Takuan Soho

There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrate to some stroke of the imagination.

Truth is the summit of being justice is the application of it to affairs.

I’ve never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them.

The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.

All good things are cheap: all bad are very dear.

Hate has caused a lot of problems in this world, but it has not solved one yet.

We are inclined to believe those whom we don not know because they have never deceived us.

In every great time there is some one idea at work which is more powerful than any other, and which shapes the events of the time and determines their ultimate issues.

The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit – not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic. Its throes will heave our exuviate from their graves.

One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals.

Prosperity is the best protector of principle.

We are prisoners of ideas.

The superiority of some men is merely local. They are great because their associates are little.

We meet on the broad pathway of good faith and good will; no advantage shall be taken on either side, but all shall be openness and love. I will not call you children, — for parents sometimes chide their children too severely; nor brothers only, — for brothers differ. The friendship between me and you I will not compare to a chain; for that the rains might rust, or the falling tree might break. We are the same as if one man’s body were to be divided into two parts, we are all one flesh and blood.

You cannot have power for good without having power for evil too. Even mother’s milk nourishes murderers as well as heroes.