Martial Arts Quotes

“The best fighter is never angry.”
― Lao Tzu

“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
― Bruce Lee

“Never respond to an angry person with a fiery comeback, even if he deserves it...Don't allow his anger to become your anger.”
― Bohdi Sanders, Warrior Wisdom: Ageless Wisdom for the Modern Warrior

“Use only that which works, and take it from any place you can find it.”
― Bruce Lee, Tao of Jeet Kune Do

“The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means. Whenever you parry, hit, spring, strike or touch the enemy's cutting sword, you must cut the enemy in the same movement. It is essential to attain this. If you think only of hitting, springing, striking or touching the enemy, you will not be able actually to cut him.”
― Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings

“Preoccupied with a single leaf you won't see the tree.”
― Vagabond

“To me, the extraordinary aspect of martial arts lies in its simplicity. The easy way is also the right way, and martial arts is nothing at all special; the closer to the true way of martial arts, the less wastage of expression there is.”
― Bruce Lee

“You Have the Power to Fulfill Your Dreams!”
― Dr. Tae Yun Kim, Seven Steps to Inner Power

“... but to remain historically accurate, I would have had to leave out an important question that I felt needed to be addressed, which is, 'What if Jesus had known kung fu?”
― Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

“The warrior learns of the spiritual realm by dwelling on the cutting edge of the sword, standing at the edge of the fire pit, venturing right up to the edge of starvation if necessary. Vibrant and intense living is the warrior's form of worship.”
― Stephen K. Hayes

“In Japan, a number of time-honored everyday activities (such as making tea, arranging flowers, and writing) have traditionally been deeply examined by their proponents. Students study how to make tea, perform martial arts, or write with a brush in the most skillful way possible to express themselves with maximum efficiency and minimum strain. Through this efficient, adroit, and creative performance, they arrive at art. But if they continue to delve even more deeply into their art, they discover principles that are truly universal, principles relating to life itself. Then, the art of brush writing becomes shodo—the “Way of the brush”—while the art of arranging flowers is elevated to the status of kado—the “Way of flowers.” Through these Ways or Do forms, the Japanese have sought to realize the Way of living itself. They have approached the universal through the particular.”
― H.E. Davey, Japanese Yoga: The Way of Dynamic Meditation

“The most difficult part ot traditional taekwondo is not learning
the first kick or punch. It is not struggling to remember the
motions of a poomsae or becoming aquainted with Korean culture.
Rather, it is taking the first step across the threshold of the dojang
door. This is where roads diverge, where choices are made that
will resonate throughout a lifetime.”
― Doug Cook, Taekwondo: A Path to Excellence

“Unfortunately, religion often works to shrink and tame the very wild and mysterious forces that first drew our wonder. In the process of making the inexplicable safe for the masses, the possibilities for real illusion-piercing insight becomes reduced. One might say that they are only available to those who dare to ride the breaking crest of direct life-altering experience.”
― Stephen K. Hayes

“I’ve learned to fall like the BJJ player, to protect the body through controlling the distribution of force by slapping the mat with hands open. With hands open. Hands open. Open. O Pen.”
― Cameron Conaway, Caged: Memoirs of a Cage-Fighting Poet

“The Destructive Arts are exactly like Martial Arts, except they don't have uniforms or usefulness and the end result doesn't resemble art in any way.”
― Jim Benton, Okay, So Maybe I Do Have Superpowers

“The Chinese words ‘kung fu’ translate more or less as ‘a man hard at work over a long time’. If you want to unlock the full power of kung fu, it is not going to be easy: you are going to have to work, you are going to have to sacrifice and you are going to have to suffer – over a long time. There really is no such thing as a free lunch.”
― Master Iain Armstrong

“Tenderness relieves strength that encumbers.”
― Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut

“I can show you the path but I can not walk it for you.”
― Master Iain Armstrong , Get Your Health Back FAST With Chinese Chi Kung.

“He landed on cheap shot, but I knocked him out of the tournament.”
― Josh Waitzkin, The Art of Learning: A Journey in the Pursuit of Excellence

“I think all artists struggle to represent the geometry
of life in their own way, just like writers deal with
archetypes. There are only so many stories that you can
tell, but an infinite number of storytellers.”
― Henry Mosquera, Sleeper's Run

“The historic beauty of BJJ rests not with its ability to allow a smaller man to maim a larger man, but with its ability to allow any man of any size to survive.”
― Cameron Conaway, Caged: Memoirs of a Cage-Fighting Poet

“If you take a bus, you should know when to get off!".”
― Master Iain Armstrong, Get Your Health Back FAST With Chinese Chi Kung.

“Η δυνατή γροθιά κατά την γνώμη μου, δεν είναι αυτή που θα πετάξει τον αντίπαλο τρία μέτρα μακριά, δυνατά γροθιά είναι εκείνη που οταν την δώσεις θα φύγεις πίσω και εσύ ο ίδιος.”
― Γιώργος Μ.

