300+ Yukio Mishima Quotes to Explore Beauty, Death, and the Human Spirit

Updated 2025/05/05

January 14, 1925 – November 25, 1970
Born in Japan
Novelist, playwright, critic, political activist
He became a representative figure of postwar Japanese literature, and was highly acclaimed both at home and abroad. He pursued his own unique aesthetic with themes of beauty and death, and ultimately committed seppuku at a Self-Defense Forces garrison. His life, which combined literature with action, continues to have a strong influence today.

“Just as jealousy is born from love, sometimes love is born from jealousy.”
“The recitation of the phrase ‘I love you’ as a sacred text, through infinite repetition, brings some kind of transformation to the reader’s own heart.”
“Compared to love, hatred moves humans far more powerfully.”
“When it comes to loving, women are the experts, while men remain eternal amateurs.”
“Love has the nature of a shared possession, and it is because the limits of ownership are ambiguous that it seems to cause much unhappiness.”
“Love requires time, heart, and immense energy.”
“Is there not, in the depths of love, an impossible longing to become exactly like the other?”
“The paradox of love is that what is waited for never comes, what is desired is never obtained, and the very reason for its absence lies in the act of waiting and desiring itself.”
“Love can only be born from despair. It is the movement of the spirit against nature, the spirit’s effort toward something that is incomprehensible.”
“Love is by no means understanding.”
“Love is frightening to everyone, because there are no laws in love.”
“The devil’s invention is God’s hygiene.”
“Pleasure that fears tomorrow is both a counterfeit and something to be ashamed of.”
“If newness is considered ‘discovery,’ then nothing should make one more aware of the existing than discovery itself.”
“Every cynicism that regards heroism as ridiculous always carries the shadow of physical inferiority.”
“Every reformer is followed by deep despair. However, the reformer does not speak of this despair.”
“After the late modern period, that is, after Romanticism, all art genres became awkward with each other, grew distant, and divorced.”
“All criticism and cautionary cold water may dampen genuine, refined passion, but they will never extinguish it.”
“Some women betray their husbands with their hearts, some with their bodies, and some with their fat.”
“The impression of fragile, pure beauty in certain moments can only surrender itself to banal descriptions.”
“How many people must be spared from confession thanks to the existence of a certain novel.”
“At least while we are alive, we stand firmly on the ground with two feet.”
“The lack of will to live and optimism form the laziest of connections, and this is what it means to be human.”
“From the standpoint of destiny, living was like being completely deceived.”
“No matter how much one speaks of ‘the way of both literary and martial arts,’ true mastery of both can only be achieved at the moment of death.”
“Is not willpower the residue of fate?”
“Just as a great play is, so too is great literature nothing other than a monologue.”
“In today’s world, to prove true love, it surely isn’t enough; just dying for it is not enough.”
“How ugly the face of a person is when it is not moving.”
“A lie also looks beautiful from a distance.”
“Walking through the town dressed beautifully, with a beautiful face, is a kind of urban beautification movement.”
“A man’s will to become beautiful is, unlike a woman’s will to desire the same, always a ‘will to death.'”
“It’s pointless to believe in an invisible god who poses no risk of betrayal.”
“Sometimes, fate imposes its significant themes upon trivial, insignificant things.”
“Much of sensitivity is eased by the realization that what one feels toward others is not necessarily felt by them in return.”
“Interfering in others’ affairs is one of the hygienic practices of life.”
“A man is stronger than a woman only in terms of physical strength and intelligence, and a man who lacks both physical strength and intelligence has no superiority over a woman.”
“One often sees false villains in men, but they are extremely rare in women.”
“A man’s vanity is to make it appear as though he has no vanity.”
“The true, ultimate edge of a man’s jealousy is, I would assert, the anger of having his **face** or **reputation** wounded.”
“If decay is a disease, then the body itself, the root cause of decay, is the disease.”
“Among all types of boasting, there is none more harmless than boasting about one’s fighting skills.”
“The concept of music itself erases music.”
“Music is like a dream. At the same time, it is also like the opposite of a dream, resembling a state of even more certain awakening.”
“It has never happened, nor will it ever happen, that a woman is deceived by a man.”
