Eiji Yoshikawa Quotes

Every act is an expression of one's self.

Yes, you crows, Once in a while There's a need for housecleaning, But not only in Nara. It's nature's way To make everything new again. So spring can rise from the ground, We burn leaves, We burn fields. Sometimes we want snow to fall, Sometimes we want a housecleaning. Oh, you crows! Feast away! What a spread! Soup straight from the eye sockets, And thick red sake. But don't have too much Or you'll surely get drunk.

The large strings hummed like rain, The small strings whispered like a secret, Hummed, whispered - and then were intermingled Like a pouring of large and small pearls into a plate of jade. We heard an oriole, liquid, hidden among flowers. We heard a brook bitterly sob along a bank of sand ... By the checking of its cold touch, the very string seemed broken As though it could not pass; and the notes, dying away Into a depth of sorrow and concealment of lament, Told even more in silence than they had told in sound ... A silver vase abruptly broke with a gush of water, And out leapt armored horses and weapons that clashed and smote - And before she laid her pick down, she ended with one stroke, And all four strings made one sound, as of rending silk.

It is easy to surpass a predecessor, but difficult to avoid being surpassed by a successor.

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.

When a woman dislikes the man who is courting her, she parries him cleverly, like a willow in the wind.

If a man wanted to put the entire universe in his breast, he couldn't do it with his chest stuck out.

I wouldn't say Musashi is ordinary. But he is. That's what's extraordinary about him. He is not content to rely on whatever natural gifts he may have. Knowing he is ordinary, he is constantly trying to improve himself. No one appreciates the agonizing effort he's had to make. Now that his years of training have yielded such spectacular results, everybody's talking about his 'God-given talent.' That's how men who don't try very hard comfort themselves.

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.

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.

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.

If you trust me enough to tell me a secret, I certainly promise to keep it. Please speak freely, on any subject.

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.

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.

It was only leaves and branches.

Not only must a warrior be strong with his bow, but he must have a heart full of pity for all living creatures.

Musashi wondered how many people there were who on this night could say: "I was right. I did what I should have done. I have no regrets." For him, each resounding knell evoked a tremor of remorse. He could conjure up nothing but the things he had done wrong during the last year. Nor was it only the last year - the year before, and the year before that, all the years that had gone by had brought regrets. There had not been a single year devoid of them. Indeed, there had hardly been one day.

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.

Everything in the world is good. But if you're not careful, even good things can turn against you

To him, any place could serve as home - more than that: wherever he happened to be was the universe.

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.

He saw the white paper as the great universe of nonexistence. A single stroke would give rise to existence within it. He could evoke rain or wind at will, but whatever he drew, his heart would remain in the painting forever. If his heart was tainted, the picture would be tainted; if his heart was listless, so would the picture be. If he attempted to make a show of his craftsmanship, it could not be concealed. Men's bodies fade away, but ink lives on. The image of his heart would continue to breathe after he himself was gone.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Anywhere there is life, there are eyes. And things, too, speak to those who have ears to hear.

Lord Karasumaru considered it a grave mistake on the part of the gods to
have made a man like himself a nobleman. And, though a servant of the
Emperor, he saw only two paths open to him: to live in constant misery or
to spend his time carousing. The sensible choice was to rest his head
on the knees of a beautiful woman, admire the pale light of the moon,
view the cherry blossoms in season and die with a cup of sake in his hand.

It is easy to crush an enemy outside oneself but impossible to defeat an enemy within.

People were born with two hands; why not use both of them? As it was, swordsmen fought with only one sword, and often one hand. This made sense, so long as everybody followed the same practice. But if one combatant were to employ two swords at once, what chance would an opponent using only one have of winning?

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.

A wise man who cultivates wisdom may sometimes drown in it.

Die? Then so be it.

I want to dedicate myself to training and discipline. I want to spend every moment of every day working to improve myself.

I can only bow to the will of the heaven, but not to the will of these men.

Her only weapons were her tears.

In the ashes on the hearth Saigyo traced and retraced the word, "pity." He had yet to learn to accept life with all its good and evils, to love life in all its manifestations by becoming one with nature. And for this he had abandoned home, wife, and child in that city of conflict. He had fled to save his own life, not for any grandiose dream of redeeming mankind; neither had he taken vows with the thoughts of chanting sutras to Buddha; nor did he aspire to brocaded ranks of the high prelates. Only by surrendering to nature could he best cherish his own life, learn how man should live, and therein find peace. And if any priest accused him of taking the vows out of self-love, not to purify the world and bring salvation to men, Saigyo was ready to admit that these charges were true and that he deserved to be reviled and spat upon as a false priest. Yet, if driven to answer for himself, he was prepared to declare that he who had not learned to love his own life could not love mankind, and that what he sought now was to love that life which was his. Gifts he had none to preach salvation or the precepts of Buddha; all that he asked was to be left to exist as humbly as the butterflies and the birds.

It's no good to want to win still more when you have already won.

How was Gengo to know, Saigyo reflected, that this unheroic existence imposed even greater torment than the icy lashings of the Nachi Falls in its thousand-foot leap? How was Gengo to realize that Saigyo had not slept a single night undisturbed since he had fled his home for the Eastern Hills, that his sleep was haunted by the cries of his beloved daughter from whom he had torn himself.
Who knew that during the day, when he went about his tasks of drawing water and chopping wood as he composed verses, the sighting of the wind in the treetops of the valleys below and the pines surrounding the temple sounded to him like the mourning of his young wife, and so troubled his nights that sleep no longer visited him? Never again would Saigyo find peace. He had wrenched asunder the living boughs of the tree that was his life. Remorse and compassion for his loved ones would dog him to the end of his days.

is there anything that will not decay?

To Kiyomori each stall, each soul here seemed borne under by the crushing weight of the world; everyone here was a pitiful weed, trodden underfoot
a conglomeration of human lives putting down roots in this slime, living and letting live in the struggle to survive; and he was stirred by the fearful and magnificent courage communicated by the scene.

The bitter winds in February were sometimes called the First East Winds, but the longing for spring somehow made them seem more piercing.

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.

Enemies were teachers in disguise.

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.

Love was like a toothache.

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?