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The mind, by its very nature, persistently tries to live forever, resisting age and attempting to give itself a form... . When a person passes his prime and his life begins to lose true vigor and charm, his mind starts functioning as if it were another form of life it imitates what life does, eventually doing what life cannot do.

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
Persons
Age
Charm
Imitates
Person
Another
Prime
Persistently
Live
True
Starts
Functioning
Giving
Nature
Eventually
Vigor
Trying
Cannot
Begins
Resisting
Mind
Form
Lose
Attempting
Life
Doe
Loses
Passes
Give
Forever
Tries

More quotes by 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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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.
Yukio Mishima
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There's a huge seal called 'impossibility' pasted all over this world. And don't ever forget that we're the only ones who can tear it off once and for all.
Yukio Mishima
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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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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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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.
Yukio Mishima
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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.
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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Actually the action called a kiss represented nothing more for me than some place where my spirit could seek shelter.
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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The cynicism that regards hero worship as comical is always shadowed by a sense of physical inferiority
Yukio Mishima
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I cried sobbingly until at last those visions reeking with blood came to comfort me. And then I surrendered myself to them, to those deplorably brutal visions, my most intimate friends.
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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Living is merely the chaos of existence.
Yukio Mishima
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The only people in this world I really trust are my fans - even if they do forget you so fast.
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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There isn't any fear in existence itself, or any uncertainty, but living creates it.
Yukio Mishima
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Nobody even imagines how well one can lie about the state of one’s own heart.
Yukio Mishima
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Was I ignorant, then, when I was seventeen? I think not. I knew everything. A quarter-century's experience of life since then has added nothing to what I knew. The one difference is that at seventeen I had no 'realism'.
Yukio Mishima
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I had no taste for defeat - much less victory - without a fight.
Yukio Mishima