Yamamoto Tsunetomo Quotes

The desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders of cowardice and propagators of corruption.

If you seek in the spirit of selfishness, to grasp all as your own, you shall lose all, and be driven out of the world, at last, naked and forlorn, to everlasting poverty and contempt.

I know that you're selfish, selfish beyond words, and I know that you haven't the nerve of a rabbit, I know you're a liar and a humbug, I know that you're utterly contemptible. And the tragic part is'--her face was on a sudden distraught with pain--'the tragic part is that notwithstanding I love you with all my heart.

I know you'll probably get angry with me for that, shout, stamp your feet: "speak just for yourself and your miseries in the underground, and don't go saying 'we all.'" Excuse me, gentleman, but I am not justifying myself with this allishness. As far as I myself am concerned, I have merely carried to an extreme in my life what you have not dared to carry even halfway, and, what's more, you've taken your cowardice for good sense, and found comfort in thus deceiving yourselves. So that I, perhaps, come out even more "living" than you.

I had often heard Mentor say, that the voluptuous were never brave, and I now found by experience that it was true; for the Cyprians whose jollity had been so extravagant and tumultuous, now sunk under a sense of their danger and wept like women. I heard nothing but the screams of terror and the wailings of hopeless distress. Some lamented the loss of pleasures that were never to return; but none had presence of mind either to undertake or direct the navigation of the menaced vessel.

For what is there more hideous than avarice, more brutal than lust, more contemptible than cowardice, more base than stupidity and folly?

Truth . . . and if mine eyes Can bear its blaze, and trace its symmetries, Measure its distance, and its advent wait, I am no prophet - I but calculate.

If there is excitement in their lives, it is contained in the figures on the profit and loss sheet. What an indictment.

Some things You have to let be lost Some battles, some battles You have to leave unfought. Then the truth just wastes away In all we dare not say. And in all we can't explain But I faithfully remain.

Because we cannot accept the truth of transience, we suffer.

You haven't changed. You may say: 'I'm full of love, I'm full of truth, I'm full of knowledge, I'm full of wisdom.' I say: 'That's all nonsense. Do you behave? Are you free of fear? Are you free of ambition, greed, envy and the desire to achieve success in every field? If not, you are just playing a game. You are not serious.'

Sincerity means that the appearance and the reality are exactly the same.

By the truth we are undone. Life is a dream. 'Tis the waking that kills us. He who robs us of our dreams robs us of our life.

One may gain one truth at the expense of another.

A gamester, as such, is the cool, calculating, essential spirit of concentrated, avaricious selfishness.

At the end of the day, anybody who thinks there's a reward for nothing, ends up losing.

Those that think that wealth is the proper thing for them cannot give up their revenues; those that seek distinction cannot give up the thought of fame; those that cleave to power cannot give the handle of it to others. While they hold their grasp of those things, they are afraid of losing them. When they let them go, they are grieved and they will not look at a single example, from which they might perceive the folly of their restless pursuits - such men are under the doom of heaven.

The more you want, the more you stand to lose

One of the chief misfortunes of honest people is that they are cowardly.

Knowing reality is knowing that you can't lose it.

Men sooner forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony

Sin makes man a coward; but a life in the Truth of Christ makes Him bold.

The dangers gather as the treasures rise.

We have to look at the substance of something rather than the shadow.