The Heike Story Quotes

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. ~ Eiji Yoshikawa

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

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

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

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. ~ Eiji Yoshikawa

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

Die? Then so be it. ~ Eiji Yoshikawa

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

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

The experiment left no doubt that, as far as accuracy of measurement went, the resistance disappeared. At the same time, however, something unexpected occurred. The disappearance did not take place gradually but abruptly. From 1/500 the resistance at 4.2K, it could be established that the resistance had become less than a thousand-millionth part of that at normal temperature. Thus the mercury at 4.2K has entered a new state, which, owing to its particular electrical properties, can be called the state of superconductivity. ~ Heike Kamerlingh Onnes

Three things refuse to obey my will: the waters of the Kamo River, the fall of the backgammon dice, and the monks of the Enryakuji Temple. ~ Shirakawa

The bells of the Gion monastery in India echo with the warning that all things are impermanent. The blossoms of the sala trees teach us through their hues that what flourishes must fade. The proud do not prevail for long but vanish like a spring night's dream. In time the mighty, too, succumb: all are dust before the wind. ~ Heike

You are insistent, calling again. You want me to tell you the story of Scheherazade, who rocks the sad king on her knees as she sings him tales from wonderland. Yet you know that I am not Scheherazade, and that one of the world's greatest wonders is that I am unable to enter my country or pass through the region around it. ~ Liana Badr

My function as a writer is not story-telling but truth-telling: to make things plain. ~ Laura Riding

My theory is, I don't know how long it's going to be, five or ten years, there will be only two ways to see a movie, and that will either be on your computer through your TV screen or in the cinema, end of story. There will be no DVD; that's it - simple. ~ Eric Fellner

I was going to up until that last entry. Reading it all just reminded me how much we felt, how much we feel, and how much a part of us it is. It doesn't belong to anyone else and I guess I don't want it to.
It's ours. Our history. Our story. And in a way our future too. As much as I love her, you're right. I can't give that to Joss. I can't give these to her. ~ Samantha Young

This is the story of a man who went far away for a long time, just to play a game. The man is a game-player called 'Gurgeh'. The story starts with a battle that is not a battle, and ends with a game that is not a game. Me? I'll tell you about me later. This is how the story begins. ~ Anonymous

Story has staying power. We remember the illustrations from Sunday's sermon for months afterward, but by coffee hour we're already struggling to recite the pastor's three main points, despite various acronyms meant to help us. ~ Sarah Arthur

I think it would be self-indulgent to go, "Oh, I'm going to make this character different by giving him a quirk of some kind." I don't think that serves the story, particularly. But even very similar scenes with a different set of actors, a different set of circumstances, it starts to evolve as a different character. ~ David Tennant

I had absolutely no interest in being somebody else's muse.
I am not a muse.
I am the somebody.
End of fucking story. ~ Taylor Jenkins Reid

But I'm not a small-literary-novel kind of guy, and once I'd developed the world in the first couple of hundred pages, I felt that there was potential here to go on and write an engaging story set in that world. So that's what I did. This probably ruins things both for the people who want small literary novels and for those who want action-packed epics, but anyway, it's what I wrote. ~ Neal Stephenson

Every hero is the villain of his own story. ~ Holly Black

The whole point of animation to me is to tell a story, make a joke, express an idea. The technique itself doesn't really matter. Whatever works is the thing to use. ~ Terry Gilliam

The Luidaeg sighed and put her arms around me, pulling me close. "Come here," she said. "I need to hold someone, and you need to be held. It's a fair trade. Just for a little while, and then we can go on being what we are." I thought about objecting, but dismissed the idea and nestled against her, enjoying the feeling of security given by knowing someone bigger and stronger than I was would stop anything from hurting me. That's all childhood is, after all: strong arms to hold back the dark, a story to keep the shadows dancing, and a candle to mark the long journey into day. A song to keep the flights of angels at bay. How many miles to Babylon? Sorry. I don't care. ~ Seanan McGuire

I wrote my first story in second grade, and was trying novel-length by sixth. ~ Brian Hodge

If you listen carefully you will hear a symphony of light being played, it is that of you and your partner. It also called love. - On Love ~ Lamine Pearlheart

Most of us live in a fog. It's like life is a movie we arrived to 20 minutes late. You know something important seems to be going on. But we can't figure out the story. We don't know what part we're supposed to play or what the plot is. ~ John Eldredge

To power the country by building 186,000 fifty-story wind turbines - and running 19,000 miles of new transmission lines - just seems impractical and preposterous compared to the idea of building a hundred new nuclear facilities primarily on the sites we already have. ~ Lamar Alexander

was Superman. He jumped off a building - a skyscraper, no less - thinking he could fly away, and died when he found that he couldn't. I don't know if he was wearing his super suit at the time. Noel Thomas's story began with the same ending, though the means weren't so dramatic. She sat in my office, slim black purse on the floor next to her, hands folded on her lap, and calmly related that her father had killed himself. She wanted to know why. ~ Judy K. Walker

I love touring, I love making records, but eventually all I want ... I want to score. I want people to ask me to score their film or use my songs in cinematic ways. I think the ultimate media is a story that you can watch and feel and have a musical moment to. I think it's my favorite. I love watching something when music is creating motion within the motion. ~ Justin Vernon

Whereas shame let out can lead to freedom, or at least to a funny story, which is a sort of freedom too. ~ Jon Ronson

Perhaps she herself is a page that was torn from a story and folded into a star and thrown in the shadows to be forgotten. Perhaps she should not steal books from hidden archives only to rip out their pages and then, give them away. But it is too late to change any of that now. And a beloved book is still beloved even if it was stolen to begin with. And imperfect. And then lost. ~ Erin Morgenstern

Her [ Onata April] great talent as an actress is that she has the ability to understand and listen to the scenario and what the story is, and then she can pretend and live that. ~ David A. Siegel

Look into the mirror.
This is the same person who
has smiled at every challenge.
Either you will win it
or you will have a
story to inspire. ~ Pragnya Sahoo

Every success story is a tale of constant adaption, revision and change. ~ Richard Branson

Or maybe it was just that my life was a big, cruel joke, and there was no escape from the punch line. ~ Stephenie Meyer

The end result of my personal story is that I became a really good drummer, and I know myself well enough to know that I wouldn't have without this really tough conductor and this really cutthroat hostile environment I was in. ~ Damien Chazelle

Far back in the impulses to find this story is a storyteller's belief that at times life takes on the shape of art and that the remembered remnants of these moments are largely what we come to mean by life. The short semihumours comedies we live, our long certain tragedies, and our springtime lyrics and limericks make up most of what we are. they become almost all of what we remember of ourselves. ~ Norman Maclean

I don't think that Prokofiev ever treated me seriously as a composer; he considered only Stravinsky a rival and never missed a chance to take a shot at him. I remember once he started telling me some vile story about Stravinsky. I cut him off. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

Because when you go out, and you have fun, basically you're performing for these tabloid outlets and the paparazzi. And when you perform and create this story, they're chuffed - they get excited, they capture it, and they put it out. ~ Adrian Grenier

Before I start, I trick myself into thinking I know what's going to happen in the story, but the characters have ideas of their own, and I always go with the character's choices. Most of the time I discover plot twists and directions that are better than what I originally had planned. ~ Neal Shusterman

I did a film called 'Victor' that I'm really proud of! It was a period piece and the true life story of Victor Torres. I play his mom, and it's a very moving film. ~ Lisa Vidal