Osamu Dazai Quotes & Sayings

One day, I went to a soba restaurant outside town, and while I was waiting for the zarusoba I opened an old graph magazine. There was a picture of an exhausted, lonely kneeling woman who wore a checked patterned yukata after the tradegy of a large earthquake. With the intensity of my chest ready to burn up, I fell in love with that poor woman. I also felt a horrifying desire for her. Maybe tragedy and desire are back to back to one another. — Osamu Dazai

I have tried insofar as possible to avoid getting involved in the sordid complications of human beings. I have been afraid of being sucked down into their bottomless whirlpool. — Osamu Dazai

I smiled in my weakness. — Osamu Dazai

Such it is for those in the grips of misfortune: declarations of support and sympathy, rather than providing comfort, may merely increase the victim's pain. — Osamu Dazai

Then what's a synonym for woman?" "Entrails." "You're not very poetic, are you? Well, then, what's the antonym for entrails?" "Milk. — Osamu Dazai

I feel so unhappy."
I am sure that this one phrase whispered to me would arouse my sympathy more than the longest, most painstaking account of a woman's life. It amazes and astonishes me that I have never once heard a woman make this simple statement. This woman did not say, "I feel so unhappy" in so many words, but something like a silent current of misery an inch wide flowed over the surface of her body. When I lay next to her my body was enveloped in her current, which mingled with my own harsher current of gloom like a "withered leaf settling to rest on the stones at the bottom of a pool." I had freed myself from fear and uneasiness. — Osamu Dazai

Forgive me. I didn't mean to kill you, Polonius. The blade slipped out of the sheath, and it struck you. — Osamu Dazai

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

If I were to experience failure upon failure day after day - nothing but total embarrassment - then perhaps I'd develop some semblance of dignity as a result. But no, I would somehow illogically twist even such failures, gloss over them smoothly, so that it would seem like they had a perfectly good theory behind them. And I would have no qualms about putting on a desperate show to do so. — Osamu Dazai

Women found in me a man who could keep a love secret. — Osamu Dazai

A good book is always good, no matter how many times you've already read it. — Osamu Dazai

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

Victims. Victims of a transitional period of morality. That is what we both certainly are. — Osamu Dazai

It occurred to me that prison life might actually be pleasanter than groaning away my sleepless nights in hellish dread of the "realities of life" as led by human beings. — Osamu Dazai

Virtue and vice are concepts invented by human beings, words for a morality which human beings arbitrarily devised. — Osamu Dazai

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

I have often felt that I would find it more complicated, troublesome and unpleasant to ascertain the feelings by which a woman lives than to plumb the innermost thoughts of an earthworm. — Osamu Dazai

The weak fear happiness itself. — Osamu Dazai

To be a friend of the weak-that is the artist's point of departure as well as his ultimate goal. — Osamu Dazai

I am sure that the reason why I wept and stormed as if I had gone off my head was that the combination of physical exhaustion and my unhappiness had made me hate and resent everything. — Osamu Dazai

My definition of a "respected" man was one who had succeeded almost completely in hoodwinking people — Osamu Dazai

I have never derived the least joy out of amusements. Perhaps that is a sign of the impotence of pleasure. I ran riot and threw myself into wild diversions out of the simple desire to escape from my own shadow. — Osamu Dazai

I despised him as one fit only for amusement, a man with whom I associated for that sole purpose. — Osamu Dazai

Even now it comes as a shock if by chance I notice in the street a face resembling someone I know however slightly, and I am at once seized by a shivering violent enough to make me dizzy. — Osamu Dazai

The thought of dying has never bothered me, but getting hurt, losing blood, becoming crippled and the like - no thanks. — Osamu Dazai

In our lives we know joy, anger, sorrow, and a hundred other emotions, but these emotions altogether occupy a bare one per cent of our time. The remaining ninety-nine per cent is just living in waiting. — Osamu Dazai

I have one request to make of you, which embarrasses me very much. You remember the hemp kimono of Mother's which you altered so that I could wear it next summer? Please put it in my coffin. I wanted to wear it. — Osamu Dazai

For someone like myself in whom the ability to trust others is so cracked and broken that I am wretchedly timid and am forever trying to read the expression on people's faces. — Osamu Dazai

Is it painful to be the person who waits? Or is it more painful to be the person who makes others wait? Either way, there's no need to wait anymore. That's what is most painful. - Osamu Dazai — Osamu Dazai

