If the cuckoo will not sing, wait until it does.

He who knows only victory and does not know defeat will suffer for it.

不自由を常と思えば不足なし。

Wellbeing is attained by little and little, and nevertheless is no little thing itself.

-- Zeno of Citium

If the cuckoo will not sing, I shall make it want to sing.

-- The peasant who became ruler of all Japan

If the cuckoo will not sing, wait until it does.

-- The founder of Japan's Tokugawa shogunate

A human life of fifty years, compared to the span beneath heaven, is nothing but a dream, an illusion.

-- The revolutionary warlord who dismantled feudal Japan's medieval order and launched the country toward unification

If you do not know you may fall halfway through your work, you will not fall halfway through.

-- The visionary who brokered the alliance that overthrew Japan's feudal government and launched the country into modernity

I shall dedicate myself utterly, giving everything until death claims me.

-- The legendary chancellor and military strategist of the Shu Han kingdom during China's Three Kingdoms period