Quotes from Inazo Nitobe

Knowledge becomes really such only when it is assimilated in the mind of the learner and shows in his character.

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

What is important is to try to develop insights and wisdom rather than mere knowledge, respect someone's character rather than his learning, and nurture men of character rather than mere talents.

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.

the feeling of distress is the root of benevolence, therefore a benevolent man is ever mindful of those who are suffering and in distress.

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!

If there is anything to do, there is certainly a best way to do it, and the best way is both the most economical and the most graceful.

A samurai was essentially a man of action.

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.

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

When the delicious perfume of the sakura quickens the morning air, as the sun in its course rises to illumine first the isles of the Far East, few sensations are more serenely exhilarating than to inhale, as it were, the very breath of beauteous day.

Human life has sorrow; They who meet must part; He that is born must die;

dishonor is like a scar on a tree, which time, instead of effacing, only helps to enlarge. Mencius

There are, if I may so say, three powerful spirits, which have from time to time, moved on the face of the waters, and given a predominant impulse to the moral sentiments and energies of mankind. These are the spirits of liberty, of religion, and of honor. —HALLAM, Europe in the Middle Ages.

It is a brave act of valor to contemn death, but where life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest valor to dare to live

Tranquillity is courage in repose.

In the heat of battle he remains cool; in the midst of catastrophes he keeps level his mind.

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

Filial Piety, which is considered one of the two wheels of the chariot of Japanese ethics—Loyalty being the other.

When men's fowls and dogs are lost, they know to seek for them again, but they lose their mind and do not know to seek for it.

You are to be proud of your enemy; then, the success of your enemy is your success also

Indeed, valour and honour alike required that we should own as enemies in war only such as prove worthy of being friends in peace.

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.

Courage is doing what is right