Spring Snow

by Yukio Mishima

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.

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.

“Yes, and in London at tea time the hostess makes a great point of asking everyone: ‘Milk or tea first?’ Though it all comes to the same in the end, tea and milk mixed together in the cup, the English place enormous importance on one’s preference as to which should be poured in first. With them it seems to be an affair of greater gravity than the latest government crisis.”

He was like a husband so jealous that he insists his wife have the very dreams he has.

If a candle has burned brilliantly but now stands alone in the dark with its flame extinguished, it need no longer fear that its substance will dissolve into hot wax.

For the first time in his life, Kiyoaki came to realize the healing powers of solitude.

Although Honda was well aware that a man in love has no room in his heart for anything but his feelings and loses even his ability to sympathize with the sorrows of others,

Beings in existence thus are annihilated from moment to moment, and this gives rise to time.