The Temple of the Golden Pavilion Quotes

“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.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“The special quality of hell is to see everything clearly down to the last detail.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“Yet how strange a thing is the beauty of music! The brief beauty that the player brings into being transforms a given period of time into pure continuance; it is certain never to be repeated; like the existence of dayflies and other such short-lived creatures, beauty is a perfect abstraction and creation of life itself. Nothing is so similar to life as music.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“Anything can become excusable when seen from the standpoint of the result”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“To see human beings in agony, to see them covered in blood and to hear their death groans, makes people humble. It makes their spirits delicate, bright, peaceful. It's never at such times that we become cruel or bloodthirsty. No, it's on a beautiful spring afternoon like this that people suddenly become cruel. It's at a moment like this, don't you think, while one's vaguely watching the sun as it peeps through the leaves of the trees above a well-mown lawn? Every possible nightmare in the world, every possible nightmare in history, has come into being like this.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“The past does not only draw us back to the past. There are certain memories of the past that have strong steel springs and, when we who live in the present touch them, they are suddenly stretched taut and then they propel us into the future.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“If the world changed, I could not exist, and if I changed, the world could not exist”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“When people concentrate on the idea of beauty, they are, without realizing it, confronted with the darkest thoughts that exist in this world. That, I suppose, is how human beings are made.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“For clearly it is impossible to touch eternity with one hand and life with the other.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“Other people must be destroyed. In order that I might truly face the sun, the world itself must be destroyed....”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“As usual, it occurred to me that words were the only thing that could possibly save me from this situation. This was a characteristic misunderstanding on my part. When action was needed, I was absorbed in words; for words proceeded with such difficulty from my mouth that I was intent on them and forgot all about action. It seemed to me that actions, which are dazzling, varied things, must always be accompanied by equally dazzling and equally varied words.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“Amid the moon and the stars, amid the clouds of the night, amid the hills which bordered on the sky with their magnificent silhouette of pointed cedars, amid the speckled patches of the moon, amid the temple buildings that emerged sparkling white out of the surrounding darkness - amid all this, I was intoxicated by the pellucid beauty of Uiko's treachery.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“I was born with gloomy nature. I do not think I have ever known what it is to be cheerful and at ease.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“How shall I put it? Beauty-yes, beauty is like a decayed tooth. It rubs against one's tongue, it hangs there, hurting one, insisting on its own existence, finally it gets so that one cannot stand the pain and one goes to the dentist to have the tooth extracted, Then, as one looks at the small, dirty, brown, blood-stained tooth lying in one's hand, one's thoughts are likely to be as follows: ‘Is this it? Is this all it was? That thing which caused me so much pain, which made me constantly fret about its existence, which was stubbornly rooted within me, is now merely a dead object. But is this thing really the,same as that thing? If this originally belonged to my outer existence, why-through what sort of providence-did it become attached to my inner existence and succeed in causing me so much pain? What was the basis of this creature's existence? Was the basis within me? Or was it within this creature itself? Yet this creature which has been pulled out of my mouth and which now lies in my hand is something utterly different. Surely it cannot be that?”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“Insensitive people are only upset when they actually see the blood, but actually by the time that the blood has been shed the tragedy has already completed.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“Thus in a single phrase I can define the great illusion concerning 'love' in this world. It is the effort to join reality with the apparition.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“Let the darkness that is in my heart become equal to the darkness of the night that surrounds those innumerable lights!”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“Only knowledge can turn life's unbearableness into a weapon.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“In Kyoto I never experienced an air raid, but once when I was sent to the main factory in Osaka with some orders for spare parts for aircraft, there happened to be an attack and I saw one of the factory workers being carried out on a stretcher with his intestines exposed.
