Quote

Better to be caught in sudden, complete catastrophe than to be gnawed by the cancer of imagination.

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
Complete
Caught
Imagination
Better
Gnawed
Catastrophe
Sudden
Cancer

More quotes by Yukio Mishima

Image
..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.
Yukio Mishima
Image
We live in an age in which there is no heroic death.
Yukio Mishima
Image
Pain, I came to feel, might well prove to be the sole proof of the persistence of consciousness within the flesh, the sole physical expression of consciousness. As my body acquired muscle, and in turn strength, there was gradually born within me a tendency towards the positive acceptance of pain, and my interest in physical suffering deepened.
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
Men had been living a proud life, having felt no need for the spirit-until Christianity invented it.
Yukio Mishima
Image
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
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
It is a rather risky matter to discuss a happiness that has no need of words.
Yukio Mishima
Image
Other people must be destroyed. In order that I might truly face the sun, the world itself must be destroyed.
Yukio Mishima
Image
A man isn't tiny or giant enough to defeat anything.
Yukio Mishima
Image
Actually the action called a kiss represented nothing more for me than some place where my spirit could seek shelter.
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
The instant that the blade tore open his flesh, the bright disk of the sun soared up and exploded behind his eyelids.
Yukio Mishima
Image
As long as you know I am waiting, take your time flowers of the spring.
Yukio Mishima
Image
...of all the kinds of decay in this world, decadent purity is the most malignant.
Yukio Mishima
Image
His emotion evident in the glitter of his eyes.
Yukio Mishima
Image
Living is merely the chaos of existence.
Yukio Mishima
Image
Possessing by letting go of things was a secret of ownership unknown to youth.
Yukio Mishima
Image
Perfect purity is possible if you turn your life into a line of poetry written with a splash of blood.
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