I wonder if there is anyone who is not depraved. A wearisome thought.
I want money. Unless I have it ...
In my sleep, a natural death! — Osamu Dazai

All I feel are the assaults of apprehension and terror at the thought that I am the only one who is entirely unlike the rest. It is almost impossible for me to converse with other people. What should I talk about, how should I say it? - I don't know. — Osamu Dazai

Living itself is the source of sin. — Osamu Dazai

After being hurt by the world so much, they began to see the demons within humans. So without hiding it through trickery, they worked to express it. — Osamu Dazai

When I looked up 'rococo' in the dictionary a while back it was defined as 'an ornamental style emphasizing the florid and the gorgeous, but lacking substance', and I couldn't help but laugh. It was so perfect. How could anything beautiful have 'substance' anyway? Pure beauty is always without meaning or morality. — Osamu Dazai

The color of this sky, what would you call it? Rose? Flame? Iridescent? The color of angel's wings? Or a huge temple? No, it is none of these things. It is much more sublime. — Osamu Dazai

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

Any connoisseur knows you've got to be drunk to really enjoy a good romance. — Osamu Dazai

I soon came to understand that drink, tobacco and prostitutes were all great means if dissipating (even for a few moments) my dread for human beings. I came even to feel that if I had to sell every last possession to obtain these means of escape, it would be well worth it. — Osamu Dazai

Spread my usual smokescreen of farce. 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

I never could think of prostitutes as human beings or even as women. They seemed more like imbeciles or lunatics. But in their arms I felt absolute security. I could sleep soundly. It was pathetic how utterly devoid of greed they really were. And perhaps because they felt for me something like an affinity for their kind, these prostitutes always showed me a natural friendliness which never became oppressive. Friendliness with no ulterior motive, friendliness stripped of high-pressure salesmanship, for someone who might never come again. Some nights I saw these imbecile, lunatic prostitutes with the halo of Mary. — Osamu Dazai

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

A science which is postulated on the assumption that human beings are avaricious through all eternity is utterly devoid of point (whether in problems of distribution or any other aspect) to a person who is not avaricious. — Osamu Dazai

Most people would take me for over forty. — Osamu Dazai

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

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

The ones who die are always the gentle, sweet, and beautiful people. — Osamu Dazai

The wound has gradually become dearer to me than my own flesh and blood, and I have thought its pain to be the emotion of the wound as it lived or even its murmur of affection — Osamu Dazai

The courageous testimony of Dr. Faust that a maiden's smile is more precious than history, philosophy, education, religion, law, politics,economics, and all the other branches of learning. Learning is another name for vanity. It is the effort of human beings not to be human beings. — Osamu Dazai

Mine has been a life of much shame. I can't even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being. — Osamu Dazai

In my case such an expression as 'to be fallen for' or even 'to be loved' is not in the least appropriate; perhaps it describes the situation more accurately to say that I was 'looked after. — Osamu Dazai

The incomprehensibility of society is the incomprehensibility of the individual. The ocean is not society; it is the individual. — Osamu Dazai

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

This I want to believe implicitly: Man was born for love and revolution. — Osamu Dazai

Heaven forbid if beauty were to have substance. — Osamu Dazai

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

Anyway, you can be sure of one thing, a man's got to fake just to stay alive. — Osamu Dazai

He could only consider me as the living corpse of a would-be suicide, a person dead to shame, an idiot ghost. — Osamu Dazai

[ ... ] I was afraid to board a streetcar because of the conductor; I was afraid to enter the Kabuki Theater for fear of the usherettes standing along the sides of the red-carpeted staircase at the main entrance; I was afraid to go into a restaurant because I was intimidated by the waiters furtively hovering behind me waiting for my plate to be emptied. — Osamu Dazai

The weak fear happiness itself. They can harm themselves on cotton wool. Sometimes they are wounded even by happiness — Osamu Dazai

There was something wrong about thse people. But perhaps, just as it is true of my love, they could not go on living except in the way they do. If it is true that man, once born into the world, must somehow live out his life, perhaps the appearance that people make in order to go through with it, even if it is as ugly as their appearance, should not be despised. To be alive. To be alive. An intolerably immense undertaking before which one can only gasp in apprehension. — Osamu Dazai

