I Had No Taste For

Mine Was The Unbearable Jealousy A Cultured Pearl Must Feel Toward A Genuine One. Or Can There Be Such A Thing In This World As A Man Who Is Jealous Of The Woman Who Loves Him, Precisely Because Of Her Love?

I Had Long Since Insisted Upon Interpreting The Things That Fate Forced Me To Do As Victories Of My Own Will And Intelligence, And Now This Bad Habit Had Grown Into A Sort Of Frenzied Arrogance. In The Nature Of What I Was Calling My Intelligence There Was A Touch Of Something Illegitimate, A Touch Of The Sham Pretender Who Has Been Placed On The Throne By Some Freak Chance. This Dolt Of A Usurper Could Not Foresee The Revenge That Would Inevitably Be Wreaked Upon His Stupid Despotism.

True Beauty Is Something That Attacks, Overpowers, Robs, And Finally Destroys.

For Clearly It Is Impossible To Touch Eternity With One Hand And Life With The Other.

We Tend To Suffer From The Illusion That We Are Capable Of Dying For A Belief Or Theory. What Hagakure Is Insisting Is That Even In Merciless Death, A Futile Death That Knows Neither Flower Nor Fruit Has Dignity As The Death Of A Human Being. If We Value So Highly The Dignity Of Life, How Can We Not Also Value The Dignity Of Death? No Death May Be Called Futile.