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
Every day is lost in which we do not learn something useful. Man has no nobler or more valuable possession than time.
It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult
My father once told me that anyone who worked for three dollars an hour owed it to himself to put in four dollars' worth of work.
Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.
The good man does not grieve_x000D_ that other people do not recognize his merits._x000D_ His only anxiety is lest he should fail to recognize theirs.
Knowledge doesn't really form part of human nature. Conflict, combat, the outcome of the combat, and, consequently, risk and chance are what gives rise to knowledge. Knowledge is not instinctive; it is counter instinctive, just as it is not natural but counter natural.
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