Quote

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

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
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
Persons
Age
Charm
Imitates

More quotes by 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
Men had been living a proud life, having felt no need for the spirit-until Christianity invented it.
Yukio Mishima
Image
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.
Yukio Mishima
Image
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.
Yukio Mishima
Image
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.
Yukio Mishima
Image
Beauty is something that burns the hand when you touch it.
Yukio Mishima
Image
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
Image
Better to be caught in sudden, complete catastrophe than to be gnawed by the cancer of imagination.
Yukio Mishima
Image
If we value so highly the dignity of life, how can we not also value the dignity of death No death may be called futile.
Yukio Mishima
Image
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
Image
True beauty is something that attacks, overpowers, robs, and finally destroys.
Yukio Mishima
Image
We live in an age in which there is no heroic death.
Yukio Mishima
Image
The cynicism that regards hero worship as comical is always shadowed by a sense of physical inferiority
Yukio Mishima
Image
I had no taste for defeat - much less victory - without a fight.
Yukio Mishima
Image
A man isn't tiny or giant enough to defeat anything.
Yukio Mishima
Image
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
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
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
Image
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
Image
For clearly it is impossible to touch eternity with one hand and life with the other.
Yukio Mishima