“I have climbed mountain Iwato of Higo in Kyushu to pay homage to heaven, pray to Kwannon, and kneel before Buddha. I am a warrior of Harima province, Shinmen Musashi No Kami Fujiwara No Genshin, age sixty years.
From youth my heart has been inclined toward the Way of strategy. My first duel was when I was thirteen, I struck down a strategist of the Shinto school, one Arima Kihei. When I was sixteen I struck down an able strategist Tadashima Akiyama. When I was twenty-one I went up to the capital and met all manner of strategists, never once failing to win in many contests.”
Go Rin No Sho (1645), Introduction
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Miyamoto Musashi 100
Japanese martial artist, writer, artist 1584–1645Related quotes

Quoted in But Enough About Me by Nancy K. Miller (Columbia University Press, 2002), p. 96
Exteriors (1993)

F 73
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook F (1776-1779)

Variant: When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.

Journal (15 May 1824)