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Osamu Dazai

221 quotes

“There's something about you that smells a little of a Christian priest. I find it offensive.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If it failed I had no choice but to hang myself, a resolve which was tantamount to a bet on the existence of God.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She must be unhappy too. Unhappy people are sensitive to the unhappiness of others.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I had learned bit by bit the art of meeting people with a straight face—no, that’s not true: I have never been able to meet anyone without an accompaniment of painful smiles, the buffoonery of defeat. What I had acquired was the technique of stammering somehow, almost in a daze, the necessary small talk.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Despising each other as we did, we were constantly together, thereby degrading ourselves. If that is what the world calls friendship, the relations between Horiki and myself were undoubtedly those of friendship.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Women sleep so soundly they seem to be dead. Who knows? Women may live in order to sleep.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'm going somewhere where there aren't any women.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nothing was so hard for me to understand, so baffling, and at the same time so filled with menacing overtones as the commonplace remark, “Human beings work to earn their bread, for if they don’t eat, they die.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you’ve slept soundly at night the morning is exhilarating, I suppose.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Extremely tragic is a good description of you.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They were happy, the two of them. I'd been a fool to come between them. I might destroy them both if I were not careful. A humble happiness. A good mother and child. God, I thought, if you listen to the prayers of people like myself, grant me happiness once, only once in my whole lifetime will be enough! Hear my prayer!”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I can never forget the indescribably crafty shadow that passed over Flatfish's face as he laughed at me, his neck drawn in. It resembled contempt, yet it was different: if the world, like the sea, had depths of a thousand fathoms, this was the kind of weird shadows which might be found hovering here and there at the bottom. It was a laugh that enabled me to catch a glimpse of the very nadir of adult life.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What a holy thing uncorrupted virginity is, I thought.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I despised him as one fit only for amusement, a man with whom I associated for that sole purpose.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Long personal experience had taught me that when a woman suddenly bursts into hysterics, the way to restore her sprits is to give her something sweet.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Before anyone realized it, I had become an accomplished clown.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I drew with extremely excessively depressed emotions, deliberately penning each line, only to earn money for drink.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was plagued by a heavy sense of loss, as if my heart had become empty.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'm told that some men heat their bath water by burning the love letters they get from women.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My definition of a "respected" man was one who had succeeded almost completely in hoodwinking people, but who was finally seen through by some omniscient, omnipotent person who ruined him and made him suffer a shame worse than death.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was less the fact of Yoshiko's defilement than the defilement of her trust in people which became so persistent a source of grief as almost to render my life insupportable. [...] Yoshiko's immaculate trustfulness seemed clean an pure, like a waterfall among green leaves. One night sufficed to turn the waters of this pure cascade yellow and muddy. Yoshiko began from that night to fret over my every smile or frown.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is only too obvious that favoritism inevitably exists: it would have been useless to complain to human beings. So I said nothing of the truth.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As a child I had absolutely no notion of what others, even members of my own family, might be suffering or what they were thinking. I was aware only of my own unspeakable fears and embarrassments. Before anyone realized it, I had become an accomplished clown, a child who never spoke a single truthful word.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“These clownish words of deceit were taken more seriously than the truth.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They say that love flies out the window when poverty comes in the door, but people generally get the sense backwards. It doesn’t mean that when a man’s money runs out he’s shaken off by women. When he runs out of money, he naturally is in the dumps. He’s no good for anything. The strength goes out of his laugh, he becomes strangely soured. Finally, in desperation, he shakes off the woman.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Spread my usual smokescreen of farce.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Just when I was beginning to forget, that bird of ill-omen came flapping my way, to rip open with its beak the wounds of memory. All at once shame over the past and the recollection of sin unfolded themselves before my eyes and, seized by a terror so great it made me want to shriek, I could not sit still a moment longer. “How about a drink?” I asked.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The manner of speech of everybody in the world—held strange, elusive complexities, intricately presented with overtones of vagueness: I have always been baffled by these precautions so strict as to be useless, and by the intensely irritating little maneuvers surrounding them.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Last year nothing happened / The year before nothing happened / And the year before that nothing happened.