Nokturne > Nokturne's Quotes

“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.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“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, No Longer Human

“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, No Longer Human

“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, No Longer Human

“As long as I can make them laugh, it doesn’t matter how, I’ll be alright. If I succeed in that, the human beings probably won’t mind it too much if I remain outside their lives. The one thing I must avoid is becoming offensive in their eyes: I shall be nothing, the wind, the sky.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“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, No Longer Human

“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, No Longer Human

“The weak fear happiness itself.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“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, No Longer Human

“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, No Longer Human

“The thought of dying has never bothered me, but getting hurt, losing blood, becoming crippled and the like—no thanks.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“Disqualified as a human being.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“I shall be nothing, the wind, the sky.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“Disqualified as a human beings. I had now ceased utterly to be a human beings.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“My unhappiness stemmed entirely from my own vices, and I had no way of fighting anybody.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“Human beings never submit to human beings.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“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, No Longer Human

“Everything passes.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“The "world," after all, was still a place of bottomless horror.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“What is society but an individual?”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“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, No Longer Human

“Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the rest.”
― Herman Hesse

“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

“Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours.”
― Hermann Hesse

“Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else ... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.”
― Hermann Hesse

“Some of us think holding on makes us strong but sometimes it is letting go”
― Herman Hesse

“If I know what love is, it is because of you.”
― Hermann Hesse

“It is not for me to judge another man's life. I must judge, I must choose, I must spurn, purely for myself. For myself, alone.”
― Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

“Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.”
― Hermann Hesse