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The cynicism that regards hero worship as comical is always shadowed by a sense of physical inferiority

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
Regard
Worship
Physical
Hero
Shadowed
Sense
Comical
Always
Regards
Inferiority
Cynicism

More quotes by 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.
Yukio Mishima
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A man isn't tiny or giant enough to defeat anything.
Yukio Mishima
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Again and again, the cicada's untiring cry pierced the sultry summer air like a needle at work on thick cotton cloth.
Yukio Mishima
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If we look on idly, heaven and earth will never be joined. To join heaven and earth, some decisive deed of purity is necessary. To accomplish so resolute an action, you have to stake your life, giving no thought to personal gain or loss.
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
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if the world changed, i could not exist, and if i changed, the world could not exist
Yukio Mishima
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We live in an age in which there is no heroic death.
Yukio Mishima
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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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The instant that the blade tore open his flesh, the bright disk of the sun soared up and exploded behind his eyelids.
Yukio Mishima
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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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Human life is limited but I would like to live forever.
Yukio Mishima
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The images which the [press] photographer has filtered from reality, whether particular events or the anguish of human reactions to them, already bear a stamp of authenticity which the photographer is powerless to alter by one jot or tittle the meaning of the objects, by a process of purification, itself becomes the theme of the work.
Yukio Mishima
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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.
Yukio Mishima
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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.
Yukio Mishima
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There is no virtue in curiosity. In fact, it might be the most immoral desire a man can possess.
Yukio Mishima
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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.
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.
Yukio Mishima
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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
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Is there not a sort of remorse that precedes sin? Was it remorse at the very fact that I existed?
Yukio Mishima
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Beauty is something that burns the hand when you touch it.
Yukio Mishima