Yukio Mishima Quotes - Page 2

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• In the pale light of daybreak the gravestones looked like so many white sails of boats anchored in a busy harbor. They were sails that would never again be filled with wind, sails that, too long unused and heavily drooping, had been turned into stone just as they were. The boats' anchors had been thrust so deeply into the dark earth that they could never again be raised.

  Yukio Mishima

  Dark, Light, Anchors

  68 Copy quote

• Real danger is nothing more than just living. Of course, living is merely the chaos of existence, but more than that it's a crazy mixed-up business of dismantling existence instant by instant to the point where the original chaos is restored, and taking strength from the uncertainty and the fear that chaos brings to re-create existence instant by instant. You won't find another job as dangerous as that. There isn't any fear in existence itself, or any uncertainty, but living creates it.

  Yukio Mishima

  Jobs, Crazy, Real

  32 Copy quote

• Quite possibly, what I call happiness may coincide with what others call the moment of imminent danger

  Yukio Mishima

  May, Moments, Danger

  29 Copy quote

• Human beings - they go on being born and dying, dying and being born. It's kind of boring, isn't it?

  Yukio Mishima

  Dying, Goes On, Kind

  "Ken" (1963) (translation by John Bester)

  40 Copy quote

• An ugliness unfurled in the moonlight and soft shadow and suffused the whole world. If I were an amoeba, he thought, with an infinitesimal body, I could defeat ugliness. A man isn’t tiny or giant enough to defeat anything.

  Yukio Mishima

  Men, Shadow, Giants

  50 Copy quote

• There is no virtue in curiosity. In fact, it might be the most immoral desire a man can possess.

  Yukio Mishima

  Men, Curiosity, Desire

  Yukio Mishima (1958). “Confessions of a Mask”, p.222, New Directions Publishing

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Yukio Mishima

  Flower, Suffering, Dying

  "Yukio Mishima on Hagakure: The Samurai Ethic and Modern Japan". Book by Yukio Mishima and Jocho Yamamoto translated by Kathryn Sparling, 1977.

  9 Copy quote

• Other people must be destroyed. In order that I might truly face the sun, the world itself must be destroyed.

  Yukio Mishima

  Order, People, World

  Yukio Mishima (2011). “The Temple of the Golden Pavilion”, p.26, Tuttle Publishing

  12 Copy quote

• Pain, I came to feel, might well prove to be the sole proof of the persistence of consciousness within the flesh, the sole physical expression of consciousness. As my body acquired muscle, and in turn strength, there was gradually born within me a tendency towards the positive acceptance of pain, and my interest in physical suffering deepened.

  Yukio Mishima

  Pain, Acceptance, Persistence

  12 Copy quote

• if the world changed, i could not exist, and if i changed, the world could not exist

  Yukio Mishima

  World, Changed, Ifs

  Yukio Mishima (2011). “The Temple of the Golden Pavilion”, p.87, Tuttle Publishing

  20 Copy quote

• For clearly it is impossible to touch eternity with one hand and life with the other.

  Yukio Mishima

  Hands, Impossible, Eternity

  Yukio Mishima (2011). “The Temple of the Golden Pavilion”, p.109, Tuttle Publishing

  9 Copy quote

• I had no taste for defeat - much less victory - without a fight.

  Yukio Mishima

  Fighting, Victory, Taste

  "Sun and Steel: Art, Action and Ritual Death". Book by Yukio Mishima, 1970.

  22 Copy quote

• It is a rather risky matter to discuss a happiness that has no need of words.

  Yukio Mishima

  Needs, Matter

  13 Copy quote

• 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.

  Yukio Mishima

  Two, People, Captivity

  48 Copy quote

• Possessing by letting go of things was a secret of ownership unknown to youth.

  Yukio Mishima

  Letting Go, Secret, Youth

  Yukio Mishima, Cecilia Segawa Seigle (1974). “The temple of dawn”, Harvill Secker

  24 Copy quote

• Beyond doubt, there was a certain splendor in pain, which bore a deep affinity to the splendor that lies hidden within strength.

  Yukio Mishima

  Pain, Lying, Doubt

  13 Copy quote

• The most appropriate type of daily life for me was a day-by-day world destruction; peace was the most difficult and abnormal state to live in.

  Yukio Mishima

  World Destruction, Abnormal, Daily Life

  "Sun and Steel: Art, Action and Ritual Death". Book by Yukio Mishima, 1970.

  9 Copy quote

• The past does not only draw us back to the past. There are certain memories of the past that have strong steel springs and, when we who live in the present touch them, they are suddenly stretched taut and then they propel us into the future.

  Yukio Mishima

  Strong, Memories, Spring

  Yukio Mishima (1959). “The temple of the golden pavilion”, Alfred A. Knopf

  11 Copy quote

• His conviction of having no purpose in life other than to act as a distillation of poison was part of the ego of an eighteen-year-old. He had resolved that his beautiful white hands would never be soiled or calloused. He wanted to be like a pennant, dependent on each gusting wind. The only thing that seemed valid to him was to live for the emotions--gratuitous and unstable, dying only to quicken again, dwindling and flaring without direction or purpose.

  Yukio Mishima

  Beautiful, Hands, Years

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

  66 Copy quote

• …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.

  Yukio Mishima

  Heart, Men, Vanity

  29 Copy quote

• He had never looked forward to the wisdom and other vaunted benefits of old age. Would he be able to die young—and if possible free of all pain? A graceful death—as a richly patterned kimono, thrown carelessly across a polished table, slides unobtrusively down into the darkness of the floor beneath. A death marked by elegance.

  Yukio Mishima

  Pain, Darkness, Age

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

  70 Copy quote

• The period of childhood is a stage on which time and space become entangled.

  Yukio Mishima

  Space, Childhood, Stage

  Yukio Mishima (1958). “Confessions of a Mask”, p.15, New Directions Publishing

  10 Copy quote

• I cried sobbingly until at last those visions reeking with blood came to comfort me. And then I surrendered myself to them, to those deplorably brutal visions, my most intimate friends.

  Yukio Mishima

  Blood, Vision, Comfort

  10 Copy quote

• The cynicism that regards hero worship as comical is always shadowed by a sense of physical inferiority

  Yukio Mishima

  Hero, Inferiority, Worship

  15 Copy quote

• ...of all the kinds of decay in this world, decadent purity is the most malignant.

  Yukio Mishima

  Decay, World, Kind

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

  12 Copy quote

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