I wonder why Miss Kosugi's lectures are always so stiff. Is she a fool? It makes me sad. She went on and on, explaining to us about patriotism, but wasn't that pretty obvious? I mean, everyone loves the place where they were born. I felt bored. Resting my chin on my desk, I gazed idly out the window. The clouds were beautiful, maybe because it was so windy. There were four roses blooming in a corner of the yard. One was yellow, two were white, and one was pink. I sat there agape, looking at the flowers, and thought to myself, There are really good things about human beings. I mean, it's humans who discovered the beauty of flowers, and humans who admire them. At — Osamu Dazai

Genuine beauty is always meaningless, without virtue. — Osamu Dazai

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

As for love ... no, having once written that word I can write nothing more. — Osamu Dazai

The more I feared people the more I was liked, and the more I was liked the more I feared them - a process which eventually compelled me to run away from everybody. — Osamu Dazai

If my neighbors manage to survive without killing themselves, without going mad, maintaining an interest in political parties, not yielding to despair, resolutely pursuing the fight for existence, can their griefs really be genuine? — Osamu Dazai

I go about saying how pained and tormented, how lonely and sad I feel, but what do I really mean by that? If I were to speak the truth, I would die. — Osamu Dazai

I would far prefer to be told simply to go and die. It's straightforward. But people almost never say, "Die!" Paltry, prudent hypocrites! — Osamu Dazai

Why is physical love bad and spiritual love good? I don't understand. I can't help feeling that they are the same. I would like to boast that I am she who could destroy her body and soul in Gehenna for the sake of a love, for the sake of a passion she could not understand, or for the sake of the sorrow they engendered. — Osamu Dazai

In the present world, the most beautiful thing is a victim. — Osamu Dazai

I have always shook with fright before human beings. Unable as I was to feel the least particle of confidence in my ability to speak and act like a human being, I kept my solitary agonies locked in my breast. I kept my melancholy and my agitation hidden, careful lest any trace should be left exposed. I feigned an innocent optimism; I gradually perfected myself in the role of the farcical eccentric. — Osamu Dazai

I hope I meet lots of people with lovely eyes. — Osamu Dazai

I also like to take my glasses off and look at people. The faces around me, all of them, seem kind and pretty and smiling. What's more, when my glasses are off, I don't ever think about arguing with anyone at all, nor do I feel the need to make snide remarks. All I do is just blankly stare in silence. — Osamu Dazai

Unhappiness. There are all kinds of unhappy people in the world. I suppose it would be no exaggeration to say that the world is composed entirely of unhappy people. But those people can fight their unhappiness with society fairly and squarly, and society for its part easily understands and sympathizes with such struggles. My unhappiness stemmed entirely from my own vices, and I had no way of fighting anybody. — Osamu Dazai

Now I have neither happiness nor unhappiness.
Everything passes.
That is the one and only thing that I have thought resembled a truth in the society of human beings where I have dwelled up to now as in a burning hell.
Everything passes. — Osamu Dazai

Even if Mary gives birth to a child who is not her husband's, if she has a shining pride, they become a holy mother and child. — Osamu Dazai

And I was incapable of living all by myself in those lodgings where I didn't know a soul. It terrified me to sit by myself quietly in my room. I felt frightened, as if I might be set upon or struck by someone at any moment. — Osamu Dazai

No. You won't do. You've treated me nicely, yes, but only because you find me curious and amusing. It made me feel so lonely, somehow ... I'm really just a foolish and useless person. — Osamu Dazai

Not long afterwards we were married. The joy I obtained as a result of this action was not necessarily great or savage, but the suffering which ensued was staggering - so far surpassing what I had imagined that even describing it as "horrendous" would not quite cover it. The "world," after all, was still a place of bottomless horror. It was by no means a place of childlike simplicity where everything could be settled by a single then-and-there decision. — Osamu Dazai

Why can't people get along without criticizing one another?" Urashima shakes
his head as he ponders this rudimentary question. "Never have the bush clover
blooming on the beach, nor the little crabs who skitter o'er the sand, nor the wild
geese resting their wings in yonder cove found fault with me. Would that human
beings too were thus! Each individual has his own way of living. Can we not learn
to respect one another's chosen way? One makes every effort to live in a dignified
and proper manner, without harming anyone else, yet people will carp and cavil
and try to tear one down. It's most vexing. — Osamu Dazai

Still, I wait. I wait with my heart aflutter. People pass in front of me, pass by in hordes. It isn't that one; it isn't that one. I hold my shopping bag, shivering as I wait intently. Please don't forget me. Don't laugh at a 20-year old girl who goes to a rendezvous at the station day after day and then returns home without success; please remember me and keep me in your heart. The name of the little station, I purposely won't tell you. Even without my telling it to you, you'll catch sight of me someday. — Osamu Dazai

