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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
Machines
Cogs
Function
Samurai
Skills
Absorbed
Completely
Technical
Human
Whereas
Humans
Skill
Men
Machine
Total
Degenerated

More quotes by Yukio Mishima

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All my life I have been acutely aware of a contradiction in the very nature of my existence. For forty-five years I struggled to resolve this dilemma by writing plays and novels. The more I wrote, the more I realized mere words were not enough. So I found another form of expression.
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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.
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For an artist to do creative work, he needs at once physical health and some physiomental ill health. He needs both serenity and gloom.
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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.
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Is there not a sort of remorse that precedes sin? Was it remorse at the very fact that I existed?
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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.
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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.
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Anything can become excusable when seen from the standpoint of the result
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His emotion evident in the glitter of his eyes.
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Possessing by letting go of things was a secret of ownership unknown to youth.
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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.
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Let us remember that the central reality must be sought in the writer's work: it is what the writer chose to write, or was compelled to write, that finally matters. And certainly Mishima's carefully premeditated death is part of his work.
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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
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Better to be caught in sudden, complete catastrophe than to be gnawed by the cancer of imagination.
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
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Within those confining walls, teachers - a bunch of men all armed with the same information - gave the same lectures every year from the same notebooks and every year at the same point in the textbooks made the same jokes.
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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
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For clearly it is impossible to touch eternity with one hand and life with the other.
Yukio Mishima
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I seemed like a baby bird keeping its truly innocent animal lusts hidden under its wing. I was being tempted, not by the desire of possession, but simply by unadorned temptation itself.
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?
Yukio Mishima