“if the world changed, i could not exist, and if i changed, the world could not exist”
Source: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
Yukio Mishima: Existence
Yukio Mishima was Japanese author. Explore interesting quotes on existence.
Yukio Mishima:
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Source: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
Source: Sun and Steel (1968), p. 87.
Context: Only through the group, I realised — through sharing the suffering of the group — could the body reach that height of existence that the individual alone could never attain. And for the body to reach that level at which the divine might be glimpsed, a dissolution of individuality was necessary. The tragic quality of the group was also necessary, the quality that constantly raised the group out of the abandon and torpor into which it was prone to lapse, leading it to an ever-mounting shared suffering and so to death, which was the ultimate suffering. The group must be open to death — which meant, of course, that it must be a community of warriors.
“There isn't any fear in existence itself, or any uncertainty, but living creates it.”
Source: The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
“All my life I have been acutely aware of a contradiction in the very nature of my existence.”
As quoted in Mishima : A Life in Four Chapters (1985).
Context: All my life I have been acutely aware of a contradiction in the very nature of my existence. For forty-five years I struggled to resolve this dilemma by writing plays and novels. The more I wrote, the more I realized mere words were not enough. So I found another form of expression.
“Is there not a sort of remorse that precedes sin? Was it remorse at the very fact that I existed?”
Source: Confessions of a Mask (1949), p. 144.
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (1959).