“Women are the children born from the illicit union of dreams and reality.”
“There is no greater insult to a woman than the idea that her beauty is directly connected to a man’s most hideous desires.”
“A woman’s chastity should not be a reward for the occasional kind words or actions of her husband, but something directly tied to the essence of her husband’s character.”
“A woman drags all values down into the mire of sensitivity.”
“A woman cannot become anything other than herself. Rather, she easily becomes ‘herself.'”
“The certainty of having no certainty holds the most unshakable conviction.”
“Sadly, we have learned even the tools to critique the West from the West itself.”
“Sadness is a matter of the spirit, while laughter is a matter of the intellect.”
“Those who believe that enjoyment cannot be bought with money are sentimental rich people.”
“For money’s sake! For such a noble purpose, literature is too precious to be wasted.”
“To feel that God is indifferent to human sorrow is likely the cruelty of youth.”
“God is humanity’s final excuse, and paradoxes may, perhaps, be the shortcut to God.”
“A wonderful, ideal family centered around an empty well.”
“Often, the eccentric and the idealist are two sides of the same coin.”
“The more fragile a person is, the more likely they are to weave a complex chainmail. And often, this chainmail ends up wounding their own skin.”
“A wounded person does not necessarily require that the makeshift bandage be clean.”
“Deception makes humans wiser than fairy tales do.”
“A paradox may serve as an excuse in the moment, but it can never be a true excuse.”
“A powerful intellect reconstructs the world, but the greater the sensitivity, the more one must accept the chaos of the world within oneself.”
“One must not disdain vanity. In this world, there are vanities that are supremely noble.”
“Christ was original not for the sake of his life, but for the fate of his crucifixion.”
“Among the many illusions invented by modernity, ‘society’ is the most human of illusions.”
“The only weapon of modernity is irony (cynicism).”
“Could science fiction be the first literature to completely overcome modern humanism?”
“Even if the goal is empty, human happiness exists only in the process of striving toward a goal.”
“What do you think those are—things that are broken, formless, blind…? That is the essence of the spirit.”
“There is something beneficial to the soul in the clarity of pain.”
“The purer the art, the more it transcends its own field and interacts with other fields, elevating each other.”
“An artist is a variation of nature.”
“The worth of an artist is determined by the interest of the obituary written after their death.”
“An artist is not only involved in creation; they are also involved in destruction.”
“An artist, like the pelican that is said to nourish its young with its own blood, redeems the existence of their work with their own blood.”
“The reason why the emotion evoked by an artwork makes us so strongly aware of life may be because it is the emotion of death.”
“The formation of an artwork is, in itself, an act of fighting against death and resisting it.”
“Art is a great sunset. It is a sacrificial fire of all the good things of an era.”
“Art is nothing but ventriloquism, making the mute speak. In this sense, art is a metaphor.”
“Art, for me, is the other of my ego.”
“There are no matters that can be resolved by art.”
“Art is, in every sense, a critique of the material it deals with.”
“Art occupies the middle ground between the coldness of recognition and the warmth of action, and seeks to mediate between these two.”
“Contempt is the eternal critique of a woman towards a man.”
“Self-respect, which is based on the belief that one should never be deceived by others, builds a wall of ten or twenty layers around oneself.”
“Crystallized evil is as beautiful as a white pill.”
“Because it is determined, our possibilities are infinite, and because we are restrained, our flight is eternal.”
“Cleanliness is a form of selfishness commanded by desire.”
“The most unpleasant form of pretension is to pretend ignorance.”
“For a healthy young person, perhaps the most urgent need is the thought of ‘death.'”
“Maintaining the status quo is always an ugly thought, while destroying the status quo is always a hungry, impoverished thought.”
“Destruction, more than construction, shows the proof of one’s power right before one’s eyes.”
“The most effective power in modern society is intellect.”
“In modern times, there is almost no honor that does not feed on some kind of scandal.”
“Modern human society is hungry for blood.”
“Against disillusionment, a stronger disillusionment may sometimes serve as an effective remedy.”
“Which runs faster, love or a dog? Now, which gets dirty faster?”
