it is easy to surpass a predecessor, but difficult to avoid being surpassed by a successor.

It's interesting, isn't it? Being in the world.

The greatest happiness of life was to stand at the difficult border between success and failure.

The world is a stone wall ... and they have put the stones so close together that there is not a single crack through which one may enter.

The summit is believed to be the object of the climb. But its true object--the joy of living--is not in the peak itself, but in the adversities encountered on the way up.

To Kiyomori each stall, each soul here seemed borne under by the crushing weight of the world; everyone here was a pitiful weed, trodden underfoot -- a conglomeration of human lives putting down roots in this slime, living and letting live in the struggle to survive; and he was stirred by the fearful and magnificent courage communicated by the scene.

Monks transgress the Laws of the Buddha, stir up the common people, store wealth and weapons, and spread rumors; under the guise of religion, they are nothing more than self-serving agitators.