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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.

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
Time
Lose
Preparation
Loses
Insight
Lasts
Possession
Last
Complete
Process
Busy
Cranny
Action
Remains
Nook
Ever
Discipline
Preparations
Nothing
Journey
Ownership

More quotes by Yukio Mishima

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I want to make a poem of my life.
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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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..and certain that life consisted of a few simple signals and decisions that death took root at the moment of birth and man’s only recourse thereafter was to water and tend it that propagation was a fiction consequently, society was a fiction too that fathers and teachers, by virtue of being fathers and teachers, were guilty of a grievous sin.
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A father is a reality-concealing machine, a machine for dishing up lies to kids, and that isn't even the worst of it: secretly he believes that he represents reality.
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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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His emotion evident in the glitter of his eyes.
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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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Men had been living a proud life, having felt no need for the spirit-until Christianity invented it.
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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.
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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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The period of childhood is a stage on which time and space become entangled.
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It is a rather risky matter to discuss a happiness that has no need of words.
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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.
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Glory, as anyone knows, is bitter stuff.
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We live in an age in which there is no heroic death.
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Beyond doubt, there was a certain splendor in pain, which bore a deep affinity to the splendor that lies hidden within strength.
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.
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Living is merely the chaos of existence.
Yukio Mishima
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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
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Better to be caught in sudden, complete catastrophe than to be gnawed by the cancer of imagination.
Yukio Mishima