“Does there exist in modern times a purpose or ideology powerful enough to strongly guarantee the true nature of an action?”
“Curiosity has no morality. It may perhaps be the most immoral desire that humans possess.”
“An action, while exploding like a spark in an instant, possesses a mysterious power to summarize a long life.”
“The philosophy that happiness is fleeting has the power to make both the unhappy and the happy feel good.”
“Happiness is about not feeling anything. Happiness is something more insensible.”
“There is nothing more annoying than a friend with a habit of confessing.”
“Things like individuality are, at first, ugly and awkward in appearance.”
“The love of flesh and blood, once its path is twisted, can transform into terrible hatred.”
“Loneliness is the situation in which today’s youth find themselves, and their role lies only within that.”
“In this world, there is a great seal labeled ‘impossible.'”
“The most terrifying loneliness in this world is moral loneliness.”
“There is no monster in this world greater than human trust.”
“When the peak of happiness arrives in this world, there are certain thoughts that can only move when inside that happiness.”
“The purest joy in this world is to see the joy of others.”
“This world is filled with the positive images of imperfect humans.”
“A complex is the stepping stool a writer uses for hanging themselves.”
“Today, the word ‘tradition’ has almost turned into a kind of scandal.”
“If you think tonight is the last, there are endless things to talk about.”
“A work of art must not be a garment that fits the author’s measurements.”
“The artistic purity of a writer immediately leads to cultural criticism; this is the fate of contemporary Japanese writers.”
“A writer must, at least once, have shared a bed with their time, and it seems they must be inspired by the memory of it.”
“A writer continues to speak and tell their life story throughout their entire existence, in order to savor the silence of becoming their true self at the final moment.”
“The murderer is behind the Creator. Their greatness is shared, and their joy and sorrow are shared.”
“Loneliness is a kind of scent that humans emit.”
“It is a childish nonsense to say that you cannot love because your self-consciousness is too strong; it is simply that by not loving, your self-consciousness becomes inflated.”
“It is often said that a man looks beautiful when he is absorbed in his work, but what good would it do for a man who was never beautiful to become absorbed in his work?”
“Is suicide, like alchemy, a futile desire to transform lead, which is life, into gold, which is death?”
“The sense of purity in adolescence often arises from thinking of oneself as impure.”
“A poet is someone who sacrifices themselves to their youth. They carry the remains of their youth with them throughout their life.”
“I too know that there are truths in this world that can only be seen if one does not break their posture.”
“The concept of death is indeed the sweetest mother of my work.”
“The world of theater is truly captivating, but on the other hand, it holds a terrible toxin.”
“There is nothing more beneficial to the formation of the self than realizing that you have the power to negate your own will.”
“It is a wise approach to grow old gradually while coming to terms with your own face.”
“Those who clearly understand the measure of their own death will become the truly courageous people in the world to come.”
“Is a writer who fully understands the limits of their craft and never dreams about it truly happy?”
“It is easy to speak ill of things you do not possess.”
“Without poetry, without bliss! This is the most important thing. The secret to life lies only there.”
“The so-called ‘talented fool’ is the most difficult case among the fools, and it is not uncommon in the world.”
“There is no time more eager to appear completely sincere than adolescence, yet no time when one lies to oneself more.”
“Intelligence without shame is even more repulsive than a body without shame.”
“From the hardship of being on the defensive, from the suffering of being pursued, comes a cunning that is not easily understood.”
“One must not forget that those who are pure and beautiful are, in essence, the enemies of humanity.”
“It is strange for a novelist to wear the face of a representative of suffering.”
“Sentimentalism is forbidden for both novelists and surgeons.”
“For a novelist, style is the will to interpret the world and the key to it.”
“The heart of a novelist is vast, with both airports and central train stations.”
“Do not revere the novelist.”
“In the world of novels, being good at it is the first and foremost justice.”
“A novel is complete once it is written and then it leaves your hands, but a play begins the moment it is finished.”
“The narcissism at the boundary between childhood and adolescence uses anything for its own benefit, even the destruction of the world.”
“A boy is like a spinning top.”
“The hardship of a newcomer is the hardship of being ‘made to wait.'”