What is so ghastly about exposed intestines? Why, when we see the insides of a human being do we have to cover our eyes in terror? Why are people so shocked by the sight of blood pouring out? Why are a man's intestines ugly? Is it not exactly the same in quality as the beauty of youthful, glossy skin? What sort of face would Tsurukawa make if I were to say that it was from him I had learned this manner of speaking - a manner of thinking that transformed my own ugliness into nothingness? Why does there seem to be something inhuman about regarding human beings like roses and refusing to make any distinction between the inside of their bodies and the outside? If only human beings could reverse their spirits and their bodies, could gracefully turn them inside out like rose petals and expose them to the spring breeze and the sun . . .”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“To put it in a rather vulgar way, I had been dreaming about love in the firm belief that I could not be loved, but at the final stage I had substituted desire for love and felt a sort of relief. But in the end I had understood that desire itself demanded for its fulfillment that I should forget about the conditions of my existence, and that I should abandon what for me constituted the only barrier to love, namely the belief that I could not be loved. I had always thought of desire as being something clearer than it really is, and I had not realized that it required people to see themselves in a slightly dreamlike, unreal way.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“It seemed that hell could appear day or night, at any time, at any place, simply in response to one's thoughts or wishes. It seemed that we could summon it at our pleasure and that instantly it would appear.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“So far as feelings were concerned, there was no discrepancy between the very finest feeling in this world and the very worst; that their effect was the same; that no visible difference existed between murderous intent and feelings of deep compassion.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“It was certainly not consolation that Kashiwagi sought in beauty. .. What he loved was that for a short while after his breath had brought beauty into existence in the air, his own clubfeet and gloomy thinking remained there, more clearly and more vividly than before. The uselessness of beauty, the fact that beauty which had passed through his body left no mark there whatsoever, that it changed absolutely nothing- it was this that Kashiwagi loved.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“But there is no such thing as individual knowledge, a particular knowledge belonging to one special person or group. Knowledge is the sea of humanity, the field of humanity, the general condition of human existence.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“the fact of not being understood by others had been my sole source of pride since my early youth, and I had not the slightest impulse to express myself in such a way that I might be understood. When I did try to clarify my thoughts and actions, I did so with no consideration whatsoever. I do not know whether or not this was because I wanted to understand myself. Such a motive is in accord with a person's real character and comes automatically to form a bridge between himself and others”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“At such times I felt as though I was drenched up to my neck in the existence that was myself.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“Ала за мен Златният храм не беше просто абстрактно понятие. Планините го скриваха от погледа ми, но при желание винаги можех да отида и да го видя. В този смисъл красотата бе все пак нещо, което можех да пипна в ръка, да видя с очите си. Знаех и вярвах, че храмът е неизменен и вечен независимо от всевъзможните промени на този свят.
Понякога си представях, че е изящна миниатюра, която мога да взема в ръка; друг път той ставаше огромен и чудовищен и върхът му се губеше в небесата. Бях твърде млад, за да си давам ясна сметка, че красотата не може да е нито малка, нито голяма, а винаги умерена. Лете, видех ли влажно от утринната роса цвете, излъчващо сякаш бледо сияние, веднага си казвах, че е прекрасно като Златния храм. А когато над отсрещните хълмове се събираха черни, раздирани от светкавици буреносни облаци, опасани със златен кант, мрачното им великолепие също ме навеждаше на мисълта за него. Стигна се дотам, че и при вида на нечие красиво лице в душата си прошепвах: „Очарователно като Златния храм.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“I was born with a gloomy nature. I do not think I have ever known what it is to be cheerful and at ease.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“Единствено съзнанието може да преобрази този свят. Само то и нищо друго. Да го преобрази, без да го променя, схващаш ли? Ако погледнеш на света през очите на съзнанието, ще разбереш, че той е неизменим и в същото време постоянно се преобразява. Ще попиташ каква ни е ползата от това? Човек, драги, е въоръжен със съзнание, тъкмо за да направи живота поносим. Животните нямат нужда от такова оръжие, на тях не им трябва съзнание. Но хората наистина се нуждаят от нещо и с помощта на съзнанието са в състояние да превърнат самата непоносимост на живота в оръжие, макар от това тя изобщо да не намалява.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“but this girl simply let my hands gather on her own small, plump hands, like flies gathering on someone who is taking a nap.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion