Quotes from ‘Musashi – Book 1: The Way of the Samurai’

Inspiring quotations selected from Musashi – Book One: The Way of the Samurai by Eiji Yoshikawa

“I thought men who were good at the martial arts served under great lords and got big allowances.”

“Men are supposed to be able to drink.”

“If a man worries too much about what others think or do, he’s apt to be slow to act.”

“Flutes improve the more they’re played.”

“Even the devil is moved by music.”

“Besides, man is born unclothed. Nakedness is his natural state.”

“They seemed to him doomed to yearn desperately for that which they could not have, for the paternal love with which they were never blessed.”

“Why, when we could live our lives in a flower-filled paradise, do we all prefer to weep, suffer and get lost in a maelstrom of passion and fury, torturing ourselves in the flames of hell?”

“You can’t always judge people by their looks.”

“It is my duty as a priest to pry into people’s lives. I agree it’s a meddlesome trade, but it’s no more useless than the business of a merchant, clothier, carpenter or samurai. It exists because it is needed.”

“But priests shouldn’t have any use for weapons.”

“Woman, marry thyself not to a man – … Woman, marry thyself to the truth.”

“Had Takuan meant that relationships between men and women had to be worked out alone by the people involved? Did he mean that no rules applied, as they did in the Art of War? That there was no foolproof strategy, no way to win?”

“Had Takuan meant that relationships between men and women had to be worked out alone by the people involved? Did he mean that no rules applied, as they did in the Art of War? That there was no foolproof strategy, no way to win?”

“If religious teachings were just common sense, we wouldn’t need prophets to pass them on to us.”

“The Way of the Samurai was a constant gamble, and a samurai had to be ready at all times to kill or be killed.”

“If a samurai dies with a prayer for his lord’s victory on his lips, he has done something fine and meaningful.”

“A samurai does not lie.”

“… it’s a grave error to think the Way of the Samurai consists of nothing but a show of strength.”

“I told you from the beginning to stop threatening me, but you warriors are all the same. You never think about consequences. And that’s your greatest failing.”

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

“That’s a weak point with me. I sleep like a log.”

“To love solitude is the mark of the sage.”

“People aren’t strong at heart, they’re weak. And solitude is no their natural state, particularly when it involves being surrounded by enemies and chased with swords.”

“If you stare at the stars a long time, you can see them moving.”

“Why, why do men run off to war?”

“Being brave was very different from being ferocious.”

“Wasn’t strength a warrior’s most important quality? Was that not what made one warrior superior to other? How could Nikkan speak of it as a flaw?”

“The knowledge that comes from books is of no use to the warrior.”

“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.”

“Was the woman a demon in disguise?”

“The whole world’s gone crazy. A man might as well be a dead leaf, floating in the autumn breeze.”

“There aren’t many things in this world that are all that bad.”

Publishing details: Musashi – Book 1: The Way of the Samurai by Eiji Yoshikawa, Corgi Books, Translated from the Japanese by Charles S. Terry, Foreword by Edwin O. Reischauer, 1990, 302 p.

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