“To think that life, like driving a car, can succeed by being overly cautious is nonsense.”
“In life, only the things you don’t know are useful, because once you know something, it becomes useless.”
“From the very beginning of life, humans give up many things. The first thing you are taught upon being born is ‘to give up.'”
“In the prime of life, everything that seems impossible is granted, and everything that seems uncertain comes to fruition.”
“Life is not music. It does not end at the perfect climax, as music does.”
“True pride is not arrogant. It is as modest as a young bamboo shoot.”
“A true artist should not repeat the laments of an uninvited guest. Rather, they should invite the guests themselves.”
“All great works of art are a part of nature and nothing more than a newly created nature.”
“All sports contain, like a small amount of alcohol, a small amount of sentimentality.”
“Just as there are days when kindness falls upon everyone, there are also days when malice falls upon everyone.”
“Only literature, considered as something higher than life itself, can reveal the true meaning of life.”
“Anything clean will inevitably be soiled, and a white shirt will inevitably turn gray.”
“After youth, an artist spends half of their life asking about the meaning of youth.”
“Youth is the immense waste of living unconsciously. It is a period when you do not think of the harvest.”
“If we were to speak of the privileges of youth, it would be, in a word, the privilege of ignorance.”
“A single drop of youth must immediately crystallize and become an immortal crystal.”
“The mind and body can never engage in dialogue. The mind can only ask questions.”
“The imagination of the mind is the power to imagine questions.”
“The mind is, well, one could say, the impulse to accumulate zeroes infinitely and reach one.”
“The only thing that can surpass the mind is the monster called habit.”
“To integrate the three paradoxes of sex, liberation, and prison, there is only art.”
“A youth that is not troubled by life, a youth that is not corroded by life, an impregnable youth. A youth that endures the encroachments of all time.”
“For the youth, rebellion is life, and loyalty is death.”
“There is no greater misunderstanding than to associate the adventures of youth with a personal symbol of character.”
“The politeness of youth without violence is disgusting. It is worse than violence without politeness.”
“Can we live without a semblance of submission to life?”
“The fact that the world does not easily collapse is, for those who live and die skating on its surface like a skater, a problem that cannot be ignored.”
“The role that society demands from the young is that of a gullible, sincere listener, nothing more.”
“Society never asks for intelligence from the young, but at the same time, when it encounters a youth who is too balanced, it tends to be suspicious from the outset.”
“People do not recklessly die from despair.”
“There are times when not loving at all guarantees the purity of passion.”
“If I had died during the war, I could have died within the entirely unconscious, self-sufficient eros.”
“War never inflicted mental wounds on us. Furthermore, it made our skin tough. Not just the skin of the face, but our skin in general. A soul that cannot be wounded is wrapped in tough skin. It resembles immortality.”
“Imagination often arises from dissatisfaction. Or it arises from boredom.”
“Before existence, there was essence; before reality, there was illusion; before the present, there was a premonition, clearly and strongly suggesting a more profound essence, that is what woman was.”
“Bored people have no qualms about selling themselves to the garbage men of the earth.”
“In general, each era tends to harbor hostility towards the era just before it, while feeling a sense of familiarity towards the era before that.”
“There are people who use words only as an excuse for their laziness.”
“Decayed purity is the most insidious form of decay among all the decays in the world.”
“When a woman speaks arrogantly, that is when she has lost her pride the most.”
“Simply enduring, and enduring with pride—that too was heroism.”
“Pleasure, like death, calls us from the ends of the world.”
“There is not a single person in society who knows when to be satisfied, and that is exactly why society generates and develops.”
“Because no one loves, no one wounds.”
“If no one can overcome death, then the glory of victory is nothing more than the ultimate form of purely worldly glory.”
“The highest secret of manipulating men is to firmly grasp their sentimentalism.”
“There is a certain kind of courage that cannot be acquired without going through the process of indulgence.”
“How ugly the face of an intellectual is!”
“The only virtue of an intellectual is self-awareness, and they must at least be aware of their own absurdity.”
“If you compromise with a small hope and begin to see the world in the shape of that hope, it’s over.”
“Both blood and flowers are alike in that they are easily withered and prone to transformation.”
