“if the world changed, i could not exist, and if i changed, the world could not exist”
Source: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
Quotes from book
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
Yukio Mishima
Original title
金閣寺
(Japanese, 1956)
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion is a novel by the Japanese author Yukio Mishima. It was published in 1956 and translated into English by Ivan Morris in 1959.
“For clearly it is impossible to touch eternity with one hand and life with the other.”
Source: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
Source: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
“The special quality of hell is to see everything clearly down to the last detail.”
Source: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (1959).
Context: What transforms this world is — knowledge. Do you see what I mean? Nothing else can change anything in this world. Knowledge alone is capable of transforming the world, while at the same time leaving it exactly as it is. When you look at the world with knowledge, you realize that things are unchangeable and at the same time are constantly being transformed. You may ask what good it does us. Let's put it this way — human beings possess the weapon of knowledge in order to make life bearable. For animals such things aren't necessary. Animals don't need knowledge or anything of the sort to make life bearable. But human beings do need something, and with knowledge they can make the very intolerableness of life a weapon, though at the same time that intolerableness is not reduced in the slightest. That's all there is to it.
Source: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
“Anything can become excusable when seen from the standpoint of the result”
Source: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (1959).
