Better to be caught in sudden, complete catastrophe than to be gnawed by the cancer of imagination. Yukio Mishima More Quotes by Yukio Mishima More Quotes From Yukio Mishima True beauty is something that attacks, overpowers, robs, and finally destroys. Yukio Mishima true-beauty Perfect purity is possible if you turn your life into a line of poetry written with a splash of blood. Yukio Mishima linesperfectblood What transforms this world is - knowledge. Do you see what I mean? Nothing else can change anything in this world. Knowledge alone is capable of transforming the world, while at the same time leaving it exactly as it is. When you look at the world with knowledge, you realize that things are unchangeable and at the same time are constantly being transformed. Yukio Mishima leavingmeanlooks 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 donepeopleideas Dreams, memories, the sacred--they are all alike in that they are beyond our grasp. Once we are even marginally separated from what we can touch, the object is sanctified; it acquires the beauty of the unattainable, the quality of the miraculous. Everything, really, has this quality of sacredness, but we can desecrate it at a touch. How strange man is! His touch defiles and yet he contains the source of miracles. Yukio Mishima dreammenmemories The highest point at which human life and art meet is in the ordinary. To look down on the ordinary is to despise what you can't have. Show me a man who fears being ordinary, and I'll show you a man who is not yet a man. Yukio Mishima ordinarymenart Beauty is something that burns the hand when you touch it. Yukio Mishima hands Nobody even imagines how well one can lie about the state of one’s own heart. Yukio Mishima imagineheartlying 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 persistencepainacceptance As long as you know I am waiting, take your time flowers of the spring. Yukio Mishima flowerspringlong The special quality of hell is to see everything clearly down to the last detail. Yukio Mishima detailsqualityspecial Human beings - they go on being born and dying, dying and being born. It's kind of boring, isn't it? Yukio Mishima dyingkindgoes-on For an artist to do creative work, he needs at once physical health and some physiomental ill health. He needs both serenity and gloom. Yukio Mishima ill-healthcreativityartist Quite possibly, what I call happiness may coincide with what others call the moment of imminent danger Yukio Mishima momentsdangermay Real danger is nothing more than just living. Of course, living is merely the chaos of existence, but more than that it's a crazy mixed-up business of dismantling existence instant by instant to the point where the original chaos is restored, and taking strength from the uncertainty and the fear that chaos brings to re-create existence instant by instant. You won't find another job as dangerous as that. There isn't any fear in existence itself, or any uncertainty, but living creates it. Yukio Mishima crazyrealjobs There's a huge seal called 'impossibility' pasted all over this world. And don't ever forget that we're the only ones who can tear it off once and for all. Yukio Mishima tearsforgetworld He had never looked forward to the wisdom and other vaunted benefits of old age. Would he be able to die young—and if possible free of all pain? A graceful death—as a richly patterned kimono, thrown carelessly across a polished table, slides unobtrusively down into the darkness of the floor beneath. A death marked by elegance. Yukio Mishima paindarknessage When silence is prolonged over a certain period of time, it takes on new meaning. Yukio Mishima certainsilenceperiods In the pale light of daybreak the gravestones looked like so many white sails of boats anchored in a busy harbor. They were sails that would never again be filled with wind, sails that, too long unused and heavily drooping, had been turned into stone just as they were. The boats' anchors had been thrust so deeply into the dark earth that they could never again be raised. Yukio Mishima anchorslightdark His conviction of having no purpose in life other than to act as a distillation of poison was part of the ego of an eighteen-year-old. He had resolved that his beautiful white hands would never be soiled or calloused. He wanted to be like a pennant, dependent on each gusting wind. The only thing that seemed valid to him was to live for the emotions--gratuitous and unstable, dying only to quicken again, dwindling and flaring without direction or purpose. Yukio Mishima beautifulhandsyears