“Just like the bonsai hobby of the elderly, beauty, as it is refined, begins to seek a kind of deformity.”
“Intuition is something that can only be nurtured through interactions with others. It was originally unrelated to imagination.”
“Memory is the purest proof of the ‘present.'”
“A virtuous woman, in many cases, is nothing more than society’s reputation, and that society becomes the armor she wears.”
“The typical young person becomes a sacrifice of their youth. To live fully is to become a sacrifice of life itself.”
“How can one die young, and preferably without much suffering?”
“Comrades are not found through words, but through deeply and quietly exchanging glances.”
“Unimportant things should follow trends, and trends can be said to be ‘unimportant things.'”
“Morality is something like a natural work of art that a nation creates over the course of many years.”
“Morality does not permit escape from custom, but at the same time, it does not permit escape into custom either.”
“At times, the inside of a window resembles a stage.”
“The passage of time gradually turns the sublime into something absurd.”
“Originality is the pearl that can only be discovered in the sea of true universality.”
“In every society, one can observe individuals who, by all appearances, seem completely unqualified, yet somehow they are **fated** to remain in their position.”
“It may not be the body that ages us, but perhaps the heart. The troubles and decline of the heart reflect inwardly, creating ugly wrinkles and blemishes on the body.”
“Society cannot tolerate a person who flies.”
“The magic of exchanging too many love letters ages the souls of both parties.”
“No matter how much of a genius Tolstoy was, without free time, one could never read ‘War and Peace.'”
“Any shallow trend, when it ends, causes people to bury a part of their youth and enthusiasm along with it, in the grave of time.”
“Every person has their own drama, secrets that cannot be told to others, and their own unique circumstances.”
“A patient who does not wish to recover does not have the true qualification of being a patient.”
“To reject something is also, in a way, to make some concessions toward that very rejection.”
“Ownership through the renunciation of something—that is the secret of ownership unknown to the youth.”
“Narcissus, because of his exceptional pride, sometimes loves a flawed mirror.”
“If you tell a child who knows neither west nor east, ‘You can go wherever you want,’ all you will do is create more lost children.”
“If human nature did not have forgetfulness, and the glorification of the past that accompanies it, how could humans endure life?”
“Within the hatred toward humanity and the world, there is always a hidden intoxication.”
“Human beings absolutely need primitive emotions such as hatred, fighting, and winning.”
“If the amplitude of human emotions is infinitely expanded, it becomes the emotion of nature, and eventually it becomes the law of nature.”
“Once human passion begins to move according to its own laws, no one can stop it.”
“Human morality is, in essence, a simple matter—a choice between two courses of action. Good and evil, right and wrong, are merely matters that come after the choice.”
“Humans are animals that cannot fully enjoy comfort. Especially men.”
“Ultimately, humans choose themselves beforehand.”
“Humans do not love animals that live longer than themselves. The condition for being loved is the brevity of life.”
“To govern humans is simple; it is enough to control the inner void and emptiness within them.”
“From the perspective of perception, the world is eternally unchanging, and yet, it is eternally transforming.”
“Perception is the weapon that human beings have developed to cope with the unbearable nature of life, but with it, the unbearable nature of life is not in the slightest diminished.”
“How harsh a grace it is to be young.”
“Noh always begins from the point where the play has ended.”
“One of the privileges of youth is the ability to die for a completely foolish purpose.”
“It is a common example to win over your first love and fail in life, and there is also a theory that it is better for first love to end in failure.”
“Flower cultivation always carries the scent of revenge.”
“To make one’s mother forget Mother’s Day—could this be the greatest act of filial piety?”
“A smile is the final sign of not accepting humanity, an invisible dart shot from the curved lips.”
“Things born from necessity are accompanied by the bitterness of necessity.”
“When one becomes obsessed solely with beauty, they unknowingly collide with the darkest thoughts in this world.”
“Thinking that just being alive is happiness, while living a miserable life—that’s the mindset of a slave.”
“Thinking that living a comfortable life and simply being alive is happiness—that’s the way an animal feels.”
“The pleasure of seeing someone’s astonished face is the ultimate form of pleasure.”
