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

At times everything grows misty and dark before my eyes, and I feel that the strength of my whole body is oozing away through my finger tips. — Osamu Dazai

I smiled in my weakness. — 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 thought, I want to die. I want to die more than ever before. There's no chance now of a recovery. No matter what sort of thing I do, no matter what I do, it's sure to be a failure, just a final coating applied to my shame. That dream of going on bicycles to see a waterfall framed in summer leaves - it was not for the likes of me. All that can happen now is that one foul, humiliating sin will be piled on another, and my sufferings will become only the more acute. I want to die. I must die. Living itself is the source of sin. — Osamu Dazai

Having said that, I must now admit that I was still afraid of human beings, and before I could meet even the customers in the bar I had to fortify myself by gulping down a glass of liquor. The desire to see frightening things - that was what drew me every night to the bar where, like the child who squeezes his pet all the harder when he actually fears it a little, I proclaimed to the customers standing at the bar my drunken, bungling theories of art. — Osamu Dazai

I also have the impression that many women have been able, instinctively, to sniff out this loneliness of mine, which I confided to no one, and this in later years was to become one of the causes of my being taken advantage of. — 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

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

Mornings are grey. Always the same. Absolutely empty. — 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

I am choking in the suffocating foul air of the harbor. I want to hoist my sails in the open sea, even though a tempest may be blowing. Furled sails are always dirty. Those who would deride me are so many furled sails. They can do nothing. — 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

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

What frightened me was the logic of the world; in it lay the foretaste of something incalculably powerful. Its mechanism was incomprehensible, and I could not possibly remain closeted in that windowless, bone-chilling room. Though outside lay the sea of irrationality, it was far more agreeable to swim in its waters until presently I drowned. — 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

Last year nothing happened
The year before nothing happened
And the year before that nothing
happened. — Osamu Dazai

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

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

What uneasiness lies in being loved. — Osamu Dazai

It occurred to me that I was on a run of suicides. Akutagawa. Dazai. Plath. Death by water, barbiturates, and carbon monoxide poisoning; three fingers of oblivion, outplaying everything. — Patti Smith

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

I know that I am liked by other people, but I seem to be deficient in the faculty to love others. (I should add that I have very strong doubts as to whether even human beings really possess this faculty.) — 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

It was not so much shame that I experienced as the feeling that the actual world was an unfamiliar organism utterly unlike the world of my imagination. I was assailed by a sensation of desolation more intense than anything I had previously known, as if I had been abandoned at dusk in an autumnal wasteland where no answering sound would ever come, however often I called. Is that, I wonder, what is meant by the pat phrase "disappointed love"? — 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

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

I was conscripted during the war and even made to do coolie labor. The sneakers I now wear when I work in the fields are the ones the Army issued me. That was the first time in my life I had put such things on my feet, but they were surprisingly comfortable, and when I walked around the garden wearing them I felt as if I could understand the light-heartedness of the bird or animal that walks barefoot on the ground. That is the only pleasant memory I have of the war. What a dreary business the war was. — 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

Labeled a delinquent. That's the only kind of label I want to be crucified under. — 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

I wonder if I have ever actually been happy. People have told me, really more times than I can remember, ever since I was a small boy, how lucky I was, but I have always felt as if I were suffering in hell. It has seemed to me in fact that those who called me lucky were incomparably more fortunate than I. — Osamu Dazai

Disqualified as a human beings. I had now ceased utterly to be a human beings. — Osamu Dazai

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

The real things are apt to be deviant. — 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

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

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

Actions punishable by jail sentences are not the only crimes. If we knew the antonym of crime, I think we would know its true nature. God ... salvation ... love ... light. But for God there is the antonym Satan, for salvation there is perdition, for love there is hate, for light there is darkness, for good, evil. Crime and prayer? Crime and repentance? Crime and confession? Crime and ... no, they're all synonymous. What is the opposite of crime? — 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

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

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

Whenever I was asked what I wanted my first impulse was to answer "Nothing." The thought went through my mind that it didn't make any difference, that nothing was going to make me happy. — Osamu Dazai

Addiction is perhaps a sickness of the spirit. — 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

Show me what you've written, I said, although I wanted desperately to avoid looking at it. — 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

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

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

My heart had melted into something akin to a sensation of happiness, peace of mind one might even say, at the realization that I had now reached the very bottom of agony. — Dazai Osamu

hope and passion slip through your fingers like sand and in front of you lies a vast stretch of darkness — Dazai Osamu

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 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

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

A true artist is an ugly man. — Osamu Dazai

It isn't that I dislike artists, but I can't stand anyone who puts on those ponderous airs of a man of character. — Osamu Dazai

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

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

I suddenly wondered whether Mother might not actually be happy now, whether the sensation of happiness might not be something like faintly glittering gold sunken at the bottom of the river of sorrow. The feeling of that strange pale light when once on as exceeded all the bounds of unhappiness - if that can be called a sensation of happiness, the Emperor, my mother, and even I myself may be said to be happy now. — Osamu Dazai

He'll be back soon," she said, her face grave.
It suddenly occurred to me that what people call "honesty" might well refer to just such an expression. I wondered if what the word originally meant was not something lovable like that expression, rather than the stern virtue smelling of textbooks of morality. — 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

Everything passes. — Osamu Dazai

Is it not true that no two human beings understand anything whatsoever about each other, that those who consider themselves bosom friends may be utterly mistaken about their fellow and, failing to realize this sad truth throughout a lifetime, weep when they read in the newspapers about his death? — 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

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

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

When you find yourself looking ridiculous, reasoning isn't worth a damn. — 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

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

She lay down beside me, Towards dawn she pronounced for the first time the word "death." She too seemed to be weary beyond endurance of the task of being a human being; and when I reflected on my dread of the world and its bothersomeness, on money, the movement, women, my studies, it seemed impossible that I could go on living. I consented easily to her proposal. — Osamu Dazai

What is society but an individual? — 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

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

I yearned for everything long gone. — Osamu Dazai

I'm going to paint too. I'm going to paint pictures of ghosts and devils and horses out of hell. — 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

Whenever anyone criticized me I felt certain that I had been living under the most dreadful misapprehension. I always accepted the attack in silence, though inwardly so terrified as almost to be out of my mind. — Osamu Dazai

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

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 simple then-and-there decision. — Osamu Dazai

What did he mean by "society"? The plural of human beings? — 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