Yukio Mishima citations (62 citations, Page 2)

Yukio Mishima: 62 citations1 J'aime

Yukio Mishima Citations

“J'éprouvais le besoin de commencer à vivre. Commencer à vivre ma vraie vie? Même si ce devait être une simple mascarade et pas du tout ma vraie vie, le temps était venu où il me fallait prendre le départ et s'avancer en traînant lourdement mes pas.”

Yukio Mishima livre Confessions d'un masque

Confessions of a Mask

“La Beauté c'est la Mort.”

Yukio Mishima

Yukio Mishima: Citations en anglais

“Words are a medium that reduces reality to abstraction for transmission to our reason, and in their power to corrode reality inevitably lurks the danger that the words will be corroded too.”

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Yukio Mishima livre Sun and Steel

Source: Sun and Steel (1968), p. 9.
Contexte: Words are a medium that reduces reality to abstraction for transmission to our reason, and in their power to corrode reality inevitably lurks the danger that the words will be corroded too. It might be more appropriate, in fact, to liken their action to excessive stomach fluids that digest and gradually eat away the stomach itself.
Many people will express disbelief that such a process could already be at work in a person's earliest years. But that, beyond doubt, is what happened to me personally, thereby laying the ground for two contradictory tendencies within myself. One was the determination to press ahead loyally with the corrosive function of words, and to make that my life's work. The other was the desire to encounter reality in some field where words should play no part at all.

“My "act" has ended by becoming an integral part of my nature, I told myself. It's no longer an act.”

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Yukio Mishima livre Confessions d'un masque

Source: Confessions of a Mask (1949), p. 153.
Contexte: My "act" has ended by becoming an integral part of my nature, I told myself. It's no longer an act. My knowledge that I am masquerading as a normal person has even corroded whatever of normality I originally possessed, ending by making me tell myself over and over again that it too was nothing but a pretense of normality. To say it another way, I'm becoming the sort of person who can't believe in anything except the counterfeit.

“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.”

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Yukio Mishima livre The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

Source: The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

“i still have no way to survive but to keep writing one line, one more line, one more line…”

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Yukio Mishima

“Anything can become excusable when seen from the standpoint of the result”

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Yukio Mishima livre The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

Source: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“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.”

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Yukio Mishima livre Thirst for Love

Source: Thirst for Love

“The past does not only draw us back to the past. There are certain memories of the past that have strong steel springs and, when we who live in the present touch them, they are suddenly stretched taut and then they propel us into the future.”

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Yukio Mishima livre The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

Source: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“The instant that the blade tore open his flesh, the bright disk of the sun soared up and exploded behind his eyelids.”

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Yukio Mishima livre Runaway Horses

Source: Runaway Horses

“Mine was the unbearable jealousy a cultured pearl must feel toward a genuine one. Or can there be such a thing in this world as a man who is jealous of the woman who loves him, precisely because of her love?”

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Yukio Mishima livre Confessions d'un masque

Source: Confessions of a Mask (1949), p. 208.
Contexte: I received an impassioned letter from Sonoko. There was no doubt that she was truly in love. I felt jealous. Mine was the unbearable jealousy a cultured pearl must feel toward a genuine one. Or can there be such a thing in this world as a man who is jealous of the woman who loves him, precisely because of her love?

“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.”

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Yukio Mishima livre The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

Source: The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

“I had long since insisted upon interpreting the things that Fate forced me to do as victories of my own will and intelligence, and now this bad habit had grown into a sort of frenzied arrogance. In the nature of what I was calling my intelligence there was a touch of something illegitimate, a touch of the sham pretender who has been placed on the throne by some freak chance. This dolt of a usurper could not foresee the revenge that would inevitably be wreaked upon his stupid despotism.”

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Yukio Mishima livre Confessions d'un masque

Source: Confessions of a Mask (1949), p. 220.

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

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Yukio Mishima livre Sun and Steel

Source: Sun and Steel (1968), p. 49.

“"I'll be going now," she said.
Shinji made no answer and a surprised look came over his face. He had caught sight of a black streak that ran straight across the front of her red sweater.
Hatsue followed his gaze and saw the dirty smudge, just in the spot where she had been leaning her breast against the concrete parapet. Bending her head, she started slapping her breast with her open hands. Beneath her sweater, which all but seemed to be concealing some firm supports, two gently swelling mounds were set to trembling ever so slightly by the brisk brushing of her hands.
Shinji stared in wonder. Struck by her hands, the breasts seemed more like two small, playful animals. The boy was deeply stirred by the resilient softness of their movement.
The streak of dirt was finally brushed out.”

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Yukio Mishima livre The Sound of Waves

Source: The Sound of Waves (1956), p. 31, ch. 4.

“Is there not a sort of remorse that precedes sin? Was it remorse at the very fact that I existed?”

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Yukio Mishima livre Confessions d'un masque

Source: Confessions of a Mask (1949), p. 144.

“I've never done much, but I've lived my whole life thinking of myself as the only real man. And if I'm right, then a limpid, lonely horn is going to trumpet through the dawn some day, and a turgid cloud laced with light will sweep down, and the poignant voice of glory will call for me from the distance — and I'll have to jump out of bed and set out alone. That's why I've never married. I've waited, and waited, and here I am past thirty.”

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Yukio Mishima

Ryuji, the sailor in The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea (1965), p. 38.

“In its essence, any art that relies on words makes use of their ability to eat away — of their corrosive function — just as etching depends on the corrosive power of nitric acid.”

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Yukio Mishima livre Sun and Steel

Source: Sun and Steel (1968), p. 8.

“The purest evil that human efforts could attain, in other words, was probably achieved by those men who made their wills the same and who made their eyes see the world in the same way, men who went against the pattern of life's diversity, men whose spirits shattered the natural wall of the individual body, making nothing of this barrier, set up to guard against mutual corrosion, men whose spirit accomplished what flesh could never accomplish.”

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Yukio Mishima livre Runaway Horses

Runaway Horses (1969), as translated by Michael Gallagher (1973).

“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.”

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Yukio Mishima livre Sun and Steel

Source: Sun and Steel (1968), p. 57.

“We tend to suffer from the illusion that we are capable of dying for a belief or theory. What Hagakure is insisting is that even in merciless death, a futile death that knows neither flower nor fruit has dignity as the death of a human being. If we value so highly the dignity of life, how can we not also value the dignity of death? No death may be called futile.”

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Yukio Mishima

Yukio Mishima on Hagakure : The Samurai Ethic and Modern Japan (1977) as translated by Kathryn Sparling, p. 105; Mishima's commentary on the sayings of Yamamoto Tsunetomo.

“Just let matters slide. How much better to accept each sweet drop of the honey that was Time, than to stoop to the vulgarity latent in every decision. However grave the matter at hand might be, if one neglected it for long enough, the act of neglect itself would begin to affect the situation, and someone else would emerge as an ally. Such was Count Ayakura's version of political theory.”

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Yukio Mishima livre Spring Snow

Spring Snow (1968), as translated by Michael Gallagher (1972).

“As he saw it, there was only one choice — to be strong and upright, or to commit suicide.”

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Yukio Mishima Ken

"Sword" ("Ken"), quoted in 三島由紀夫短編集: Seven Stories, translated by John Bester (2002), p. 46.

“Human beings — they go on being born and dying, dying and being born. It's kind of boring, isn't it?”

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Yukio Mishima Ken

"Sword" ("Ken"), quoted in 三島由紀夫短編集: Seven Stories, translated by John Bester (2002), p. 67.