Quote

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.

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
Spring
Propel
Back
Memories
Stretched
Live
Present
Springs
Future
Steel
Strong
Draw
Suddenly
Past
Draws
Certain
Touch
Taut
Doe

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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.
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There isn't any fear in existence itself, or any uncertainty, but living creates it.
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Perfect purity is possible if you turn your life into a line of poetry written with a splash of blood.
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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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According to Eshin's Essentials of Salvation, the Ten Pleasures are but a drop in the ocean when compared to the joys of the Pure Land.
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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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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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Beauty is something that burns the hand when you touch it.
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As long as you know I am waiting, take your time flowers of the spring.
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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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I want to make a poem of my life.
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Nobody even imagines how well one can lie about the state of one’s own heart.
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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.
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If the photographer is to create works that will stand for his spirit in the same way as artists in other genres, he must first - having no ready-made, abstract components such as works and sounds - supply other means to abstraction instead.
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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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Men had been living a proud life, having felt no need for the spirit-until Christianity invented it.
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