Quotes from William Adams

Faith is a continuation of reason.

Men moving only in an official circle are apt to become merely official -- not to say arbitrary -- in their ideas, and are apter and apter with each passing day to forget that they only hold power in a representative capacity.

Most of us are just about as happy as we make up our minds to be.

If our countries had war the one with the other, that was no cause that he should put us to death; with which they were out of heart that their cruel pretense failed them. For which God be forever-more praised.

So in process of four or five years the emperor called me, as divers times he had done before.

Therefore I do pray and entreat you in the name of Jesus Christ to do so much as to make my being here in Japan known to my poor wife, in a manner a widow and my two children fatherless; which thing only is my greatest grief of heart and conscience.

So that between the Cape of St. Maria and Japan we were four months and twenty-two days; at which time there were no more than six besides myself that could stand upon his feet.

At which time came to us many boats and we suffered them to come aboard, being not able to resist them, which people did us no harm, neither of us understanding the one the other.

From the ship all things were taken out, so that the clothes which I took with me on my back I only had.

So I departed and was free from imprisonment.

In the end of five years I made supplication to the king to go out of this land, desiring to see my poor wife and children according to conscience and nature.

Now being in such grace and favor by reason I learned him some points of geometry and understanding of the art of mathematics with other things, I pleased him so that what I said he would not contrary.

Not only I lost what I had in the ship, but from the captain and the company generally what was good or worth the taking was carried away; all which was done unknown to the emperor.

Faith is the continuation of reason.

I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside me.