"Lohengrin Arrives on a Boat Drawn by a Swan", Vintage Illustration, Artist Unknown (Mary Evans Picture Library)

"What is belief? How is a belief born? All belief assumes that something is true.

The extremest form of Nihilism would mean that all belief—all assumption of truth—is false: because no real world is at hand. It were therefore: only an appearance seen in perspective, whose origin must be found in us (seeing that we are constantly in need of a narrower, a shortened, and simplified world).

This should be realized, that the extent to which we can, in our heart of hearts, acknowledge appearance, and the necessity of falsehood, without going to rack and ruin, is the measure of strength.

In this respect, Nihilism, in that it is the negation of a real world and of Being, might be a divine view of the world."

- Friedrich Nietzsche, Will to Power

Nietzsche here acknowledges the divinity of the Titans and the sacrality of art. To live outside the realm of perfect and definitive truth, to operate within appearances, to live courageously in the world of Becoming—this is the great Titanic power which he elsewhere calls 'Dionysian.' It is the source of the divine madness of great men, who are really master artists of life itself.

"I cannot wash away your negativities and sins with water, nor can I remove your pain and suffering by my hand, nor can I transfer my realizations to you."

"The only way I can help you is through giving teaching, and you should strive to liberate yourself."

- Buddha Shakymuni

"The One is the negation of negations. Every creature contains negation: on denies that it is the other. [...] but God contains the denial of denials."

Meister Eckhart

"For Mishima, art is not the opposite of reality. Art for him is a different kind of reality. Mishima represents an apotheosis of the Nietzschean idea that life can be justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon. His act of aesthetic terrorism was not a failed coup d’état but a triumphant coup de théâtre, a spectacular piece of performance art that was simultaneously a radical anti-artistic gesture. Mishima believed that he had taken the idea of life as art to its extreme point, beyond which no one could go any further."

- Andrew Rankin, Mishima Aesthetic Terrorist: An Intellectual Portrait

"Now I know... the major cause of your illness: you have forgotten your true nature... and it is because you do not know the end and purpose of things that you think the criminal have power and happiness. And because you have forgotten the means by which the world is governed you believe these ups and downs of Fortune happen haphazardly... In your true belief you about the worlds government - that it is subject to divine reason and not the haphazards of chance - there lies our greatest hope of rekindling your health." - Lady Wisdom to the Ill Boethius.

Baron Ungern-Sternberg's pistol