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Quote by Yukio Mishima

“He was a man who had already died once. There was no reason why he should feel any sense of responsibility or attachment to the world. To him, it was nothing more than a sheet of newspaper covered in the scribblings of cockroaches.”

Quote by Yukio Mishima

Book:Life for Sale
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Life for Sale

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Yukio Mishima
Yukio Mishima

Yukio Mishima was a Japanese author and playwright, a prominent figure in post-war Japanese literature. His works, characterized by a fusion of traditional Japanese aesthetics and modernist techniques, often explored themes of tradition, ritual, and the samurai code. more

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“I want to end here with the most common and least understood sexual problem. So ordinary is this problem, so likely are you to suffer from it, that it usually goes unnoticed. It doesn't even have a name. The writer Robertson Davies dubs it acedia. “Acedia” used to be reckoned a sin, one of the seven deadly sins, in fact. Medieval theologians translated it as “sloth,” but it is not physical torpor that makes acedia so deadly. It is the torpor of the soul, the indifference that creeps up on us as we age and grow accustomed to those we love, that poisons so much of adult life. As we fight our way out of the problems of adolescence and early adulthood, we often notice that the defeats and setbacks that troubled us in our youth are no longer as agonizing. This comes as welcome relief, but it has a cost. Whatever buffers us from the turmoil and pain of loss also buffers us from feeling joy. It is easy to mistake the indifference that creeps over us with age and experience for the growth of wisdom. Indifference is not wisdom. It is acedia. The symptom of this condition that concerns me is the waning of sexual attraction that so commonly comes between lovers once they settle down with each other. The sad fact is that the passionate attraction that so consumed them when they first courted dies down as they get to know each other well. In time, it becomes an ember; often, an ash. Within a few years, the sexual passion goes out of most marriages, and many partners start to look elsewhere to rekindle this joyous side of life. This is easy to do with a new lover, but acedia will not be denied, and the whole cycle happens again. This is the stuff of much of modern divorce, and this is the sexual disorder you are most likely to experience call it a disorder because it meets the defining criterion of a disorder: like transsexuality or S-M or impotence, it grossly impairs sexual, affectionate relations between two people who used to have them. Researchers and therapists have not seen fit to mount an attack on acedia. You will find it in no one’s nosology, on no foundation's priority list of problems to solve, in no government mental health budget. It is consigned to the innards of women's magazines and to trashy “how to keep your man” paperbacks. Acedia is looked upon with acceptance and indifference by those who might actually discover how it works and how to cure it. It is acedia I wish to single out as the most painful, the most costly, the most mysterious, and the least understood of the sexual disorders. And therefore the most urgent.”

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“True beauty makes men dumb [...] criticism, like beauty, sought above all to strike men dumb [...] Criticism's method was to evoke silence without calling on beauty [...] At some time, however, the faith that beauty must strike dumb became a thing of the past. Beauty has not only failed to silence people, it has gotten so even when it passes through the middle of a banquet people don't stop talking. Those of you who have gone to Kyoto do not fail to go to the Stone Garden at the Ryoanji Temple [...]It is a garden to strike men dumb. The amusing thing , though, is that [...] saying that it would not do not to say a word, they screw up their faces trying to squeeze out a haiku [...] It has gotten so we feel we must say something in a great hurry. It has gotten so feel we must convert beauty right away. If we don't convert it, it's dangerous. [...] With this, the age of criticism began.”

PhilosophyBeautyCriticismApathy
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“And I quote: "Here in America, as elsewhere, there will always be tremulous little people of dim intellect and hyperactive imagination, burning for explanations to all life's vicissitudes. They grow impatient with learned analyses of the present. They are defeated by histories that illuminate the past. No species of scholarship or analysis could ever satisfy them; for they need that Wondrous Explanation that will quiet all their fears, thrill them with villains to revile, and never tax their feeble powers of intellection.”

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Book:Reading for Survival
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