20 Quotes by Inazo Nitobe

Bushido as an independent code of ethics may vanish, but its power will not perish from the earth; its schools of martial prowess or civic honor may be demolished, but its light and its glory will long survive their ruins. Like its symbolic flower, after it is blown to the four winds, it will still bless mankind with the perfume with which it will enrich life.

We needed no Shakespeare to feel -- though, perhaps, like the rest of the world, we needed him to express it.

A samurai was essentially a man of action.

Beneath the instinct to fight there lurks a diviner instinct to love.

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!

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.

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.

Chivalry is itself the poetry of life.” – SCHLEGEL, Philosophy of History.

Bushido. The sense of honor which cannot bear being looked down upon as an inferior power, – that was the strongest of motives.