“… of all the kinds of decay in this world, decadent purity is the most malignant.”
Source: Confessions of a Mask
Quotes from book
Confessions of a Mask
Yukio Mishima
Original title
仮面の告白
(Japanese, 1949)
Confessions of a Mask is Japanese author Yukio Mishima's second novel. First published in 1949, it launched him to national fame though he was only in his early twenties.
“There is no virtue in curiosity. In fact, it might be the most immoral desire a man can possess.”
Source: Confessions of a Mask (1949), p. 222.
Source: Confessions of a Mask (1949), p. 208.
Context: I received an impassioned letter from Sonoko. There was no doubt that she was truly in love. I felt jealous. Mine was the unbearable jealousy a cultured pearl must feel toward a genuine one. Or can there be such a thing in this world as a man who is jealous of the woman who loves him, precisely because of her love?
Source: Confessions of a Mask (1949), p. 220.
“Is there not a sort of remorse that precedes sin? Was it remorse at the very fact that I existed?”
Source: Confessions of a Mask (1949), p. 144.
Source: Confessions of a Mask (1949), p. 115.
Source: Confessions of a Mask (1949), p. 118.
Context: At no time are we ever in such complete possession of a journey, down to its last nook and cranny, as when we are busy with preparations for it. After that, there remains only the journey itself, which is nothing but the process through which we lose our ownership of it.
Source: Confessions of a Mask (1949), p. 153.
Context: My "act" has ended by becoming an integral part of my nature, I told myself. It's no longer an act. My knowledge that I am masquerading as a normal person has even corroded whatever of normality I originally possessed, ending by making me tell myself over and over again that it too was nothing but a pretense of normality. To say it another way, I'm becoming the sort of person who can't believe in anything except the counterfeit.
