Tale Of The Heike Quotes

The sound of the Gion Shoja temple bells echoes the impermanence of all things; the color of the sala flowers reveals the truth that to flourish is to fall. The proud do not endure, like a passing dream on a night in spring; the mighty fall at last, to be no more than dust before the wind.

The Jetavana Temple bells ring the passing of all things. Twinned sala trees, white in full flower, declare the great man's certain fall. The arrogant do not long endure: They are like a dream one night in spring. The bold and brave perish in the end: They are as dust before the wind.

The bells of the Gion monastery in India echo with the warning that all things are impermanent. The blossoms of the sala trees teach us through their hues that what flourishes must fade. The proud do not prevail for long but vanish like a spring night’s dream. In time the mighty, too, succumb: all are dust before the wind.

Call them robbers and cutthroats--were they not amiable enough when they had sufficient to fill their bellies? Something was out of joint in a world that drove these men to steal.

Is that so? He who lives in the mountains years for the city, and the city-dweller would rather live in the mountains," the Abbot chuckled, "and nothing is ever to one's liking...

So it is that in our world hopes are thwarted at every turn and the people's lot is always pain.

Here--you warriors--why this moaning and complaining? Have you no more sense than toads and vipers? Our time hasn't come. Have you no patience? Are we not the 'trodden weed' still? The time is not yet here for us to raise our heads. Must you still complain?

Three things refuse to obey my will: the waters of the Kamo River, the fall of the backgammon dice, and the monks of the Enryakuji Temple.

Perhaps the whole thing is a dream, they thought, and yet it seemed real. Surely it must be real—yet it was still like a dream.

The sovereign is a ship, his people water. Water keeps the ship afloat; water can capsize it as well. Subjects sustain their sovereign; subjects also overthrow him.

From a lament by Nōin Hōshi, included in the early-thirteenth-century anthology Shinkokinshū: “I, who live on, saw the autumn moon again this year, but I shall not see again the friend I have lost.

There is a book where it is written: 'Who refuses what heaven offers, the same shall incur heaven's blame; failure to act when the time comes invites nothing but disaster.

The loyal subject serves not two lords. The chaste woman knows no second man.

So be it, cuckoo! Let us, you and I, compare the flow of our tears, for I, too, in this sad world do little but lift my cry.

Cuckoo, when you come seeking from the orange tree that sweetest fragrance, do you call out of yearning for your loves of long ago?

No wonder everyone sought, by hook or by crook, alliance with the Heike. All alive within the four seas mimicked the ways of Rokuhara,14 down to the mere cut of a robe or crease of a hat.

(song) The Jetavana Temple bells ring the passing of all things. Twinned sal trees, white in full flower, declare the great man’s certain fall.1 The arrogant do not long endure: They are like a dream one night in spring.

In the ashes on the hearth Saigyo traced and retraced the word, "pity." He had yet to learn to accept life with all its good and evils, to love life in all its manifestations by becoming one with nature. And for this he had abandoned home, wife, and child in that city of conflict. He had fled to save his own life, not for any grandiose dream of redeeming mankind; neither had he taken vows with the thoughts of chanting sutras to Buddha; nor did he aspire to brocaded ranks of the high prelates. Only by surrendering to nature could he best cherish his own life, learn how man should live, and therein find peace. And if any priest accused him of taking the vows out of self-love, not to purify the world and bring salvation to men, Saigyo was ready to admit that these charges were true and that he deserved to be reviled and spat upon as a false priest. Yet, if driven to answer for himself, he was prepared to declare that he who had not learned to love his own life could not love mankind, and that what he sought now was to love that life which was his. Gifts he had none to preach salvation or the precepts of Buddha; all that he asked was to be left to exist as humbly as the butterflies and the birds.

He whose fame had so resounded the whole length and breadth of Japan, who had wielded colossal power, Kiyomori, in an instant floated as smoke into the sky over the city, while the remains mingled soon with the sands of the shore, and all he had been returned to earth.

Fighting back tears of parting, he tugged at her sleeve. Your presence with me and this dewdrop life of mine have this in common: that tonight, for all I know, the end is to come for both. Striving likewise not to cry, she replied, If this is the end and the two of us must part, then this dewdrop, too, is certain to melt away, my love, even before you.

I have lost Tomoakira. Kenmotsu Tarō, too, is dead. Nothing is left me but despair. What kind of man would see his son challenge the foe to save his father and then ...? What kind of man, I say, seeing him stricken, would not save him but rather, like me, run away? Ah, what sharp words I would have had for anyone who had done the same! But now that that man is myself, I have learned all too convincingly how desperately one clings to life. What other people must think of me now, I can only shudder to imagine.

No man, high or low, can keep from treading the path of love. For a husband and wife above all, a single night spent side by side confirms, they say, a bond established over five hundred lives. A tie founded so long in the past is very far from casual. All those who are born must die, it is true. All who meet must part. That is simply the way of this world. As one dewdrop may fall in its time from the tip of a leaf and another trickle straight down the stem to the root, one will precede the other sooner or later. Could the moment for that parting then never come?

Kiyomori dijo para sus adentros: "... ¡Ah, yo también quiero tener una esposa! ¿No habrá otra muchacha como ella en alguna parte del mundo?". Tragó saliva y acto seguido se ruborizó por el sonido que produjo su garganta. De pronto le vino a la mente la imagen de Ruriko. Al mismo tiempo, recordaba la postura de la prostituta de Rokujou-Touin cuando estaba durmiendo. Al parecer, él ni siquiera sabía distinguir exactamente el objeto del amor. La idea que tenía del amor era la de un simple encuentro ocasional. En el caso de que pudiera tomar a alguien por esposa cuanto antes, no le importaba que fuese Ruriko, la prostituta de Rokujou-Touin o incluso otra cualquiera.

gainsay him.

this book what it is.

祇園精舎の鐘の聲、諸行無常の響き有り。 沙羅雙樹の花の色、盛者必衰の理を顯す。 驕れる者も久しからず、唯春の夜の夢の如し。 猛き者も遂には滅びぬ、偏に風の前の塵に同じ。 Gionshōja no kane no koe, Shogyōmujō no hibiki ari. Sarasōju no hana no iro, Jōshahissui no kotowari wo arawasu. Ogoreru mono mo hisashikarazu, tada haru no yo no yume no gotoshi. Takeki mono mo tsui ni wa horobin(u), hitoeni kaze no mae no chiri ni onaji. The sound of the Gion Shōja bells echoes the impermanence of all things; the color of the sāla flowers reveals the truth that the prosperous must decline. The proud do not endure, they are like a dream on a spring night; the mighty fall at last, they are as dust before the wind.

To depend on the protection of another man is to be his slave, to protect other folk is to be the slave of your own emotions.