those fine limbs." Whether he was the son of an emperor or the child of an intrigue, was he not a child of the heavens and the earth?
Eiji Yoshikawa
#17. You're going to find people from all over the country, everyone hungry for money and position. You won't make a name for yourself just doing what the next man does. You'll have to distinguish yourself in some way.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#18. Hold on to your life and make it honest and brave.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#19. Think what you like. There are people who die by remaining alive and others who gain life by dying.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#20. It is easy to crush an enemy outside oneself but impossible to defeat an enemy within.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#21. Beyond the shadow of a doubt, food was more important than a woman's suffering.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#22. The greatest happiness of life was to stand at the difficult border between success and failure.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#23. Should misfortune visit the Court, that can only be the result of its continued abuses. If the palace is attacked, that can only be the result of misgovernment. I can hardly be held responsible for the outcome.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#24. There is nothing outside of yourself that can ever enable you to get better, stronger, richer, quicker, or smarter. Everything is within. Everything exists. Seek nothing outside of yourself.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#25. The truth of the scholar, alone in his study, does not always accord with what the world at large considers to be true.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#26. It is easy to surpass a predecessor, but difficult to avoid being surpassed by a successor.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#28. People tend to be put off by the idea of selling sex, but if you spend a winter's night with one of them and talk with her about her family and so on, you're likely to find she's just like any other woman.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#29. If you trust me enough to tell me a secret, I certainly promise to keep it. Please speak freely, on any subject.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#30. The authorities make them hate him. Otsu, these people are simple. They're afraid of the government, so afraid that if it so decrees, they'll drive away their fellow villagers, even their own kin.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#32. Not only must a warrior be strong with his bow, but he must have a heart full of pity for all living creatures.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#34. The line between life and death is not thicker than an eyelid.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#35. Fighting isn't all there is to the Art of War. The men who think that way, and
are satisfied to have food to eat and a place to sleep, are mere vagabonds. A
serious student is much more concerned with training his mind and disciplining
his spirit than with developing martial skills.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#39. A day in a man's life is constructed according to whether he accepts or rejects flashes of inspiration.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#40. You're safer out in the open than you are crouching in the woodshed listening for footsteps and going crazy.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#41. It's no good to want to win still more when you have already won.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#42. Everything in the world is good. But if you're not careful, even good things can turn against you
Eiji Yoshikawa
#43. She needed intimacy and a sense of partaking in, not just observing, real life.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#44. If the young cannot harbor great dreams in their souls, who can?
Eiji Yoshikawa
#45. There's not much benefit in attacking an empty house.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#46. When a woman dislikes the man who is courting her, she parries him cleverly, like a willow in the wind.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#47. Who among all the provincial lords - besides Lord Asakura - is a man upon whom we could rely? Who is the most reliable military leader in the country today? Does such a man exist?" "He
Eiji Yoshikawa
#48. To him, any place could serve as home - more than that: wherever he happened to be was the universe.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#50. The world is a stone wall ... and they have put the stones so close together that there is not a single crack through which one may enter.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#51. I want to dedicate myself to training and discipline. I want to spend every moment of every day working to improve myself.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#52. The young man rushed toward them. "Stand and fight!" he was shouting. "Is running away the Yoshioka version of the Art of War? I personally don't want to kill you, but my Drying Pole's still thirsty. The least you can do, cowards that you are, is leave your heads behind.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#53. A wise man who cultivates wisdom may sometimes drown in it.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#54. Still, in a fight like that, you never know. There's a superhuman element involved. All warriors have to face it; winning or losing is partly a matter of luck.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#55. Danger was the grindstone on which the swordsman whetted his spirit. Enemies were teachers in disguise.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#56. I want to lead an important life. I want to do it because I was born a human being.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#57. Take a good look at the times. It is inevitable that greedy men, who close their eyes and obstruct the tide of the times with their selfishness, will be burned up together with the fallen leaves.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#58. Is that so? He who lives in the mountains years for the city, and the city-dweller would rather live in the mountains," the Abbot chuckled, "and nothing is ever to one's liking ...
Eiji Yoshikawa
#59. Here
you warriors
why this moaning and complaining? Have you no more sense than toads and vipers? Our time hasn't come. Have you no patience? Are we not the 'trodden weed' still? The time is not yet here for us to raise our heads. Must you still complain?
Eiji Yoshikawa
#60. I can only bow to the will of the heaven, but not to the will of these men.
Eiji Yoshikawa
#61. Call them robbers and cutthroats
were they not amiable enough when they had sufficient to fill their bellies? Something was out of joint in a world that drove these men to steal.
Eiji Yoshikawa
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