When confronted with two alternatives, life and death, one is to choose death without hesitation.

The Four Oaths: Never be late with respect to the way of the warrior; be useful to the lord; be respectful to your parents; get beyond love and grief: exist for the good of man.

One must know the so-called 'lesson of a downpour. A man, caught in a sudden rain en route, dashes along the road not to get wet or drenched. Once one takes it for granted that in rain he naturally gets wet, he can be in a tranquil frame of mind even when soaked to the skin. This lesson applies to everything.

Calculating people are contemptable. The reason for this is that calculation deals with loss and gain, and the loss and gain mind never stops. Death is considered loss and life is considered gain. Thus, death is something that such a person does not care for, and he is contemptable. Furthermore, scholars and their like are men who with wit and speech hide their own true cowardice and greed. People often misjudge this.

There is not a man who does not get senile by the time he reaches sixty. And when one thinks that he will not be senile, he is already so.

There is nothing we should be quite so grateful for as the last line of the poem that goes, 'When your own heart asks.

Singlemindedness is all-powerful.