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am afraid because I can so clearly foresee my own life rotting away of itself, like a leaf that rots without falling, while I pursue my round of existence from day to day.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I pretended to be precocious, people started the rumor that I was precocious. When I acted like an idler, rumor had it I was an idler. When I pretended I couldn't write a novel, people said I couldn't write. When I acted like a liar, they called me a liar. When I acted like a rich man, they started the rumor I was rich. When I feigned indifference, they classed me as the indifferent type. But when I inadvertently groaned because I was really in pain, they started the rumor that I was faking suffering. The world is out of joint.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To wait. In our lives we know joy, anger, sorrow, and a hundred other emotions, but these emotions all together occupy a bare one percent of our time. The remaining ninety-nine percent is just living in waiting. I wait in momentary expectation, feeling as though my breasts are being crushed, for the sound in the corridor of the footsteps of happiness. Empty. Oh, life is too painful, the reality that confirms the universal belief that it is best not to be born.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They say that people who like summer flowers die in the summer. [...] I like roses best. But they bloom in all four seasons. I wonder if people who like roses best have to die four times over again.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I want to spend my time with people who don't look to be respected. But such good people won't want to spend their time with me.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In spite of my suffering, at the thought that I was sure to end up by killing myself, I cried aloud and burst into tears.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Victims. Victims of a transitional period of morality. That is what we both certainly are.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I drink out of desperation. Life is too dreary to endure. The misery, loneliness, crampedness — they're heartbreaking.[...] What feelings do you suppose a man has when he realizes that he will never know happiness or glory as long as he lives? Hard work. All that amounts to is food for the wild beasts of hunger.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mother, recently I have discovered the one way in which human beings differ completely from other animals. Man has, I know, language, knowledge, principles, and social order, but don't all the other animals have them too, granted the difference of degree? Perhaps the animals even have religions. Man boasts of being the lord of all creation, but it would seem as if essentially he does not differ in the least from other animals. But, Mother, there was one way I thought of. Perhaps you won't understand. It's a faculty absolutely unique to man - having secrets. Can you see what I mean?”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have no desire for others to take it on themselves to analyze my thoughts. I am without thoughts. I have never, not even once, acted on the basis of any doctrine or philosophy. I am convinced that those people whom the world considers good and respects are all liars and fakes. I do not trust the world.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Addiction is perhaps a sickness of the spirit.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As for love . . . no, having once written that word I can write nothing more.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now even if I die, no one will be so grieved as to do himself bodily harm. No [...] I know just how much sadness my death will cause you. Undoubtedly you will weep when you learn the news--apart, of course, from such ornamental sentimentality as you may indulge in--but if you will please try to think of my joy at being liberated completely from the suffering of living and this hateful life itself, I believe that your sorrow will gradually dissolve.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“At this moment, as I stood on the verge of tears, the words "realism" and "romanticism" welled up within me. I have no sense of realism. And that this very fact might be what permits me to go on living sends cold chills through my whole body.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Scoundrels [...] simply don't die. The ones who die are always the gentle, sweet, and beautiful people. [...] Scoundrels live a long time. The beautiful die young.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Not long ago I learned from a certain person in considerable detail about the worthlessness of your character. All the same, it is you who have given me strength, you who have put the rainbow of revolution in my breast. It is you who have given an object to my life.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I must go on living. And, though it may be childish of me, I can't go on in simple compliance. From now on I must struggle with the world. I thought that Mother might well be the last of those who can end their lives beautifully and sadly, struggling with no one, neither hating nor betraying anyone. In the world to come there will be no room for such people. The dying are beautiful, but to live, to survive – those things somehow seem hideous and contaminated with blood.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the present world, the most beautiful thing is a victim.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Logic, inevitably, is the love of logic. It is not the love for living human beings.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am convinced that those people whom the world considers good and respects are all liars and fakes. I do not trust the world. My only ally is the tagged dissolute. The tagged dissolute. That is the only cross on which I wish to be crucified. Though ten thousand people criticize me, I can throw in their teeth my challenge: Are you not all the more dangerous for being without tags?”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Any man who criticizes my suicide and passes judgment on me with an expression of superiority, declaring (without offering the least help) that I should have gone on living my full complement of days, is assuredly a prodigy among men quite capable of tranquilly urging the Emperor to open a fruit shop.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source