Young people get the foolish idea that what is new for them must be new for everybody else too. No matter how unconventional they get, they're just repeating what others before them have done.
Interpretation
Young individuals often believe their experiences are unique, not realizing they echo past generations.
This quote by Yukio Mishima highlights the common tendency among youth to view their experiences and ideas as groundbreaking or novel. However, it suggests that, in reality, these thoughts and actions are likely repetitions of what previous generations have already encountered, thereby inviting reflection on the cyclical nature of human behavior and the influence of history on personal experiences.
In practice
This quote can be shared at a graduation ceremony to remind students of the value of learning from past generations.
What I wanted was to die among strangers, untroubled, beneath a cloudless sky. And yet my desire differed from the sentiments of that ancient Greek who wanted to die under the brilliant sun. What I wanted was some natural, spontaneous suicide. I wanted a death like that of a fox, not yet well versed in cunning, that walks carelessly along a mountain path and is shot by a hunter because of its own stupidity.
a samurai is a total human being, whereas a man who is completely absorbed in his technical skill has degenerated into a ‘function’, one cog in a machine.
When a captive lion steps out of his cage, he comes into a wider world than the lion who has known only the wilds. While he was in captivity, there were only two worlds for him - the world of the cage, and the world outside the cage. Now he is free. He roars. He attacks people. He eats them. Yet he is not satisfied, for there is no third world that is neither the world of the cage nor the world outside the cage.
…the samurai ethic is a political science of the heart, designed to control such discouragement and fatigue in order to avoid showing them to others. It was thought more important to look healthy than to be healthy, and more important to seem bold and daring than to be so. This view of morality, since it is physiologically based on the special vanity peculiar to men, is perhaps the supreme male view of morality.
Is there not a sort of remorse that precedes sin? Was it remorse at the very fact that I existed?
Anything can become excusable when seen from the standpoint of the result
Today is the oldest you've ever been, and the youngest you'll ever be again.
Books are not life, only its ashes.
Your breathing should flow gracefully, like a river, like a watersnake crossing the water, and not like a chain of rugged mountains or the gallop of a horse. To master our breath is to be in control of our bodies and minds. Each time we find ourselves dispersed and find it difficult to gain control of ourselves by different means, the method of watching the breath should always be used.
The Sting of a reproach, is the Truth of it.
If we did not have a sense of who we were, how we got here, why we want to achieve something - which, on the face of it, on the logic of it, is probably not worth trying - and prove that logic wrong, then you wouldn't succeed; then you would just evaporate.
I just want to retire before I go senile because if I don't retire before I go senile, then I'll do more damage than good at that point.
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