Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Long
Melancholy
Time
Persistence
Stood
Fruit
Poised
Called
Approached
Though
Tempting
Happiness
Abyss
Felt
Forbidden

More quotes by Yukio Mishima

Image
The instant that the blade tore open his flesh, the bright disk of the sun soared up and exploded behind his eyelids.
Yukio Mishima
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Yukio Mishima
Image
Actually the action called a kiss represented nothing more for me than some place where my spirit could seek shelter.
Yukio Mishima
Image
The cynicism that regards hero worship as comical is always shadowed by a sense of physical inferiority
Yukio Mishima
Image
Nobody even imagines how well one can lie about the state of one’s own heart.
Yukio Mishima
Image
When silence is prolonged over a certain period of time, it takes on new meaning.
Yukio Mishima
Image
I want to make a poem of my life.
Yukio Mishima
Image
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
Image
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.
Yukio Mishima
Image
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
Image
For clearly it is impossible to touch eternity with one hand and life with the other.
Yukio Mishima
Image
Living is merely the chaos of existence.
Yukio Mishima
Image
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
Image
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.
Yukio Mishima
Image
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
Image
We live in an age in which there is no heroic death.
Yukio Mishima
Image
I had no taste for defeat - much less victory - without a fight.
Yukio Mishima
Image
The highest point at which human life and art meet is in the ordinary. To look down on the ordinary is to despise what you can't have. Show me a man who fears being ordinary, and I'll show you a man who is not yet a man.
Yukio Mishima