Quotes Page 3

"He who speaks in anger makes his anger heard, but his words forgotten."

-- Unknown

"Patience and persistence can bring down the tallest trees."

-- Unknown

"The bird does not care how it flies,
and Oh! how it flies!"

-- Unknown

"Here is a test to see if your mission on earth is finished:
If you're alive, it isn't."

-- Unknown

"The river has no shape, but it takes on the boundaries which it carves out for itself, so is the mind boundless, until it creates a prison for its own thoughts."

-- Unknown

Those who are first on the battlefield and await the opponents are at ease; those who are last on the battlefield and head into a fight become exhausted.  Therefore, good warriors cause others to go to them and do not go to others."

-- Sun Tzu, The Art of War

"Art reaches its greatest peak when devoid of self-consciousness.  Freedom discovers man the moment he loses concern over what impression he is making or about to make."

-- Bruce Lee, Tao of Jeet Kune Do

"A superstar is like a roman candle, they shine bright.  A teacher is like a lantern, they may not shine as bright, but they illuminate the path."

-- Unknown

"Listen carefully to what I will say now.  For the lesson is not always carried in the words of men.  You see, many believe that the nature of the universe is to hide itself from mortal eyes.  That we must search and meditate upon all around us to see and grasp the simple truth that is enlightenment.  However, perhaps the answers are being told to us all the time and we have just forgotten how to hear them."

-- Unknown

"It is the sound of purest harmony, the sound of the universe.  Make your soul sing its song, and you will find there is nothing you cannot accomplish."

-- Unknown

"Your soul - your life energy - is not bound by flesh. It can reach where your fingers cannot."

-- Unknown

"In the beginners' mind there are many possibilities, In the experts' there are few."

-- Unknown

"O-Sensei is my only Aikido Teacher. When I have questions, I go back to him in my memory. In that way, I am still learning from him - almost 50 years later."

-- Kazuaki Tanahashi

"You gotta charge them something for Aikido," a trainer at a Marine base told me.
But gurus in India were beggars.
They didn't sell their knowledge, because they viewed it as priceless.

-- Ralph Glanstein, 6th dan

"My advice is to be patient. You don't learn Aikido overnight.
If you want something out of Aikido, you have to put something into it."

-- Donovan Waite, 6th dan, Aikido of Center City

"Aikido, he says, is research into the ideal of the perfection of self."

-- Christian Tisser, 7th dan, Shihan, quoting Yamaguchi Sensei

"In Aikido, we always want to make the ideal movement. Somebody comes with a very good, earnest attack, and you try to make the ideal movement. Of course, it doesn't work. So you do it again -- again trying to make the ideal movement. You fail again. In Aikido, we want to make the most beautiful technique, and we fail. Still, the purpose is to make the most perfect technique. That's what we have to remember but we forget it very easily."

"There was a painter named Hans Menling who never signed his paintings. He just wrote, 'It's my best.' I attended a Jesuit College, and every day we had to write 'It's my best' in our notebooks. I think that Aikido is the same: you try to do your best -- not the best, of course, but your best."

-- Christian Tisser, 7th dan, Shihan

"Techniques are tools.
They are the mechanical structures for our transformation."

-- Christian Tisser, 7th dan, Shihan

"That's why O-Sensei said that Aikido is ichi go ichi e.
You must do the technique as if for the first time and the last time."

-- Christian Tisser, 7th dan, Shihan

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes."

-- Marcel Proust