Young People Get The Foolish Idea That

…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.

Other People Must Be Destroyed. In Order That I Might Truly Face The Sun, The World Itself Must Be Destroyed.

For A Long Time I Had Not Approached The Forbidden Fruit Called Happiness, But It Was Now Tempting Me With A Melancholy Persistence. I Felt As Though Sonoko Were An Abyss Above Which I Stood Poised.

Men Had Been Living A Proud Life, Having Felt No Need For The Spirit-until Christianity Invented It.

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.