“A person draws their life to an end with their final thought.”
“Beauty is a shore that cannot be reached.”
“Beauty is nature within the human, nature placed under human conditions.”
“Those who seek to tempt others into vice usually try to exploit the good qualities of that person to the fullest.”
“It is frightening to see the ruins of beauty, but it is even more frightening to see beauty clearly lingering in those ruins.”
“Beauty is a splendid galloping horse.”
“Beauty cries out in a high-pitched voice like a crane. Its sound echoes through the heavens and earth, then vanishes instantly.”
“Secrets are enjoyable, and whether they are worries or joys, we paint them all with the same color.”
“Only expression can give reality its sense of realness, and reality is not found in the world itself but only in expression.”
“Anxiety is the priceless treasure we can steal from youth.”
“Anxiety itself is not in the least a sickness, but the state of ‘fearing anxiety’ is pathological.”
“‘Bujutsu’ (martial arts) is about falling as a flower, while ‘Bun’ (literature) is about cultivating an immortal flower.”
“Becoming delinquent is a violent means of abandoning childish innocence.”
“Passion for literature generally arises during the spring-like onset of a fever.”
“The true novelty of literature is that it also transforms the reader, making them new.”
“Literature, no matter how full of dreams it may be, or how it may evoke dreams in the hearts of its readers, always begins with the point where the author’s own dream has been shattered.”
“Culture is the act of giving a ‘name’ to various phenomena based on a unified aesthetic consciousness.”
“The speed of forgetfulness and the shallowness of emotions that disregard the importance of anything are the first signs of human aging.”
“Law is a collection of things that constantly hinder the desire to transform life into a momentary poem.”
“We affirm everything that once existed. Therein begins our revolution.”
“The real danger is nothing other than the fact of being alive.”
“True beauty is that which silences people.”
“The person who could always become the defendant with the slightest mistake—such a person was the only truly real type of human.”
“The misfortune of others, viewed from outside the window, is more beautiful than when seen from inside.”
“Those who defend, no matter how powerful their weapons, are destined to be defeated someday.”
“Daydreaming is not a mental activity as people think. It is, rather, an escape from the mind.”
“Daydreaming has never once hindered my flight.”
“The reason disorder is loved by literature is because literature itself is the embodiment of order.”
“Among all memories, as time passes, dreams and reality become equivalent.”
“The true nature of elegance, culture, and all the aesthetic things humans conceive is barren and inorganic.”
“Unlike dreams, reality is a material that lacks any malleability.”
“The cherry blossom viewing of a sad woman is more beautiful than that of a cheerful woman.”
“To suffer from being an outsider is the same as suffering from being human.”
“Others will never understand. How insensibility is akin to intense pain.”
“In this world, things done seriously mostly fail, while things done unseriously often go well.”
“In love, unreserved devotion is often linked to unreserved self-admiration.”
“Old people are inevitably forced to be political.”
“Old people learn that time includes intoxication. By the time they learn, the wine sufficient for intoxication has already been lost.”
“The kind of friendship between an old couple is the most beautiful work of art in friendship.”
“The skin of a young man is shiny and feels unsettling.”
“Each generation of the young has appeared, one after another, with the unique ‘disease of the time’ as their banner.”
“The death of the young alone is magnificent and luxurious. Because they spend their entire remaining life all at once.”
“The art world of our country knows only two terms of evaluation: completed and incomplete.”
“For youth to seek happiness is a form of decline.”
“What we call thought is not born beforehand, but afterwards.”
“It takes time for us to become aware of the great transformations prepared for us at a deeper level.”
“The era we live in is a rare one, where politics causes history to weather away.”
“The spirit that designs the hydrogen bomb is not unrelated to the one that uses the electric washing machine as a convenience of civilization.”
“We fear the future, generally speaking, in light of the accumulation of the past.”
“In our classical literature, the autumn leaves and cherry blossoms are metaphors for blood and death.”
“We create works by utilizing the corrosive effect of language that erodes reality.”
“When we make life our own, we forget curiosity, fear, surprise, and joy.”
“We do not know how to preserve beauty and the pleasure it brings, except by wisely stopping at the edge of beauty.”