The cynicism that regards hero worship as comical is always shadowed by a sense of physical inferiority

Nobody even imagines how well one can lie about the state of one’s own heart.

We tend to suffer from the illusion that we are capable of dying for a belief or theory. What Hagakure is insisting is that even in merciless death, a futile death that knows neither flower nor fruit has dignity as the death of a human being. If we value so highly the dignity of life, how can we not also value the dignity of death? No death may be called futile.

A man isn't tiny or giant enough to defeat anything.

Other people must be destroyed. In order that I might truly face the sun, the world itself must be destroyed.

Even when we're with someone we love, we're foolish enough to think of her body and soul as being separate. To stand before the person we love is not the same as loving her true self, for we are only apt to regard her physical beauty as the indispensable mode of her existence. When time and space intervene, it is possible to be deceived by both, but on the other hand, it is equally possible to draw twice as close to her real self.

For an artist to do creative work, he needs at once physical health and some physiomental ill health. He needs both serenity and gloom.