Yukio Mishima Quotes - Page 2

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• 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

• Anything can become excusable when seen from the standpoint of the result

  Yukio Mishima

  Results, Standpoint

  Yukio Mishima (2011). “The Temple of the Golden Pavilion”, p.165, Tuttle Publishing

  63 Copy quote

• 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

• 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

  47 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

• A man isn't tiny or giant enough to defeat anything.

  Yukio Mishima

  Men, Giants, Tiny

  "The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea". Book by Yukio Mishima, 1965.

  33 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

• 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

  8 Copy quote

• a samurai is a total human being, whereas a man who is completely absorbed in his technical skill has degenerated into a ‘function’, one cog in a machine.

  Yukio Mishima

  Men, Skills, Cogs

  Yukio Mishima, Tsunetomo Yamamoto (1977). “Yukio Mishima on Hagakure: the Samurai ethic and modern Japan”

  25 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

• 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

• 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

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

  Yukio Mishima

  Needs, Matter

  13 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

• 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

• 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 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

• 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

• The instant that the blade tore open his flesh, the bright disk of the sun soared up and exploded behind his eyelids.

  Yukio Mishima

  Flesh, Sun, Blades

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

  25 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

• 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 want to make a poem of my life.

  Yukio Mishima

  Want

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

  19 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

  6 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

• 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

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