A collection of quotes and sayings by Yukio Mishima on patriotism, books, poetry, beauty, memories, dreams, pain, persistence, acceptance, ideas, art, creativity and heart.
83 Yukio Mishima Quotes That Will Challenge Your Credence
Yukio Mishima was an eminent Japanese playwright, author, poet, film director, nationalist, model, actor, and founder of the 'Tatenokai.' He is regarded as one of the most illustrious 20th-century writers. In 1968, he was also considered for the ‘Nobel Prize in Literature,’ but the award was given to Yasunari Kawabata. Some of his notable works include, ‘The Temple of the Golden Pavilion,’ ‘Sun and Steel,’ and ‘Confessions of a Mask.’ His thoughts, writings and works focused on political change, sexuality and death, displaying a perfect combination of traditional and modern aesthetics and that knew no cultural boundaries. Following is an inspiring collection of sayings and quotations by Yukio Mishima, which have been extracted from his writings, thoughts, work, and life. We bring to you the famous quotes and thoughts by Yukio Mishima that have been curated from his plays, books, movies, writings, works and life.
Young people get the foolish idea that what is new for them must be new for everybody else too. No matter how unconventional they get, they're just repeating what others before them have done.
Anything can become excusable when seen from the standpoint of the result
Yukio Mishima
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.
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
The instant that the blade tore open his flesh, the bright disk of the sun soared up and exploded behind his eyelids.
Yukio Mishima
Other people must be destroyed. In order that I might truly face the sun, the world itself must be destroyed....
...of all the kinds of decay in this world, decadent purity is the most malignant.
Yukio Mishima
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?
There's a huge seal called 'impossibility' pasted all over this world. And don't ever forget that we're the only ones who can tear it off once and for all.
Yukio Mishima
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.
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.
A man isn't tiny or giant enough to defeat anything
Yukio Mishima
He felt that taking naps was much more beneficial than confronting catastrophes.
Yukio Mishima
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.
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.
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
The parting, like the white fruit of an apple discolouring instantly around the bite, had begun three days before when they had met aboard the Rakuyo.
It seemed that hell could appear day or night, at any time, at any place, simply in response to one's thoughts or wishes. It seemed that we could summon it at our pleasure and that instantly it would appear.
There is no virtue in curiosity. In fact, it might even be the most immoral desire a man can possess.
Yukio Mishima
Beyond doubt it would speedily verify the proverb that a nation must ravage itself before foreigners can ravage it, a man must despise himself before others can despise him.
Yukio Mishima
Let the darkness that is in my heart become equal to the darkness of the night that surrounds those innumerable lights!
…In the very simplicity of her desire to punish herself appeared egoism in its purest form. Never before had this woman who seemed to think only of herself experienced an egoism so immaculate.
The perfectly ordinary girl and the great philosopher are alike: for both, the smallest triviality can become the vision that wipes out the world.
Yukio Mishima
Because the fact of not being understood by other people had become my only real source of pride, I was never confronted by any impulse to express things and to make others understand something that I knew.
Separation is painful, but so is its opposite. And if being together brings joy, then it is only proper that separation should do the same in its own way.
The philosophy that prepares a revolution and the sentiment that underpins the philosophy have, in every case the two pillars of nihilism and mysticism.
Yukio Mishima
Insensitive people are only upset when they actually see the blood, but actually by the time that the blood has been shed the tragedy has already completed.
True pain can only come gradually. It is exactly like tuberculosis in that the disease has already progressed to a critical stage before the patient becomes aware of its symptoms.
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.
They had laid the tender, down-ruffled little bird on a platter and appeared now to be pondering a way to eat out its heart without causing it distress.
This time, Fusako was able to express herself with fluency and candor. The bold letters she had been writing week after week had granted her an unexpected new freedom.
And it seemed increasingly obvious that the world would have to topple if he was to attain the glory that was rightfully his. They were consubstantial: glory and the capsized world.
Yukio Mishima
That which proceeds from a man’s soul shall shape his soul; that which proceeds from his speech shall shape his speech, and deeds that proceed from his body shall shape his body.
Most people are always doubtful as to whether they are happy or not, cheerful or not. This is the normal state of happiness, as doubt is a most natural thing.
Better to be caught in sudden, complete catastrophe than to be gnawed by the cancer of imagination.
Yukio Mishima
He never made fun of her as her neighbors did. That was why she visited him. He felt in this mad, ugly woman five years his senior a comrade in apartness. He liked people who refused to recognize the world.
As long as conscious desire is at work, it will permit distinctions to exist. But if one can suppress it, these distinctions dissolve and one can be as content with a skull as with anything else.
You're not human. You're a being who is incapable of social intercourse. You're nothing but a creature, non-human and somehow strangely pathetic.
Yukio Mishima
Why are we all burdened with the duty to destroy everything, change everything, entrust everything to impermanency? Is it this unpleasant duty that the world calls life?
What more could I have done when I did not know that to love is both to seek and to be sought? For me love was nothing but a dialogue of little riddles, with no answers given.
One could certainly think of a man not in terms of a body but as a single vital current. And this would allow one to grasp the concept of existence as dynamic and on-going, rather than as static.
Her nose was perfect; her lips exquisite. Like a master placing a go stone on the board after long deliberation, he placed the details of her beauty one by one in the misty dark and drew back to savour them.
