Spring Snow is a novel by Yukio Mishima, which is the first book in his tetralogy, ‘The Sea of Fertility’.
This book was published serially in Shinchō from 1965 to 1967.
The Spring Snow novel follows the story of Shigekuni Honda, who narrates an epic tale of aristocratic life in Japan during the Taishō period (1912 to 1926).
In this post, you will find best quotes from Spring Snow novel.
Table of Contents
Best Spring Snow Quotes by Yukio Mishima
“In his heart, he always preferred the actuality of loss to the fear of it.” ~ Yukio Mishima (Spring Snow).
“Just now I had a dream. I’ll see you again. I know it. Beneath the falls.” ~ Yukio Mishima (Spring Snow).
“He felt that taking naps was much more beneficial than confronting catastrophes.” ~ Yukio Mishima (Spring Snow).
“One must merge one form of darkness with another, and then wait for the darkness to be tinged with the rosiness of the fateful dawn to come.” ~ Yukio Mishima (Spring Snow).
“My happiness lies in your hands. Be careful with it, won’t you?” ― Yukio Mishima , Spring Snow
“Be it the edge of time or space, there is nothing so awe-inspiring as a border.” ~ Yukio Mishima (Spring Snow).
Other Book Quotes: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah Quotes by Richard Bach and The One Quotes by Kiera Cass
Top Spring Snow Quotes by Yukio Mishima
“Dreams, memories, the sacred–they are all alike in that they are beyond our grasp. Once we are even marginally separated from what we can touch, the object is sanctified; it acquires the beauty of the unattainable, the quality of the miraculous. Everything, really, has this quality of sacredness, but we can desecrate it at a touch. How strange man is! His touch defiles and yet he contains the source of miracles.” ~ Yukio Mishima (Spring Snow).
“Even when we’re with someone we love, we’re foolish enough to think of her body and soul as being separate. To stand before the person we love is not the same as loving her true self, for we are only apt to regard her physical beauty as the indispensable mode of her existence. When time and space intervene, it is possible to be deceived by both, but on the other hand, it is equally possible to draw twice as close to her real self.” ~ Yukio Mishima (Spring Snow).
“His conviction of having no purpose in life other than to act as a distillation of poison was part of the ego of an eighteen-year-old. He had resolved that his beautiful white hands would never be soiled or calloused. He wanted to be like a pennant, dependent on each gusting wind. The only thing that seemed valid to him was to live for the emotions–gratuitous and unstable, dying only to quicken again, dwindling and flaring without direction or purpose.” ~ Yukio Mishima (Spring Snow).
“Time is what matters. As time goes by, you and I will be carried inexorably into the mainstream of our period, even though we’re unaware of what it is. And later, when they say that young men in the early Taisho era thought, dressed, talked, in such and such a way, they’ll be talking about you and me. We’ll all be lumped together…. In a few decades, people will see you and the people you despise as one and the same, a single entity.” ~ Yukio Mishima (Spring Snow).
“Separation is painful, but so is its opposite. And if being together brings joy, then it is only proper that separation should do the same in its own way.” ~ Yukio Mishima (Spring Snow).
Famous Spring Snow Quotes
“There’s no doubt that he’s heading straight for tragedy. It will be beautiful, of course, but should he throw his whole life away as a sacrificial offering to such a fleeting beauty–like a bird in flight glimpsed from a window?” ~ Yukio Mishima (Spring Snow).
“On a warm spring day, a galloping horse was only too clearly a sweating animal of flesh and blood. But a horse racing through a snowstorm became one with the very elements; wrapped in the whirling blast of the north wind, the beast embodied the icy breath of winter.” ~ Yukio Mishima (Spring Snow).
“That which proceeds from a man’s soul shall shape his soul; that which proceeds from his speech shall shape his speech, and deeds that proceed from his body shall shape his body.” ~ Yukio Mishima (Spring Snow).
“One could certainly think of a man not in terms of a body but as a single vital current. And this would allow one to grasp the concept of existence as dynamic and on-going, rather than as static.” ~ Yukio Mishima (Spring Snow).
“Everything, really, has this quality of sacredness, but we can desecrate it at a touch. How strange man is! His touch defiles and yet he contains the source of miracles.” ~ Yukio Mishima (Spring Snow).
Quotes from Spring Snow
“For everything sacred has the substance of dreams and memories, and so we experience the miracle of what is separated from us by time or distance suddenly being made tangible.” ~ Yukio Mishima (Spring Snow).
“A man may be hard to persuade by rational argument while he is easily swayed by a display of passion, even if it is feigned.” ~ Yukio Mishima (Spring Snow).
“He was like a husband so jealous that he insists his wife have the very dreams he has.” ~ Yukio Mishima (Spring Snow).
“For the average man, driven as he is by lurid fantasies, there is almost nothing more deliciously titillating than the contemplation, from a safe distance, of evil laid out in its cause and effect.” ~ Yukio Mishima (Spring Snow).
“There’s no doubt that he’ll be heading straight for tragedy. It will be beautiful, of course, but should he throw his whole life away as a sacrificial offering to such a fleeting beauty—like a bird in flight glimpsed from a window?” ~ Yukio Mishima (Spring Snow).
“For even in the triviality of a single playing card missing from a deck, the world’s order is inevitably turned awry.” ~ Yukio Mishima (Spring Snow).
“Beings in existence thus are annihilated from moment to moment, and this gives rise to time. The process whereby time is engendered by this moment-to-moment annihilation may be likened to a row of dots and a line.” ~ Yukio Mishima (Spring Snow).
Spring Snow Quotes by Yukio Mishima
“To live in the midst of an era is to be oblivious to it style. You and I, you see, must be immersed in some style of living or other, but we’re like goldfish swimming around in a bowl without ever noticing it.” ~ Yukio Mishima (Spring Snow).
“To speak of chance is to negate the possibility of any law of cause and effect. Chance is the one final irrationality acceptable to the free will.” ~ Yukio Mishima (Spring Snow).
“History is a record of destruction. One must always make room for the next ephemeral crystal. For history, to build and to destroy are one and the same thing.” ~ Yukio Mishima (Spring Snow).
“He realized that as long as conscious desire is at work, it will permit distinctions to exist. But if one can suppress it, these distinctions dissolve and one can be as content with a skull as with anything else.” ~ Yukio Mishima (Spring Snow).
“It was that strange moment, poised on the edge of evening, when lights are still unnecessary, when even in the midst of a convivial gathering, one may be caught by a vague intimation of precariousness.” ~ Yukio Mishima (Spring Snow).
“To follow its shadow, to remain forever within it, she herself would have to become the sea. And at that moment, in a single great surge, she did.” ~ Yukio Mishima (Spring Snow).
“Once passion was set in motion according to its own laws, then it was irresistible. This was a theory that would never be accepted by modern law, which took it as self-evident that conscience and reason ruled man.” ~ Yukio Mishima (Spring Snow).
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