Osamu Dazai Quotes

“The beautiful die young.”

“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.”

“I drink out of desperation. Life is too dreary to endure. The misery, loneliness, crampedness - they’re heartbreaking.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Victims. Victims of a transitional period of morality. That is what we both certainly are.”

“Mine has been a life of much shame. I can’t even guess what it must be to live the life of a human being.”

“I have always found the female of the human species many times more difficult to understand than the male.”

“Now I have neither happiness nor unhappiness. Everything passes.”

“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 am convinced that human life is filled with many pure, happy, serene examples of insincerity, truly splendid of their kind-of people deceiving one another without (strangely enough) any wounds being inflicted, of people who seem unaware even that they are deceiving one another.”

“I have no desire for others to take it on themselves to analyze my thoughts. I am without thoughts.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The real things are apt to be deviant.”

“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.”

“Virtue and vice are concepts invented by human beings, words for a morality which human beings arbitrarily devised.”

“A true artist is an ugly man.”

“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.”

“The possession of a title does not an aristocrat make.”

“Within our family, it is solely Mama who embodies authentic nobility. She possesses a certain allure that none of us can hope to emulate.”

“Authenticity often lies within the realm of deviation.”

“Scoundrels like Naoji are not the ones who perish. It is always the gentle, sweet and beautiful souls who meet such fates.”

“I am going to Izu because I have you, because you are with me.”

″...here again the face fails inexplicably to give the impression of one belonging to a living human being.”

“The weak fear happiness itself.”

“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.”

“What, I wondered, did he mean by society? The plural of human beings? Where was the substance of this thing called society?”

“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’.”

“But I think that anyone who had ever been subjected to the least exposure to what makes for beauty would likely toss the photograph aside with the gesture employed in brushing away a caterpillar, and mutter in profound revulsion, ‘What a dreadful child.‘”

“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.”

“If you’ve slept soundly at night the morning is exhilarating, I suppose.”

“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.”

“The artificiality of his smile belies his good looks, however, indicating the depth of his isolation and rendering him unpleasant to look at.”