Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Ground Book
Context: To master the virtue of the long sword is to govern the world and oneself, thus the long sword is the basis of strategy. The principle is "strategy by means of the long sword". If he attains the virtue of the long sword, one man can beat ten men. Just as one man can beat ten, so a hundred men can beat a thousand, and a thousand men can beat ten thousand. In my strategy, one man is the same as ten thousand, so this strategy is the complete warrior's craft.
The Way of the warrior does not include other Ways, such as Confucianism, Buddhism, certain traditions, artistic accomplishments and dancing. But even though these are not part of the Way, if you know the Way broadly you will see it in everything. Men must polish their particular Way.
“To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.”
Source: Hamlet
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William Shakespeare 699
English playwright and poet 1564–1616Related quotes
Lectures VI and VII, "The Sick Soul"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
Context: Take the happiest man, the one most envied by the world, and in nine cases out of ten his inmost consciousness is one of failure. Either his ideals in the line of his achievements are pitched far higher than the achievements themselves, or else he has secret ideals of which the world knows nothing, and in regard to which he inwardly knows himself to be found wanting.
Book I, Chapter 10.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Vivian Grey (1826)
"Ultima Ratio Regum"
The Still Centre (1939)
Context: Consider his life which was valueless
In terms of employment, hotel ledgers, news files.
Consider. One bullet in ten thousand kills a man.
Ask. Was so much expenditure justified
On the death of one so young and so silly
Lying under the olive tree, O world, O death?
“As honest as you can expect a man to be in a world where its going out of style.”
Source: The Big Sleep
“Ten thousand do not turn the scale against a single man of worth.”
in Eric Hoffer, Between the Devil and the Dragon (New York: 1982), p. 107
“One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives.”
“And torture one poor word ten thousand ways.”
Britannia Rediviva (1688), line 208.