Yukio Mishima Quotes

The living and the dead,
The awake and the sleeping,
The young and the old are all one and the same.
When the ones change, they become the others.
When those shift again, they become these again.

God is day and night.
God is winter and summer.
God is war and peace.
God is fertility and famine.
He transforms into many things.

Day and night are one.
Goodness and badness are one.
The beginning and the end of a circle are one.

No, Mr. Honda, I have forgotten none of the blessings that were mine in the other world. But I fear I have never heard the name Kiyoaki Matsugae. Don’t you suppose, Mr. Honda, that there never was such a person? You seem convinced that there was; but don’t you suppose that there was no such person from the beginning, anywhere? I couldn’t help thinking so as I listened to you.”
“Why then do we know each other? And the Ayakuras and the Matsugaes must still have family registers.”
“Yes, such documents might solve problems in the other world. But did you really know a person called Kiyoaki? And can you say definitely that the two of us have met before?”
“I came here sixty years ago.”
“Memory is like a phantom mirror. It sometimes shows things too distant to be seen, and sometimes it shows them as if they were here.”
“But if there was no Kiyoaki from the beginning — ” Honda was groping through a fog. His meeting here with the Abbess seemed half a dream. He spoke loudly, as if to retrieve the self that receded like traces of breath vanishing from a lacquer tray. “If there was no Kiyoaki, then there was no Isao. There was no Ying Chan, and who knows, perhaps there has been no I.”
For the first time there was strength in her eyes.
“That too is as it is in each heart.

A person who has been seriously wounded does not demand that the bandages that save his life be clean.

Two men may talk together enthusiastically for an hour or so about shared experiences, and yet not have a true conversation. A lonely man who wants to indulge his nostalgic mood feels the need of someone with whom to share it. When he finds such a companion, he starts to pour out his monologue as though recounting a dream. And so the talk goes on between them, their monologues alternating, but after a time they suddenly become aware that they have nothing to say to each other. They are like two men standing at either side of a chasm, the bridge across which has been destroyed.

We human beings sometimes steer off in a direction in which we hope to find something a little bit better.

Human life is limited but I would like to live forever.

And it seemed increasingly obvious that the world would have to topple if he was to attain the glory that was rightfully his. They were consubstantial: glory and the capsized world.

He'd been mistaken in thinking that if he killed himself the sordid bourgeois world would perish with him.

The soul, you see, is a shy and retiring thing. It lurks in dark places and dislikes sunlight. And so, if you do not keep the skylight open at all times, the soul will rot. It easily decays, like a fresh sea urchin.

the fact of not being understood by others had been my sole source of pride since my early youth, and I had not the slightest impulse to express myself in such a way that I might be understood. When I did try to clarify my thoughts and actions, I did so with no consideration whatsoever. I do not know whether or not this was because I wanted to understand myself. Such a motive is in accord with a person's real character and comes automatically to form a bridge between himself and others

Ordinary life is even more horrible than war

I had no taste for defeat — much less victory — without a fight.

.... كل ما هنالك ان احداً لم يلحظ الأمر، فنحن أكثر تعوداً مما ينبغي .على عبث الوجود. و ضياع كون ليس جديراً ان يحمل على محمل الجد

When I arrived at the house in the suburbs that night I seriously contemplated suicide for the first time in my life. But as I thought about it, the idea became exceedingly tiresome, and I finally decided it would be a ludicrous business. I had an inherent dislike of admitting defeat. Moreover, I told myself, there's no need for me to take such decisive action myself, not when I'm surrounded by such a bountiful harvest of death — death in an air raid, death at one's post of duty, death in the military service, death on the battlefield, death from being run over, death from disease — surely my name has already been entered in the list for one of these: a criminal who has been sentenced to death does not commit suicide. No — no matter how I considered, the season was not auspicious for suicide. Instead I was waiting for something to do me the favor of killing me. And this, in the final analysis, is the same as to say that I was waiting for something to do me the favor of keeping me alive.

At thirteen, Noboru was convinced of his own genius (each of the others in the gang felt the same way) 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. Therefore, his own father's death, when he was eight, had been a happy incident, something to be proud of.