But happiness is being able to hope, however faintly, for happiness. So, at least, we must believe if we are to live in the world of today. — Osamu Dazai

Love flies out the window when poverty comes in the door, they say, and it's true. — Osamu Dazai

That was a really rare event. I don't think It's an exaggeration to say that It was the one and only time in my life that I refused something offered to me. My unhappiness was the happiness of a person who could not say no. I had been intimidated by the fear that if I declined something offered me, a yawning crevice would open between the other person's heart and myself which could never be mended through all eternity — Osamu Dazai

Society. I felt as though even I were beginning at last to acquire some vague notion of what it meant. It is a struggle between one individual to another, a then-and-there struggle, in which the immediate triumph is everything. 'Human beings never submit to human beings.' Even slaves practice their mean retaliations. Human beings cannot conceive of any means of survival except of a single then-and-there contest. They speak of duty to one's country and such like things, but the object of their effort is invariably the individual, and, even once the individual's needs have been met, again the individual comes in. The incomprehensibility of society is the incomprehensibility of the individual. The ocean is not society; it is individuals. — Osamu Dazai

I shall be nothing, the wind, the sky. — Osamu Dazai

Tomorrow will probably be another day like today. Happiness will never come my way. I know that. But it's probably best to go to sleep believing that it will surely come, tomorrow it will come. I purposely made a loud thump as I fell into bed. Ah, that feels good. The futon was cool, just the right temperature against my back, and it was simply delightful. Sometimes happiness arrives one night too late. The thought occurred to me as I lay there. You wait and wait for happiness, and when finally you can't bear it any longer, you rush out of the house, only to hear later that a marvelous happiness arrived the following day at the home you had abandoned, and now it was too late. Sometimes happiness arrives one night too late. Happiness... I — Osamu Dazai

A mere smile can determine a woman's fate. It is frightening. Fascinatingly so. I have to be careful. — Osamu Dazai

I have frantically played the clown in order to distangle myself from these painful relationships, only to wear myself out as a result. — Osamu Dazai

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

It is true, I suppose, that nobody finds it exactly pleasant to be criticized or shouted at, but I see in the face of the human being raging at me a wild animal in its true colors, one more horrible than any lion, crocodile or dragon. People normally seem to be hiding this true nature, but an occasion will arise (as when an ox sedately ensconced in a grassy meadow suddenly lashes out with its tail to kill the horsefly on its flank) when anger makes them reveal in a flash human nature in all its horror. — Osamu Dazai

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

I have never been able to
meet anyone without an accompaniment of painful
smiles, the buffoonery of defeat. — Osamu Dazai

I had no choice but to pray for his death. Typically enough, the one thing that never occurred to me was to kill him. During the course of my life I have wished innumerable times that I might meet with a violent death, but I have never once desired to kill anybody. I thought that in killing a dreaded adversary I might actually be bringing him happiness. — Osamu Dazai

I have sometimes thought that I have been burdened with a pack of ten misfortunes, any one of which if borne by my neighbor would be enough to make a murderer out of him. — Osamu Dazai

What is society but an individual? [ ... ] The ocean is not society; it is individuals. This was how I managed to gain a modicum of freedom from my terror at the illusion of the ocean called the world. — Osamu Dazai

When I liked something I tasted it hesitantly, furtively, as though it were extremely bitter. — Osamu Dazai

Most women have only to lay eyes on you to want to be doing something for you so badly they can't stand it ... You're always so timid and yet you're funny ... Sometimes you get terribly lonesome and depressed, but that only makes a woman's heart itch all the more for you. — Osamu Dazai

Now, even when I make an outfit for myself, I wonder what other people will think. The truth is that I secretly love what seems to be my own individuality, and I hope I always will, but fully embodying it is another matter. I always want everyone to think I am a good girl. Whenever I am around a lot of people, it is amazing how obsequious I can be. I fib and chatter away, saying things I don't want to or mean in any way. I feel like it is to my advantage to do so. I hate it. I hope for a revolution in ethics and morals. Then, my obsequiousness and this need to plod through life according to others' expectations would simply dissolve. Oh, — Osamu Dazai

I was frightened even by God. I could not believe in His love, only in His punishment. Faith. That, I felt, was the act of facing the tribunal of justice with one's head bowed to receive the scourge of God. I could believe in hell, but it was impossible for me to believe in the existence of heaven. — Osamu Dazai