Yukio Mishima Quotes - Page 4

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• 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.

  Yukio Mishima

  Persistence, Long, Fruit

  Yukio Mishima (1958). “Confessions of a Mask”, p.194, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Usual, Mouths, Action

  Yukio Mishima (2011). “The Temple of the Golden Pavilion”, p.25, Tuttle Publishing

  8 Copy quote

• History knew the truth. History was the most inhuman product of humanity.It scooped up the whole of human will and, like the goddess Kali in Calcutta, dripped blood from its mouth as it bit and crunched.

  Yukio Mishima

  Blood, Humanity, Kali

  Yukio Mishima (1974). “The Decay of the Angel”, Random House

  15 Copy quote

• This is a photograph, so it is as you see: there are no lies and no deceptions. One can detect here, elevated to an incomparably higher level, the same pathetic emotional appeal that lies concealed in every fake spiritualist photograph, every pornographic photograph; one comes to suspect that the strange, disturbing emotional appeal of the photographic art consists solely in that same repeated refrain: this is a true ghost... this is a photograph, so it is as you see: there are no lies, no deceptions.

  Yukio Mishima

  Art, Lying, Emotional

  4 Copy quote

• The images which the [press] photographer has filtered from reality, whether particular events or the anguish of human reactions to them, already bear a stamp of authenticity which the photographer is powerless to alter by one jot or tittle; the meaning of the objects, by a process of purification, itself becomes the theme of the work.

  Yukio Mishima

  Reality, Events, Bears

  8 Copy quote

• 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?

  Yukio Mishima

  Jealous, Men, World

  Yukio Mishima (1958). “Confessions of a Mask”, p.208, New Directions Publishing

  7 Copy quote

• Abruptly he thrust his snow-drenched leather gloves against my cheeks. I dodged. A raw carnal feeling blazed up within me, branding my cheeks. I felt myself staring at him with crystal clear eyes... From that time on I was in love with Omi.

  Yukio Mishima

  Eye, Snow, Feelings

  Yukio Mishima (1958). “Confessions of a Mask”, p.61, New Directions Publishing

  8 Copy quote

• We had stretched out our arms to each other and supported something in our joined hands, but this thing we were holding was like a sort of gas that exists when you believe in its existence and disappears when you doubt. The task of supporting it seems simple at first glance, but actually requires an ultimate refinement of calculation and a consummate skill.

  Yukio Mishima

  Believe, Simple, Hands

  Yukio Mishima (1958). “Confessions of a Mask”, p.243, New Directions Publishing

  7 Copy quote

• All my life I have been acutely aware of a contradiction in the very nature of my existence. For forty-five years I struggled to resolve this dilemma by writing plays and novels. The more I wrote, the more I realized mere words were not enough. So I found another form of expression.

  Yukio Mishima

  Writing, Expression, Years

  "Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters". Biography, www.imdb.com. September 12, 1985.

  7 Copy quote

• The purest evil that human efforts could attain, in other words, was probably achieved by those men who made their wills the same and who made their eyes see the world in the same way, men who went against the pattern of life's diversity, men whose spirits shattered the natural wall of the individual body, making nothing of this barrier, set up to guard against mutual corrosion, men whose spirit accomplished what flesh could never accomplish.

  Yukio Mishima

  Wall, Eye, Men

  "Runaway Horses". Book by Yukio Mishima translated by Michael Gallagher, 1973.

  7 Copy quote

• ..and certain that life consisted of a few simple signals and decisions; that death took root at the moment of birth and man’s only recourse thereafter was to water and tend it; that propagation was a fiction; consequently, society was a fiction too; that fathers and teachers, by virtue of being fathers and teachers, were guilty of a grievous sin.

  Yukio Mishima

  Teacher, Father, Simple

  9 Copy quote

• Was I ignorant, then, when I was seventeen? I think not. I knew everything. A quarter-century's experience of life since then has added nothing to what I knew. The one difference is that at seventeen I had no 'realism'.

  Yukio Mishima

  Thinking, Differences, Ignorant

  5 Copy quote

• Time is what matters. As time goes by, you and I will be carried inexorably into the mainstream of our period, even though we’re unaware of what it is. And later, when they say that young men in the early Taisho era thought, dressed, talked, in such and such a way, they’ll be talking about you and me. We’ll all be lumped together…. In a few decades, people will see you and the people you despise as one and the same, a single entity.

  Yukio Mishima

  Men, What Matters, Talking

  Yukio Mishima (1990). “Spring Snow”, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• I seemed like a baby bird keeping its truly innocent animal lusts hidden under its wing. I was being tempted, not by the desire of possession, but simply by unadorned temptation itself.

  Yukio Mishima

  Baby, Animal, Wings

  Yukio Mishima (1958). “Confessions of a Mask”, p.72, New Directions Publishing

  7 Copy quote

• The mind, by its very nature, persistently tries to live forever, resisting age and attempting to give itself a form... . When a person passes his prime and his life begins to lose true vigor and charm, his mind starts functioning as if it were another form of life; it imitates what life does, eventually doing what life cannot do.

  Yukio Mishima

  Giving, Forever, Mind

  6 Copy quote

• He was in a room of the Gesshuuji, which he had thought it would be impossible to visit. The approach of death had made the visit easy, had unloosed the weight that held him in the depths of being. It was even a comfort to think, from the light repose the struggle up the hill had brought him, that Kiyoaki, struggling against illness up that same road, had been given wings to soar with by the denial that awaited him.

  Yukio Mishima

  Struggle, Thinking, Wings

  4 Copy quote

• According to Eshin's Essentials of Salvation, the Ten Pleasures are but a drop in the ocean when compared to the joys of the Pure Land.

  Yukio Mishima

  Ocean, Land, Joy

  Yukio Mishima (1966). “Death in Midsummer, and Other Stories”, p.59, New Directions Publishing

  5 Copy quote

• Within those confining walls, teachers - a bunch of men all armed with the same information - gave the same lectures every year from the same notebooks and every year at the same point in the textbooks made the same jokes.

  Yukio Mishima

  Notebook, Teacher, Wall

  "Acts of Worship: Seven Stories (Cigarette)". Book by Yukio Mishima, November 1, 2002.

  9 Copy quote

• Just let matters slide. How much better to accept each sweet drop of the honey that was Time, than to stoop to the vulgarity latent in every decision. However grave the matter at hand might be, if one neglected it for long enough, the act of neglect itself would begin to affect the situation, and someone else would emerge as an ally. Such was Count Ayakura's version of political theory.

  Yukio Mishima

  Sweet, Hands, Long

  Yukio Mishima (1990). “Spring Snow”, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• If the photographer is to create works that will stand for his spirit in the same way as artists in other genres, he must first - having no ready-made, abstract components such as works and sounds - supply other means to abstraction instead.

  Yukio Mishima

  Mean, Artist, Firsts

  4 Copy quote

• Let us remember that the central reality must be sought in the writer's work: it is what the writer chose to write, or was compelled to write, that finally matters. And certainly Mishima's carefully premeditated death is part of his work.

  Yukio Mishima

  Writing, Reality, Matter

  4 Copy quote

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