Yukio Mishima Quotes - Page 3

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• I am one who has always been interested only in the edges of the body and the spirit, the outlying regions of the body and the outlying regions of the spirit. The depths hold no interest for me; I leave them to others, for they are shallow, commonplace. What is there, then, at the outer most edge? Nothing, perhaps, save a few ribbons, dangling down into the void.

  Yukio Mishima

  Depth, Body, Ribbons

  26 Copy quote

• I want to make a poem of my life.

  Yukio Mishima

  Want

  "Yukio Mishima: Samurai Writer". Documentary, 1985.

  19 Copy quote

• When people concentrate on the idea of beauty, they are, without realizing it, confronted with the darkest thoughts that exist in this world. That, I suppose, is how human beings are made.

  Yukio Mishima

  Ideas, People, World

  Yukio Mishima (2011). “The Temple of the Golden Pavilion”, p.52, Tuttle Publishing

  10 Copy quote

• Yet how strange a thing is the beauty of music! The brief beauty that the player brings into being transforms a given period of time into pure continuance; it is certain never to be repeated; like the existence of dayflies and other such short-lived creatures, beauty is a perfect abstraction and creation of life itself. Nothing is so similar to life as music.

  Yukio Mishima

  Player, Perfect, Strange

  25 Copy quote

• I still have no way to survive but to keep writing one line, one more line, one more line.

  Yukio Mishima

  Writing, Lines, One Line

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Yukio Mishima

  Suicide, Sky, Stupidity

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

  12 Copy quote

• Actually the action called a kiss represented nothing more for me than some place where my spirit could seek shelter.

  Yukio Mishima

  Kissing, Shelter, Spirit

  Yukio Mishima (1958). “Confessions of a Mask”, p.115, New Directions Publishing

  8 Copy quote

• Suddenly the full long wail of a ship's horn surged through the open window and flooded the dim room—a cry of boundless, dark, demanding grief; pitch-black and glabrous as a whale's back and burdened with all the passions of the tides, the memory of voyages beyond counting, the joys, the humiliations: the sea was screaming.

  Yukio Mishima

  Memories, Grief, Passion

  "The Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea".

  38 Copy quote

• Even when we're with someone we love, we're foolish enough to think of her body and soul as being separate. To stand before the person we love is not the same as loving her true self, for we are only apt to regard her physical beauty as the indispensable mode of her existence. When time and space intervene, it is possible to be deceived by both, but on the other hand, it is equally possible to draw twice as close to her real self.

  Yukio Mishima

  Real, Love Is, Thinking

  16 Copy quote

• Again and again, the cicada's untiring cry pierced the sultry summer air like a needle at work on thick cotton cloth.

  Yukio Mishima

  Summer, Air, Cotton

  Yukio Mishima (1990). “Runaway Horses”, Vintage

  27 Copy quote

• At no time are we ever in such complete possession of a journey, down to its last nook and cranny, as when we are busy with preparations for it. After that, there remains only the journey itself, which is nothing but the process through which we lose our ownership of it.

  Yukio Mishima

  Journey, Discipline, Preparation

  Yukio Mishima (1958). “Confessions of a Mask”, p.118, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• By means of microscopic observation and astronomical projection the lotus flower can become the foundation for an entire theory of the universe and an agent whereby we may perceive Truth.

  Yukio Mishima

  Art, Truth, Flower

  Yukio Mishima (1966). “Death in Midsummer, and Other Stories”, p.61, New Directions Publishing

  64 Copy quote

• It seems to me that before the photograph can exist as art it must, by its very nature choose whether it is to be a record or a testimony.

  Yukio Mishima

  Art, Records, Photograph

  4 Copy quote

• It is a common failing of childhood to think that if one makes a hero out of a demon the demon will be satisfied.

  Yukio Mishima

  Hero, Thinking, Childhood

  Yukio Mishima (1958). “Confessions of a Mask”, p.107, New Directions Publishing

  7 Copy quote

• However, as words become particularized, and as men begin - in however small a way - to use them in personal, arbitrary ways, so their transformation into art begins. It was words of this kind that, descending on me like a swarm of winged insects, seized on my individuality and sought to shut me up within it. Nevertheless, despite the enemy's depredations upon my person, I turned their universality - at once a weapon and a weakness - back on them, and to some extent succeeded in using words to universalize to my own individuality.

  Yukio Mishima

  Art, Men, Individuality

  27 Copy quote

• Isao had never felt that he might want to be a woman. He had never wished for anything else but to be a man, live in a manly way, die a manly death. To be thus a man was to give constant proof of one's manliness-to be more a man today than yesterday, more a man tomorrow than today. To be a man was to forge ever upward toward the peak of manhood, there to die amid the white snows of that peak.

  Yukio Mishima

  Men, White, Yesterday

  Yukio Mishima (2010). “Runaway Horses”, p.344, Random House

  7 Copy quote

• His emotion evident in the glitter of his eyes.

  Yukio Mishima

  Eye, Glitter, Emotion

  Yukio Mishima (1990). “Runaway Horses”, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

• There isn't any fear in existence itself, or any uncertainty, but living creates it.

  Yukio Mishima

  Existence, Uncertainty

  Yukio Mishima (2010). “The Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea”, p.51, Random House

  10 Copy quote

• A father is a reality-concealing machine, a machine for dishing up lies to kids, and that isn't even the worst of it: secretly he believes that he represents reality.

  Yukio Mishima

  Father, Lying, Believe

  6 Copy quote

• We are not wounded so deeply when betrayed by the things we hope for as when betrayed by things we try our best to despise. In such betrayal comes the dagger in the back.

  Yukio Mishima

  Betrayal, Trying, Betrayed

  4 Copy quote

• Men had been living a proud life, having felt no need for the spirit-until Christianity invented it.

  Yukio Mishima

  Men, Needs, Proud

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Yukio Mishima

  Revenge, Stupid, Fate

  "Confessions of a Mask". Book by Yukio Mishima, 1949.

  12 Copy quote

• 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

• Amid the moon and the stars, amid the clouds of the night, amid the hills which bordered on the sky with their magnificent silhouette of pointed cedars, amid the speckled patches of the moon, amid the temple buildings that emerged sparkling white out of the surrounding darkness - amid all this, I was intoxicated by the pellucid beauty of Uiko's treachery.

  Yukio Mishima

  Stars, Moon, Night

  Yukio Mishima (2011). “The Temple of the Golden Pavilion”, p.29, Tuttle Publishing

  34 Copy quote

• Is there not a sort of remorse that precedes sin? Was it remorse at the very fact that I existed?

  Yukio Mishima

  Facts, Sin, Remorse

  Yukio Mishima (1958). “Confessions of a Mask”, p.144, New Directions Publishing

  9 Copy quote

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