If you work by reason, you grow rough-edged. If you follow your feelings, you get swept away. If you insist on having your way, you feel boxed in. In any case, the human world is hard to live in.

のんきと見える人々も、心の底を叩いてみると、どこか悲しい音がする。

You cannot receive benefit from others without exposing your weaknesses. You cannot give benefit to others without exposing your weaknesses.

We have two ears and one mouth, so we should listen more than we say.

-- Zeno of Citium

Excess benevolence becomes weakness. Excess righteousness becomes rigidity.

-- The 'One-Eyed Dragon' of northern Japan who carved

I came as dew, I vanish as dew — all that I was, all I achieved at Naniwa, is a dream within a dream.

-- The peasant who became ruler of all Japan

If the cuckoo will not sing, I shall make it want to sing.

-- The peasant who became ruler of all Japan

Life is like a long journey carrying a heavy burden. Never hurry.

-- The founder of Japan's Tokugawa shogunate

A human life of fifty years, compared to the span beneath heaven, is nothing but a dream, an illusion.

-- The revolutionary warlord who dismantled feudal Japan's medieval order and launched the country toward unification