Samurai Bushido Quotes

#1. All that matters is having single-minded purpose ( ichinen), in the here and now. Life is an ongoing succession of 'one will' at a time, each and every moment. A man who realizes this truth need not hurry to do, or seek, anything else anymore. Just live in the present with single-minded purpose. People forget this important truth, and keep seeking other things to accomplish. #Quote by Yamamoto Tsunetomo

#2. I'm serious, baby. The Doors are the only western rock band that really gets the heart and soul of Japan. A samurai knows that he can die at any time. That's what makes life precious. And don't even talk to me about lame hippie whiners like John Fogerty and Creedence Clearwater revival. Jim Morrison . . . samurai! John Fogerty . . . ham on rye! #Quote by Carol Storm

#3. There were charming ones as well as terrible ones, that I must admit. The painter was particularly entranced by Japanese masks: warriors', actors' and courtesans' masks. Some of them were frightfully contorted, the bronze cheeks creased by a thousand wrinkles, with vermilion weeping from the corners of the eyes and long trails of green at the corners of the mouths like splenetic beards.

'These are the masks of demons,' said the Englishman, caressing the long black swept-back tresses of one of them. 'The Samurai wore them in battle, to terrify the enemy. The one which is covered in green scales, with two opal pendants between the nostrils, is the mask of a sea-demon. This one, with the tufts of white fur for eyebrows and the two horsehair brushes beside the lips, is the mask of an old man. These others, of white porcelain - a material as smooth and fine as the cheeks of a Japanese maiden, and so gentle to the touch - are the masks of courtesans. See how alike they all are, with their delicate nostrils, their round faces and their heavy slanted eyelids; they are all effigies of the same goddess. The black of their wigs is rather beautiful, isn't it? Those which bubble over with laughter even in their immobility are the masks of comic actors.'

That devil of a man pronounced the names of demons, gods and goddesses; his erudition cast a spell. Then: 'Bah! I have been down there too long!'

Now he took up the light edifices of gauze and painted silk #Quote by Jean Lorrain

#4. Supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy. #Quote by Sun Tzu

#5. One who was born in the house of a warrior, regardless of his rank or class, first acquaints himself with a man of military feats and achievements in loyalty ... Everyone knows that if a man doesn't hold filial piety toward his own parents he would also neglect his duties toward his lord. Such a neglect means a disloyalty toward humanity. Therefore such a man doesn't deserve to be called 'samurai'. #Quote by Takeda Shingen

#6. There's a level where the themes of a film are very relevant to me and also the idea of finding out how relevant one genre is to another. I think that westerns and samurai films and superhero films have a lot in common. It's just that the scale of the visuals in tentpole films can sometimes overwhelm the drama. #Quote by James Mangold

#7. What do I geek out about? What am I? Hmmm. I love movies. I watch movies. I like big, sweeping epics, like Ed Zwick stuff: 'The Last Samurai,' 'Legends of the Fall,' 'Blood Diamond,' 'Glory.' #Quote by Chris Evans

#8. In our modern world, we look unkindly on mistakes and imperfection. But this is far from the samurai ideal. Mistakes are part of the learning process and if you haven't made them then you are, indeed, dangerous because it means you have never learned anything. Mistakes, to a samurai, are the proof of your learning. #Quote by Alexei Maxim Russell

#9. I love family reunions. Maybe next year we could pass out samurai swords. #Quote by Doug Solter

#10. Never quit, you have to resist to the utmost. 'Til you drop, like a Samurai #Quote by Carlson Gracie

#11. The Hand (Kara-Te) is the cutting edge of the Mind #Quote by Soke Behzad Ahmadi

#12. Bushido. The sense of honor which cannot bear being looked down upon as an inferior power, - that was the strongest of motives. #Quote by Inazo Nitobe

#13. Scientist and smart fellow learner-of-stuff, want to do samurai-monster training with us? We intend to become dangerous. #Quote by Laini Taylor

#14. So the monks and the samurai all had something with the three-pronged fork symbol," Paul said as they bounced in the back of Ricky's truck. "And they all move and work in threes. So how is the Adversary tracking us?"
"You mean tracking you," Cody said, laughing. "We Indians just blend into the background, en'it? #Quote by Guy L. Pace

