The beauty of the human body is beautiful precisely because we know it must perish.

言葉は言葉を呼び、その結果行為は永久に来ない。

Yukio Mishima

Writers & Literary Figures

Yukio Mishima

Mishima Yukio (1925-1970) was a Japanese novelist, playwright, and nationalist whose extraordinary body of work - including 'The Temple of the Golden Pavilion' and the Sea of Fertility tetralogy - earned multiple Nobel Prize nominations. His ritual suicide by seppuku after a failed coup attempt remains one of the most dramatic deaths in literary history.

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Source: 太陽と鉄Verified

Yukio Mishima's Other Quotes

There is no such thing as a perfect sentence. Just as there is no such thing as perfect despair.

A beautiful death is never within our grasp.

The difference between infinity and eternity lies in that one is a matter of quantity, and the other a matter of quality.

Related Quotes

Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.

-- Bruce Lee

Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.

-- Edgar Allan Poe

Fierce-browed, I coolly defy a thousand pointing fingers; head bowed, I willingly serve as a children's ox.

-- Lu Xun

Either explode in silence, or perish in silence.

-- Lu Xun

A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.

-- Henrik Ibsen

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe