All Quotes

"FREDERIC: Yes, I have done my best for you. And why? It was my duty under my indentures, and I am the slave of duty."

"KING: Well, Frederic, if you conscientiously feel that it is your duty to destroy us, we cannot blame you for acting on that conviction. Always act in accordance with the dictates of your conscience, my boy, and chance the consequences."

"SONG — MAJOR-GENERAL: I am the very model of a modern Major-General"

"GENERAL: And now that I've introduced myself, I should like to have some idea of what's going on."

"GENERAL: But wait a bit. I object to pirates as sons-in-law."

"HYMN — KING & CHORUS"

"CHORUS: Oh, dry the glistening tear That dews that martial cheek; Thy loving children hear, In them thy comfort seek. With sympathetic care Their arms around thee creep, For oh, they cannot bear To see their father weep!"

"GENERAL: Why do I sit here? To escape from the pirates' clutches, I described myself as an orphan; and, heaven help me, I am no orphan! I come here to humble myself before the tombs of my ancestors, and to implore their pardon for having brought dishonour on the family escutcheon."

"SONG: Go, ye heroes, go to glory"

"FREDERIC: You don't mean to say you are going to hold me to that?"

"FREDERIC: Ought I to tell you? No, no, I cannot do it; and yet, as one of your band--"

"DUET - MABEL and FREDERIC: Stay, Fred'ric, stay!"

"MABEL: Sergeant, approach! Young Frederic was to have led you to death and glory."

"KING: With base deceit"

"SERGEANT: To gain a brief advantage you've contrived,"

"MABEL: Poor wandering ones!"

"And there are so many stories to tell, too many, such an excess of intertwined lives events miracles places rumors, so dense a commingling of the improbable and the mundane! I have been a swallower of lives; and to know me, just the one of me, you'll have to swallow the lot as well."

"What had been (at the beginning) no bigger than a full stop, had expanded into a comma, a word, a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter; now it was bursting into more complex developments, becoming, one might say, a book - perhaps an encyclopedia - even a whole language ..."

"No people whose word for "yesterday" is the same as their word for "tomorrow" can be said to have a firm grip on the time."

"There was one more serious problem... they failed to notice the immobility of my eyelids... they observed my icy blueness, but there was not the slightest tremor; until Amina took matters into her own hands and reached into the cradle to stroke my eyelids downwards. They closed: my breathing altered, instantly, to the contented rhythms of sleep. After that, for several months, mother and ayah took it in turns to open and close my lids. "He'll learn, Madam," Mary comforted Amina, "He is a good obedient child and he will get the hang of it for sure." I learned: the first lesson of my life: nobody can face the world with his eyes open all the time."

"You be respectable, sister," she said, "Me, I'll be alive."

"Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I've gone which would not have happened if I had not come. Nor am I particularly exceptional in this matter; each "I," every one of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude. I repeat for the last time: to understand me, you'll have to swallow a world."

"Children are vessels where adults pour their poison."

"There is no magic on earth strong enough to wipe out the legacies of one's parents."

"It has often been said that Mrs. Gandhi's younger son Sanjay accused his mother of being responsible, through her neglect, for his father's death; and that this gave him an unbreakable hold over her, so that she became incapable of denying him anything."

"Hell is other people's fantasies: every saga requires at least one descent into Jahannum, and I followed Picture Singh into the inky negritude of the Club, holding an infant son in my arms."

"Atemi accounts for 99% of Aikido."

"I felt the universe suddenly quake, and that a golden spirit sprang up from the ground, veiled my body, and changed my body into a golden one. At the same time my body became light. I was able to understand the whispering of the birds, and was clearly aware of the mind of God, the creator of the universe. At that moment I was enlightened: the source of Budo is God's love — the spirit of loving protection for all beings … Budo is not the felling of an opponent by force; nor is it a tool to lead the world to destruction with arms. True Budo is to accept the spirit of the universe, keep the peace of the world, correctly produce, protect and cultivate all beings in nature."

"I am the Universe."

"Shihonage is the foundation of Aikido. All you ever need to master is shihonage."

"Kicking leaves you momentarily on one foot, and for that moment you are in a very weak position. If you were to be swept off your feet, you would be finished. This is why lifting your feet off the ground is crazy."

"Aiki is not a technique to fight with or defeat an enemy. It is the way to reconcile the world and make human beings one family."

"In a real battle, atemi is seventy percent, technique is thirty percent."

"Aikido is Love."

"The Art of Peace begins with you. Work on yourself and your appointed task in the Art of Peace. Everyone has a spirit that can be refined, a body that can be trained in some manner, a suitable path to follow. You are here to realize your inner divinity and manifest your innate enlightenment. Foster peace in your own life and then apply the Art to all than you encounter."

"Each and every master, regardless of the era or the place, heard the call and attained harmony with heaven and earth. There are many paths leading to the top of Mount Fuji, but there is only one summit — love."

"The Way of the Warrior has been misunderstood. It is not a means to kill and destroy others. Those who seek to compete and better one another are making a terrible mistake. To smash, injure, or destroy is the worst thing a human being can do. The real Way of a Warrior is to prevent such slaughter — it is the Art of Peace, the power of love."

"As your Bujutsu [Martial Technique] training approaches perfection you will be able to detect the suki [opening/weakness in your enemy's technique], even before he can, and as if to satisfy some deficiency in him, you can fill the suki with your technique. (p. 26)"

"True Budo is practiced not only to destroy an enemy, it must also make him, or his own will, gladly lose his spirit (seishin) to oppose you. (p. 26)"

"True Budo is done for the sake of "building peace". Train every day so as to make peace between this spirit [Budo] and all things manifested on the face of the Earth. (p. 26)"

"When facing the realm of life and death in the form of an enemy's sword, one must be firmly settled in mind and body, and not at all intimidated; without providing your opponent the slightest opening, control his mind in a flash and move where you will — straight, diagonally, or in any other appropriate direction."

"Regarding technique, from ancient times it has been said that movements must fly like lightning and attacks must strike like thunder."

"Always imagine yourself on the battlefield under the fiercest attack; never forget this crucial element of training."

"One does not need buildings, money, power, or status to practice the Art of Peace. Heaven is right where you are standing, and that is the place to train."

"Those who are possessed by nothing possess everything."

"As soon as you concern yourself with the "good" and "bad" of your fellows, you create an opening in your heart for maliciousness to enter. Testing, competing with, and criticizing others weakens and defeats you."

"Be grateful even for hardship, setbacks, and bad people. Dealing with such obstacles is an essential part of training in the Art of Peace."

"Even the most powerful human being has a limited sphere of strength. Draw him outside of that sphere and into your own, and his strength will dissipate."

"Foster peace in your own life and then apply the Art to all that you encounter."

"If your opponent strikes with fire, counter with water, becoming completely fluid and free-flowing. Water, by its nature, never collides with or breaks against anything. On the contrary, it swallows up any attack harmlessly."