Again and again, the cicada's untiring cry pierced the sultry summer air like a needle at work on thick cotton cloth. Yukio Mishima More Quotes by Yukio Mishima More Quotes From Yukio Mishima We live in an age in which there is no heroic death. Yukio Mishima heroic-deathheroicage Anything can become excusable when seen from the standpoint of the result Yukio Mishima standpointresults To see human beings in agony, to see them covered in blood and to hear their death groans, makes people humble. It makes their spirits delicate, bright, peaceful. It's never at such times that we become cruel or bloodthirsty. No, it's on a beautiful spring afternoon like this that people suddenly become cruel. It's at a moment like this, don't you think, while one's vaguely watching the sun as it peeps through the leaves of the trees above a well-mown lawn? Every possible nightmare in the world, every possible nightmare in history, has come into being like this. Yukio Mishima humblespringbeautiful 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 darklossclouds 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. Yukio Mishima world-destructionabnormaldaily-life …the samurai ethic is a political science of the heart, designed to control such discouragement and fatigue in order to avoid showing them to others. It was thought more important to look healthy than to be healthy, and more important to seem bold and daring than to be so. This view of morality, since it is physiologically based on the special vanity peculiar to men, is perhaps the supreme male view of morality. Yukio Mishima vanityheartmen Yet how strange a thing is the beauty of music! The brief beauty that the player brings into being transforms a given period of time into pure continuance; it is certain never to be repeated; like the existence of dayflies and other such short-lived creatures, beauty is a perfect abstraction and creation of life itself. Nothing is so similar to life as music. Yukio Mishima strangeplayerperfect I want to make a poem of my life. Yukio Mishima want I had no taste for defeat - much less victory - without a fight. Yukio Mishima victoryfightingtaste Even when we're with someone we love, we're foolish enough to think of her body and soul as being separate. To stand before the person we love is not the same as loving her true self, for we are only apt to regard her physical beauty as the indispensable mode of her existence. When time and space intervene, it is possible to be deceived by both, but on the other hand, it is equally possible to draw twice as close to her real self. Yukio Mishima reallove-isthinking Men had been living a proud life, having felt no need for the spirit-until Christianity invented it. Yukio Mishima proudmenneeds 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 cogsskillsmen Glory, as anyone knows, is bitter stuff. Yukio Mishima bitterglorystuff An ugliness unfurled in the moonlight and soft shadow and suffused the whole world. If I were an amoeba, he thought, with an infinitesimal body, I could defeat ugliness. A man isn’t tiny or giant enough to defeat anything. Yukio Mishima giantsshadowmen When a captive lion steps out of his cage, he comes into a wider world than the lion who has known only the wilds. While he was in captivity, there were only two worlds for him - the world of the cage, and the world outside the cage. Now he is free. He roars. He attacks people. He eats them. Yet he is not satisfied, for there is no third world that is neither the world of the cage nor the world outside the cage. Yukio Mishima captivitytwopeople if the world changed, i could not exist, and if i changed, the world could not exist Yukio Mishima changedifsworld I am one who has always been interested only in the edges of the body and the spirit, the outlying regions of the body and the outlying regions of the spirit. The depths hold no interest for me; I leave them to others, for they are shallow, commonplace. What is there, then, at the outer most edge? Nothing, perhaps, save a few ribbons, dangling down into the void. Yukio Mishima ribbonsdepthbody 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. Yukio Mishima passiongriefmemories The instant that the blade tore open his flesh, the bright disk of the sun soared up and exploded behind his eyelids. Yukio Mishima bladesfleshsun Possessing by letting go of things was a secret of ownership unknown to youth. Yukio Mishima youthsecretletting-go
