A feeling of liberation should contain a bracing feeling of negation, in which liberation itself is not negated. In the moment a captive lion steps out of his cage, he possesses a wider world than the lion who has known only the wilds. While he was in captivity, there were only two worlds to 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. Etsuko however, had in her heart not the slightest interest in these matters. Her soul knew nothing but affirmation.

~ Yukio Mishima

Yukio Mishima Classics Existence Freedom Japan Japanese Japanese Classics Japanese Lit Japanese Literature Mishima Thirst For Love Yukio Mishima

No human being can be so honest as to become completely false.

~ Yukio Mishima

Yukio Mishima Falsity Honesty Mishima Self Awareness

Might it have been nothing but life itself? Life; this limitless complex sea, filled with assorted flotsam, brimming with capricious, violent, and yet eternally transparent blues and greens.

~ Yukio Mishima

Yukio Mishima Existence Existential Japanese Japanese Classics Japanese Lit Japanese Literature Mishima Yukio Mishima

The special quality of hell is to see everything clearly down to the last detail.

~ Yukio Mishima

Yukio Mishima Hell Mishima

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

Yukio Mishima Cruelty Mishima

...being aware that the sacred quality hidden in the experience of eroticism is something impossible for language to reach (this is also due to the impossibility of experiencing of re-experiencing anything through language), Bataille still expresses it in words. (Mishima on Bataille)

~ Georges Bataille

Georges Bataille Bataille Metaphysics Mishima