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For clearly it is impossible to touch eternity with one hand and life with the other.

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
Life
Clearly
Eternity
Touch
Impossible
Hand
Hands

More quotes by Yukio Mishima

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Suddenly the full long wail of a ship's horn surged through the open window and flooded the dim room—a cry of boundless, dark, demanding grief pitch-black and glabrous as a whale's back and burdened with all the passions of the tides, the memory of voyages beyond counting, the joys, the humiliations: the sea was screaming.
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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 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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We are not wounded so deeply when betrayed by the things we hope for as when betrayed by things we try our best to despise. In such betrayal comes the dagger in the back.
Yukio Mishima
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True beauty is something that attacks, overpowers, robs, and finally destroys.
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Quite possibly, what I call happiness may coincide with what others call the moment of imminent danger
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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.
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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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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.
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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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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 had no taste for defeat - much less victory - without a fight.
Yukio Mishima
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We live in an age in which there is no heroic death.
Yukio Mishima
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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
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There is no virtue in curiosity. In fact, it might be the most immoral desire a man can possess.
Yukio Mishima
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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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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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The special quality of hell is to see everything clearly down to the last detail.
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?
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