Miyamoto Musashi · 96 pages
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“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.”
― Miyamoto Musashi, quote from A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy
“Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world”
― Miyamoto Musashi, quote from A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy
“You must understand that there is more than one path to the top of the mountain”
― Miyamoto Musashi, quote from A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy
“Do nothing that is of no use”
― Miyamoto Musashi, quote from A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy
“The ultimate aim of martial arts is not having to use them”
― Miyamoto Musashi, quote from A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy
“If you wish to control others you must first control yourself”
― Miyamoto Musashi, quote from A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy
“from one thing, know ten thousand things”
― Miyamoto Musashi, quote from A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy
“You can only fight the way you practice”
― Miyamoto Musashi, quote from A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy
“Perceive that which cannot be seen with the eye.”
― Miyamoto Musashi, quote from A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy
“It is difficult to understand the universe if you only study one planet”
― Miyamoto Musashi, quote from A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy
“Today is victory over yourself of yesterday; tomorrow is your victory over lesser men.”
― Miyamoto Musashi, quote from A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy
“Get beyond love and grief: exist for the good of Man.”
― Miyamoto Musashi, quote from A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy
“Do not regret what you have done”
― Miyamoto Musashi, quote from A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy
“The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means. Whenever you parry, hit, spring, strike or touch the enemy's cutting sword, you must cut the enemy in the same movement. It is essential to attain this. If you think only of hitting, springing, striking or touching the enemy, you will not be able actually to cut him.”
― Miyamoto Musashi, quote from A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy
“All man are the same except for their belief in their own selves, regardless of what others may think of them”
― Miyamoto Musashi, quote from A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy
“If you do not control the enemy, the enemy will control you”
― Miyamoto Musashi, quote from A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy
“Do not sleep under a roof. Carry no money or food. Go alone to places frightening to the common brand of men. Become a criminal of purpose. Be put in jail, and extricate yourself by your own wisdom.”
― Miyamoto Musashi, quote from A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy
“You should not have any special fondness for a particular weapon, or anything else, for that matter. Too much is the same as not enough. Without imitating anyone else, you should have as much weaponry as suits you.”
― Miyamoto Musashi, quote from A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy
“The only reason a warrior is alive is to fight, and the only reason a warrior fights is to win”
― Miyamoto Musashi, quote from A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy
“To know ten thousand things, know one well”
― Miyamoto Musashi, quote from A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy
“Respect Buddha and the gods without counting on their help”
― Miyamoto Musashi, quote from A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy
“Whatever the Way, the master of strategy does not appear fast….Of course, slowness is bad. Really skillful people never get out of time, and are always deliberate, and never appear busy.”
― Miyamoto Musashi, quote from A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy
“The important thing in strategy is to suppress the enemy's useful actions but allow his useless actions”
― Miyamoto Musashi, quote from A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy
“You may abandon your own body but you must preserve your honour.”
― Miyamoto Musashi, quote from A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy
“The true science of martial arts means practicing them in such a way that they will be useful at any time, and to teach them in such a way that they will be useful in all things.”
― Miyamoto Musashi, quote from A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy
“To become the enemy, see yourself as the enemy of the enemy”
― Miyamoto Musashi, quote from A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy
“Know your enemy, know his sword.”
― Miyamoto Musashi, quote from A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy
“When you decide to attack, keep calm and dash in quickly, forestalling the enemy...attack with a feeling of constantly crushing the enemy, from first to last.”
― Miyamoto Musashi, quote from A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy
“No man is invincible, and therefore no man can fully understand that which would make him invincible”
― Miyamoto Musashi, quote from A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy
“It is difficult to realize the true Way just through sword-fencing. Know the smallest things and the biggest things, the shallowest things and the deepest things.”
― Miyamoto Musashi, quote from A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy
Miyamoto Musashi
Born place: Mimasaka Province, Japan
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“With a cold"--she spoke evenly, lowering her eyes a little--"now is the hardest time. Maybe even harder than dying. But this is probably as bad as it can get. You might come to fear the next time you get a cold; it will be as bad as this, but if you just hold steady, it won't be. For the rest of your life. That's how it works. You could take the negative view and live in fear: Will it happen again? But it won't hurt so much if you just accept it as a part of life." With that she looked up at me, smiling.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, quote from Kitchen
“Emotion constricted Hawke’s throat. He suddenly understood why the victims of concentration camps had walked quietly to the gas chambers. In the face of horror and insanity, it was the one human thing to do. Not the noble thing, not the heroic thing—the human thing. To live succumbing to the insanity, was the ultimate loss of pride.”
― Karl Marlantes, quote from Matterhorn
“Remember nobody is good or bad. They are either strong or weak. Strong people stick to their morals, no matter what the trials and tribulations. Weak people, many a times, do not even realise how low they have sunk.”
― Amish Tripathi, quote from The Secret of the Nagas
“When you can't save yourself or your heart, it helps to be able to save face.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from What Happened to Goodbye
“Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?
Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things;it has predisposed men to endure them and often to look on them as benefits.
After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, quote from Democracy in America
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