SagaciousKnowledge > SagaciousKnowledge's Quotes

“A truly brave man is ever serene; he is never taken by surprise; nothing ruffles the equanimity of his spirit. In the heat of battle he remains cool; in the midst of catastrophes he keeps level his mind. Earthquakes do not shake him, he laughs at storms. We admire him as truly great, who, in the menacing presence of danger or death, retains his self-possession; who, for instance, can compose a poem under impending peril or hum a strain in the face of death. Such indulgence betraying no tremor in the writing or in the voice, is taken as an infallible index of a large nature—of what we call a capacious mind (Yoyū), which, far from being pressed or crowded, has always room for something more.”
― Inazo Nitobe, Bushido, The Soul Of Japan

“Knowledge becomes really such only when it is assimilated in the mind of the learner and shows in his character.”
― Inazo Nitobe, Bushido: The Soul of Japan

“What is important is to try to develop insights and wisdom rather than mere knowledge, respect someone's character rather than his learning, and nurture men of character rather than mere talents.”
― Inazo Nitobe

“Beneath the instinct to fight there lurks a diviner instinct to love.”
― Inazo Nitobe, Bushido: The Soul of Japan

“Did not Socrates, all the while he unflinchingly refused to concede one iota of loyalty to his daemon, obey with equal fidelity and equanimity the command of his earthly master, the State? His conscience he followed, alive; his country he served, dying. Alack the day when a state grows so powerful as to demand of its citizens the dictates of their consciences!”
― Inazo Nitobe, Bushido: The Soul of Japan

“Tranquillity is courage in repose. It is a statical manifestation of valor, as daring deeds are a dynamical. A truly brave man is ever serene; he is never taken by surprise; nothing ruffles the equanimity of his spirit.”
― Inazo Nitobe, Bushido, the Soul of Japan

“The Yamato spirit is not a tame, tender plant, but a wild--in the sense of natural--growth; it is indigenous to the soil; its accidental qualities it may share with the flowers of other lands, but in its essence it remains the original, spontaneous outgrowth of our clime. But its nativity is not its sole claim to our affection. The refinement and grace of its beauty appeal to our æsthetic sense as no other flower can. We cannot share the admiration of the Europeans for their roses, which lack the simplicity of our flower. Then, too, the thorns that are hidden beneath the sweetness of the rose, the tenacity with which she clings to life, as though loth or afraid to die rather than drop untimely, preferring to rot on her stem; her showy colours and heavy odours--all these are traits so unlike our flower, which carries no dagger or poison under its beauty, which is ever ready to depart life at the call of nature, whose colours are never gorgeous, and whose light fragrance never palls. Beauty of colour and of form is limited in its showing; it is a fixed quality of existence, whereas fragrance is volatile, ethereal as the breathing of life. So in all religious ceremonies frankincense and myrrh play a prominent part. There is something spirituelle in redolence. When the delicious perfume of the sakura quickens the morning air, as the sun in its course rises to illumine first the isles of the Far East, few sensations are more serenely exhilarating than to inhale, as it were, the very breath of beauteous day.”
― Inazo Nitobe, Bushido, the Soul of Japan

“A samurai was essentially a man of action.”
― Inazo Nitobe, Bushido, The Soul Of Japan

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“All cruelty springs from weakness.”
― Seneca, Seneca's Morals: Of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency

“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.”
― Seneca

“You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It

“The time will come when diligent research over long periods will bring to light things which now lie hidden. A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the investigation of so vast a subject... And so this knowledge will be unfolded only through long successive ages. There will come a time when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them... Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come, when memory of us will have been effaced.”
― Seneca, Natural Questions

“It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.”
― Seneca, The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters

“If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.”
― Seneca the Younger

“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. ”
― Seneca

“He who is brave is free”
― Seneca

“No man was ever wise by chance”
― Seneca

“If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you’re needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

“They lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn.”
― Seneca, On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It

“Associate with people who are likely to improve you.”
― Seneca

“He suffers more than necessary, who suffers before it is necessary.”
― Seneca

“Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.”
― Seneca

“Timendi causa est nescire -
Ignorance is the cause of fear.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Natural Questions

“Wealth is the slave of a wise man. The master of a fool ”
― Seneca, Moral Essays, Volume I: De Providentia. De Constantia. De Ira. De Clementia

“Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow, and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune's control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.”
― Seneca

“For what prevents us from saying that the happy life is to have a mind that is free, lofty, fearless and steadfast - a mind that is placed beyond the reach of fear, beyond the reach of desire, that counts virtue the only good, baseness the only evil, and all else but a worthless mass of things, which come and go without increasing or diminishing the highest good, and neither subtract any part from the happy life nor add any part to it?
A man thus grounded must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters

“If you live in harmony with nature you will never be poor; if you live according what others think, you will never be rich.”
― Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

“As long as you live, keep learning how to live.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca