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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

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Yukio Mishima
Age: 45 †
Born: 1925
Born: January 14
Died: 1970
Died: November 25
Actor
Author
Critic
Essayist
Film Actor
Film Director
Lyricist
Military Personnel
Model
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Prosaist
Screenwriter
City of Tokyo
Mishima Yukio
Kimitake Hiraoka
Hiraoka Kimitake
Total
Degenerated
Machines
Cogs
Function
Samurai
Skills
Absorbed
Completely
Technical
Human
Whereas
Humans
Skill
Men
Machine

More quotes by Yukio Mishima

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Human beings - they go on being born and dying, dying and being born. It's kind of boring, isn't it?
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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.
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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.
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I still have no way to survive but to keep writing one line, one more line, one more line.
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The instant that the blade tore open his flesh, the bright disk of the sun soared up and exploded behind his eyelids.
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Nobody even imagines how well one can lie about the state of one’s own heart.
Yukio Mishima
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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?
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The special quality of hell is to see everything clearly down to the last detail.
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Quite possibly, what I call happiness may coincide with what others call the moment of imminent danger
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For clearly it is impossible to touch eternity with one hand and life with the other.
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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.
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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.
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There is no virtue in curiosity. In fact, it might be the most immoral desire a man can possess.
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It is a rather risky matter to discuss a happiness that has no need of words.
Yukio Mishima
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Human life is limited but I would like to live forever.
Yukio Mishima
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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.
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Actually the action called a kiss represented nothing more for me than some place where my spirit could seek shelter.
Yukio Mishima
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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.
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...of all the kinds of decay in this world, decadent purity is the most malignant.
Yukio Mishima
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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