Yukio Mishima Quotes

Beauty is something that burns the hand when you touch it.

We are not wounded so deeply when betrayed by the things we hope for as when betrayed by things we t...

…In the very simplicity of her desire to punish herself appeared egoism in its purest form. Never be...

Might it have been nothing but life itself? Life; this limitless complex sea, filled with assorted f...

A feeling of liberation should contain a bracing feeling of negation, in which liberation itself is ...

It seemed that hell could appear day or night, at any time, at any place, simply in response to one'...

Amid the moon and the stars, amid the clouds of the night, amid the hills which bordered on the sky ...

To see human beings in agony, to see them covered in blood and to hear their death groans, makes peo...

Only knowledge can turn life's unbearableness into a weapon.

So far as feelings were concerned, there was no discrepancy between the very finest feeling in this ...

To put it in a rather vulgar way, I had been dreaming about love in the firm belief that I could not...

What transforms this world is — knowledge. Do you see what I mean? Nothing else can change anything ...

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

The special quality of hell is to see everything clearly down to the last detail.

Thus in a single phrase I can define the great illusion concerning 'love' in this world. It is the e...

The philosophy that prepares a revolution and the sentiment that underpins the philosophy have, in e...

Each instant brought them, more momentous than the explosion of Krakatoa. It was only that no one no...

The only real flesh was the flesh that existed in his imagination. Since, therefore, he regarded the...

The Imperial Concubine was fully aware of her own beauty, and she tended to be attracted by any forc...

True beauty is something that attacks, overpowers, robs, and finally destroys.

No human being can be so honest as to become completely false.

On the spur of the moment she decided to go and view the blossoms by herself in the dark night. It w...

When one has attained a state of mind from which the evil passions of the present world have been so...

I hope that I am making myself understood. The Golden Temple once more appeared before me. Or rather...

Japanese people today think of money, just money: Where is our national spirit today? The Jieitai mu...

Because the fact of not being understood by other people had become my only real source of pride, I ...

To be strong and true had been the most important task he had set himself since early childhood.Once...

Kazu, now that she thought of it, realized that for all her headstrong temperament, she had never lo...

This time, Fusako was able to express herself with fluency and candor. The bold letters she had been...

I felt as though I owned the whole world. And little wonder, because at no time are we ever in such ...

But I had deliberately acquired the habit of closing my eyes even to such obvious assumptions, just ...

The blossoms seem unusually lovely this year. There were none of the scarlet-and-white-striped curta...

Again, there were maidens who cherished the firm belief that he had come from the sea. Because withi...

When I arrived at the house in the suburbs that night I seriously contemplated suicide for the first...

She did not know it, but she was actually in despair at the poverty of human emotions. Was it not ir...

…Her desire was close to that of the person who drowns himself; he does not necessarily covet death ...

Reiko had not kept a diary and was now denied the pleasure of assiduously rereading her record of th...

Otaguro’s bosom heaved with an ineffable surge of joy. “Every man is fighting,” he murmured. “Every ...

Beyond doubt it would speedily verify the proverb that a nation must ravage itself before foreigners...

How oddly situated a man is apt to find himself at age thirty-eight! His youth belongs to the distan...

Again and again, the cicada’s untiring cry pierced the sultry summer air like a needle at work on th...

The instant that the blade tore open his flesh, the bright disk of the sun soared up and exploded be...

A father is a reality-concealing machine, a machine for dishing up lies to kids, and that isn't even...

To Ryuji the smile seemed as brittle as fine glass crystal and very dangerous

So young and so lethargic! As though he had been born to sit and stare like this. Ever since Kiyoaki...

Everything, really, has this quality of sacredness, but we can desecrate it at a touch. How strange ...

For everything sacred has the substance of dreams and memories, and so we experience the miracle of ...

Count Ayakura’s abstraction persisted. He believed that only a vulgar mentality was willing to ackno...

Just now I had a dream. I'll see you again. I know it. Beneath the falls.

Only through the group, I realised — through sharing the suffering of the group — could the body rea...

However, as words become particularized, and as men begin - in however small a way - to use them in ...

Do I, then, belong to the heavens?Why, if not so, should the heavensFix me thus with their ceaseless...

Suddenly the full long wail of a ship's horn surged through the open window and flooded the dim room...

They had laid the tender, down-ruffled little bird on a platter and appeared now to be pondering a w...

Possibly a man who hates the land should dwell on shore forever. Alienation and the long voyages at ...

An ugliness unfurled in the moonlight and soft shadow and suffused the whole world. If I were an amo...

The only people in this world I really trust are my fans - even if they do forget you so fast.

And it seemed increasingly obvious that the world would have to topple if he was to attain the glory...