#15. ... the samurai ethic is a political science of the heart, designed to control such discouragement and fatigue in order to avoid showing them to others. It was thought more important to look healthy than to be healthy, and more important to seem bold and daring than to be so. This view of morality, since it is physiologically based on the special vanity peculiar to men, is perhaps the supreme male view of morality. #Quote by Yukio Mishima

#16. Cinema really lends itself well to big, archetypal stories, you know, classic old stories and you need kind of a weird, big terrain like the Japanese plains for Samurai movies or the West. You need that for these giants to walk around. #Quote by Alexander Payne

#17. It is the very mind itself that leads the mind astray - of the mind, do not be mindless #Quote by Takuan Soho

#18. SHUCHU RYOKU - Focus all your energy to one point. #Quote by Gozo Shioda

#19. Life is like swordplay. Grip it, hold it tightly, then make your move. #Quote by Louis Edward Rosas

#20. A soldier came to Hakuin and asked "Is there really a paradise and a hell?"
"Who are you?" inquired Hakuin.

"I am a samurai," the warrior replied.

"You, a samurai!" exclaimed Hakuin. "What kind of ruler would have you as his guard? Your face looks like that of a beggar!"

The soldier became so angry that he began to draw his sword, but Hakuin continued. "So you have a sword! Your weapon is probably as dull as your head!"

As the soldier drew his sword Hakuin remarked "Here open the gates of hell!"

At these words, the samurai, perceiving the discipline of the master, sheathed his sword and bowed.

"Here open the gates of paradise," said Hakuin #Quote by Hakuin Ekaku

#21. Wikkity, every time you punch a ninja…an angel gets its wings #Quote by Eric Anderson

#22. I have found that the Way of the samurai is death. This means that when you are compelled to choose between life and death, you must quickly choose death. #Quote by Yamamoto Tsunetomo

#23. The essence of samurai is not just service, but loyalty to his master, to a cause greater than himself. #Quote by Barry Eisler

#24. I HAD known him as a bulldozer, as a samurai, as an android programmed to kill, as Plastic Man and Titanium Man and Matter-Eater Lad, as a Buick Electra, as a Peterbilt truck, and even, for a week, as the Mackinac Bridge, but it was as a werewolf that Timothy Stokes finally went too far. #Quote by Michael Chabon

#25. And when the moment came, even then Genji would be fortunate. He would die without fear, drenched in his own heart's blood, in the embrace of a beautiful woman, and she would weep for him.

What samurai could hope for more? #Quote by Takashi Matsuoka

#26. A samurai never worries about losing his life. He worries about losing his honour. Being shamed is far worse than losing your life. A samurai is always ready to die - for his lord, for his honour. That's the samurai way #Quote by Lesley Downer

#27. Silly Caucasian girl likes to play with Samurai swords. #Quote by Lucy Liu

#28. At the moment of victory, tighten the straps of your helmet. #Quote by Tokugawa Ieyasu

#29. It's a Samurai story [47 ronin], so if we change too much Japanese audiences will have strong against feelings to the film. It's not good. #Quote by Hiroyuki Sanada

#30. Those wolves were crueler even than the Japanese devils. They knew that all they had to do was rip open the bellies and let the horses die under their own hooves. I've never seen anything more sinister, more savage in my life. Those wolves embody the spirit of the Japanese samurai. Suicidal attacks don't faze them, and that makes Mongol wolves more fearful than any others. I won't rest till I kill every last one of them! #Quote by Jiang Rong

#31. When the mindfulness of a samurai swordsman fails, he loses his life. When we lose mindfulness in daily life, something similar happens. We become so entangled in our own thoughts and emotions that we lose contact with the bigger picture. #Quote by Culadasa

#32. The Russells arrive at the same conclusion: "There is certainly no evidence from mamamalian behaviour that social aggression is more prevalent or intense among carnivores than among herbivores. And as for humans: "There is certainly no evidence that social violence has been more prevalent or intense in carnivorous hunting than in vegetarian agricultural societies. Hunting people have sometimes been extremely war-like; but no human group has produced more peaceful communities than some of the Eskimos, who have been carnivorous hunters, presumably, since the Old Stone Age.' The Samurai, on the other hand, were strict vegetarians; and so were the Hindu mobs in India which massacred their Moslem brethren whenever given a chance. It was not the eating of reindeer-steaks which caused the Fall. #Quote by Arthur Koestler

