Quotes from Inazo Nitobe

Democracy raises up a natural prince for its leader, and aristocracy infuses a princely spirit among the people.

Our sense of honor is responsible for our exaggerated sensitiveness and touchiness; and if there is the conceit in us with which some foreigners charge us, that, too, is a pathological outcome of honor. Have

Confucius himself has repeatedly taught that external appurtenances are as little a part of propriety as sounds are of music.

the boyish desire of the small Britisher, Tom Brown, "to leave behind him the name of a fellow who never bullied a little boy or turned his back on a big one.

Kumazawa:—"When others blame thee, blame them not; when others are angry at thee, return not anger. Joy cometh only as Passion and Desire part.

Ritterlichkeit ist eine Blume, die auf dem Boden Japans nicht weniger heimisch ist als ihr Symbol, die Kirschblüte. Sie ist kein vertrocknetes Blatt einer uralten Tugend, die im Herbarium unserer Geschichte verwahrt wird, sondern ein lebendiges Etwas von Schönheit und Macht, das unter uns weilt.

Bu-shi-do means literally Military-Knight-Ways—the ways which fighting nobles should observe in their daily life as well as in their vocation; in a word, the "Precepts of Knighthood," the noblesse oblige of the warrior class.

Ich wusste wohl, dass dieser Weg Im Tod sein Ende finden muss. Es war der Geist des Yamato, Der trieb mich an, um mutig Dem zu trotzen, was geschieht.

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