“Chapter Six: Mistress of Red

From underneath from hellish bowels,
She lives the torment she shrieks and howls.
A damned flame of volcanic intent,
Seeks a city where her hatred may vent.

Underneath the bow of vaulted earth,
This spirit breaks from infernoed perch.
Circles the span of inward woe,
From beneath the caverns does she go.

She seeks the city she may destroy,
To lie in ruins for her ploy.
From lofty plume of sordid ash,
She delights to see her cuts and gash.

Vulcania Draconis, spirit of bitter ’ire,
Rings the earth with her dredful fires.
Horrendous demon from Vulcan’s forge,
Lays waste to the earth, her inhabitants engorged.

Mighty Pompeii knew her ways,
Scoffed at her threats and would not pay.
In vindiction’s rage hissed she their doom,
Cast them alive within their tombs.

And Krakatoa and Mycenae,
They would not yield, she laid them waste.
An extortioness, royal supreme,
To conquer or destroy, her consummate dream.

How this evil one sets her pace,
Rings sweet earth in her death’s nec-lace.
Far from below she blasts her smoke,
To cover their eyes until they choke.

At her command cities fall and swell,
Earthquake, tidal wave, gives masses to hell.
This spirit from the blackest pit,
Broods deep on those she kiss.

She comes to seek those to enslave,
To fuel her bowels, her booty in trade.
The pride and ruination of nations and men,
Seeks souls and bodies to ambition her ends.

Now this licking creature of red-hot glow,
Sends her heat to make fumerals.
Damns the many and damns the one,
As empires burn when her rage is done.

A vengeful spirit, Draconis is,
Smiles so pleasant as victims drop in.
Opens her shotted eyes in mirth,
To hear the screams of their heated death lurch.

This diabolic holds much potent sway,
Seeks for victims as ground gives way.
She holds the riddle to the land,
And holds it she must for her time is at hand.

Had learned she now that Kari had come,
That timeless conflict again begun.
“Never did I see one I could not coerce,
But now a convolcation of power, a tour de force.”

Suppressed regret ruminated throughout,
Yet shreds of fear left no doubt.

“I will finish what was started here in mmy land,
Beyond records treatise once we did stand.
Past all memories, hmm, even so,
Before myth began and Rome’s trumpets blowed.

I will shatter her like earthenware because I mmust,
She tasks mme this creature, mmy hate it is just.
Wounded mme she did, her preysence calls,
If nothing else, ha I will hurt her if I faullt.”

On Vulcania Draconis, Kari's Diabolical Enemy
Cold Steel Eternity Vol. ii”
― Douglas Laurent

“Spirit cannot be killed, that's what the harbingers say.
Only filled or spilled, and that alone on your appointed day.
'Tis an harrowing hour, when naked souls stand in blazed or putrid breeze,
to gain the prize immortal or to the gates of hell must flee.
To till or to mill, that is the key.
Choose the path of the way to be.

Dark Sword Midnight Novel/Poem”
― Douglas Laurent

“Insanity is often compounded on the multiplicity of simple things, as so often seen in deranged people who have a simple logic all their own.

on Kari, Valkyrie, Cold Steel Eternity, Vol. II”
― Douglas Laurent

“Games that are played and always won,
Often bring the tragedy of victory
And songs that must be sung.

Kari, Garden of the Dragons, Vil. III”
― Douglas Laurent

“Games that are played and sometimes lost,
Often bring the joy of loss that learns our course.

Valkyrie Kari, Garden of the Dragons, Vol. iii”
― Douglas Laurent

“You cannot pour tea with a sword...”
― J Balbirnie

“LaForche's never-was has-never been emaciated spirit was now as it had always been, hole’ up by vapidity and things intangible. Yet it looked so common and ordinary, blenting into the masses using the trogs as a mask to hide itself (later Christina recalled Thomas saying that the sleuth Man said there was nothing unnatural like the common, and the detective was right. “The Fork” was a four-star pronged pointless entity, a spirit without form or life, except now it was evident, his external body displaying to all the leftovers of his empty writhing, splastic visage. Short of sheet and simply put, the girl had out-foiled him—.
With the wolves of humiliation tearing the meat right off of his soul, he continued in his loner power mongering ways. Once formidable, they now reeked of rancid mal-diminishment. This is all he had left–and knew it, an armload of empty conquests, but the prize, the one he had desired and wanted so much, had eluded his hounding dogmatic futile, empty and sterile grasp. The power of powerlessness tonned his shoulders, gashing him and his god of pride apart. He shot a quick glarance toward the wall phone thinking of “The Bix,” Kerta’s # 1 Ace problem solving “mechanic.”
--OnFelipe LaForche , Villain
The lady and the Samurai”
― Douglas Laurent