#33. Kim Stanley Robinson wields a pen like a samurai sword #Quote by Me

#34. I am the scroll of the poet behind which samurai swords are being sharpened. #Quote by Lester Cole

#35. The Elsinore's bow tilted skyward while her stern fell into a foaming valley. Not a man had gained his feet. Bridge and men swept back toward me and fetched up against the mizzen-shrouds. And then that prodigious, incredible old man appeared out of the water, on his two legs, upright, dragging with him, a man in each hand, the helpless forms of Nancy and the Faun. My heart leapt at beholding this mighty figure of a man-killer and slave-driver, it is true, but who sprang first into the teeth of danger so that his slaves might follow, and who emerged with a half-drowned slave in either hand.

I knew augustness and pride as I gazed--pride that my eyes were blue, like his; that my skin was blond, like his; that my place was aft with him, and with the Samurai, in the high place of government and command. I nearly wept with the chill of pride that was akin to awe and that tingled and bristled along my spinal column and in my brain. As for the rest--the weaklings and the rejected, and the dark-pigmented things, the half-castes, the mongrel-bloods, and the dregs of long-conquered races--how could they count? My heels were iron as I gazed on them in their peril and weakness. Lord! Lord! For ten thousand generations and centuries we had stamped upon their faces and enslaved them to the toil of our will. #Quote by Jack London

#36. I am a genre lover - everything from spaghetti western to samurai movie. #Quote by Quentin Tarantino

#37. I've always been passionate about these different (film) genres. Kung fu movies, samurai movies, Japanese movies, all this kind of stuff, and my love for it, and just trying to present it in a way that other people can love it as much as I do. #Quote by Quentin Tarantino

#38. I'm not a fighter, but in my mind I'm fighting every day. 'What's new? What am I doing?' I'm fighting myself. My soul is samurai. My roots aren't samurai, but my soul is. #Quote by Masaharu Morimoto

#39. He was righteous. He had a sense of duty, of what was right and wrong in the world, and I don't mean that in some evangelical sense of the word. And I don't mean that his world was just black and white. He just had a code, you know? He used to talk about that, about how few people had CODES anymore. It was his thing. He was always reading books about the samurai, about Japanese culture. #Quote by Nickolas Butler

#40. The visual palette suggests the creepy pastel paintings of Guy Peellaert (Rock Dreams); the fantasy battles with monsters and samurais echo the muscular landscapes of Frank Frazetta and Boris Vallejo. The movie is like an arrested adolescent's Google search run amok. #Quote by Richard Corliss

#41. We are samurai, Lord. Death defines us. We must become a master of dealing it to our enemies, yes, but most of all lose all fear of our own. #Quote by David Kirk

#42. I feel like a millionaire on the back of an armored jet-ski my samurai girlfriend who loves me is charging at a cartel speedboat to win a game of chicken. Isn't this the day's best part? You don't even have to remember to enjoy it. It enjoys you into itself. #Quote by Adam Levin

#43. Honor knows no birthright. #Quote by Louis Edward Rosas

#44. Read Hearn, the most eloquent and truthful interpreter of the Japanese mind, and you see the working of that mind to be an example of the working of Bushido. #Quote by Inazo Nitobe

#45. My last semester at Vassar, I'd taken to wearing nunchakus in a strap-on holster and carrying around a samurai sword - that should tell you all you need to know. #Quote by Anthony Bourdain

#46. Naturally, the top does not automatically make us better. Like the samurai frequented ordinary cutthroat, so sometimes extreme mountaineer can be self-centered, mythomaniac or crook to each yourself and the environment. #Quote by Wojciech Kurtyka

#47. I wasn't hip to 'Samurai Jack' until I saw it, but then I was all, 'This show is awesome!' #Quote by John DiMaggio

#48. I want to lead an important life. I want to do it because I was born a human being. #Quote by Eiji Yoshikawa

#49. A samurai was essentially a man of action. #Quote by Inazo Nitobe

#50. Throughout his career, Jobs liked to see himself as an enlightened rebel pitted against evil empires, a Jedi warrior or Buddhist samurai fighting the forces of darkness. IBM was his perfect foil. He cleverly cast the upcoming battle not as a mere business competition, #Quote by Walter Isaacson