78 Quotes by Eiji Yoshikawa

Don't yield! Keep up your courage! The same sun looks down on all of us!

Call them robbers and cutthroats--were they not amiable enough when they had sufficient to fill their bellies? Something was out of joint in a world that drove these men to steal.

Die? Then so be it.

Is that so? He who lives in the mountains years for the city, and the city-dweller would rather live in the mountains," the Abbot chuckled, "and nothing is ever to one's liking...

Should misfortune visit the Court, that can only be the result of its continued abuses. If the palace is attacked, that can only be the result of misgovernment. I can hardly be held responsible for the outcome.

I can only bow to the will of the heaven, but not to the will of these men.

Here--you warriors--why this moaning and complaining? Have you no more sense than toads and vipers? Our time hasn't come. Have you no patience? Are we not the 'trodden weed' still? The time is not yet here for us to raise our heads. Must you still complain?

Through his mad fancying he remembered Mokunosuke's words: "Whoever you are, you are a man after all. You are no cripple with those fine limbs." Whether he was the son of an emperor or the child of an intrigue, was he not a child of the heavens and the earth?

I seem to hear thousands of voices--the voices of the common folk in the marketplace--urging me to go forward and do what must be done. More is at stake now than my life. On me turns the future of the warriors. Let's not quibble longer, lest this rare opportunity slip through my fingers.