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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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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
Decadent
Malignant
Decay
Purity
Kinds
Kind
World

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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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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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Young people get the foolish idea that what is new for them must be new for everybody else too. No matter how unconventional they get, they're just repeating what others before them have done.
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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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At no time are we ever in such complete possession of a journey, down to its last nook and cranny, as when we are busy with preparations for it. After that, there remains only the journey itself, which is nothing but the process through which we lose our ownership of it.
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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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I want to make a poem of my life.
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I had no taste for defeat - much less victory - without a fight.
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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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Again and again, the cicada's untiring cry pierced the sultry summer air like a needle at work on thick cotton cloth.
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Actually the action called a kiss represented nothing more for me than some place where my spirit could seek shelter.
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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 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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Other people must be destroyed. In order that I might truly face the sun, the world itself must be destroyed.
Yukio Mishima
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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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Glory, as anyone knows, is bitter stuff.
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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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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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.
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The most appropriate type of daily life for me was a day-by-day world destruction peace was the most difficult and abnormal state to live in.
Yukio Mishima