Osamu Dazai Quotes

“I yearned for everything long gone.”
― Osamu Dazai, Schoolgirl

“Do not pity yourself. If you wallow in self-pity, life will be an endless nightmare.”
― Kafka Asagiri, 文豪ストレイドッグス 7 [Bungō Stray Dogs 7]

“To fall for," "to be fallen for"--I feel in these words something unspeakably vulgar, farcical, and at the same time extraordinarily complacent. Once these expressions put in an appearance, no matter how solemn the place, the silent cathedrals of melancholy crumble, leaving nothing but an impression of fatuousness. It is curious, but the cathedrals of melancholy are not necessarily demolished if one can replace the vulgar "What a messy business it is to be fallen for" by the more literary "What uneasiness lies in being loved.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“If ever I meet someone society has designated as an outcast, I invariably feel affection for him, an emotion which carries me away in melting tenderness.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“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, The Setting Sun

“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, The Setting Sun

“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, No Longer Human

“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

“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

“There are some people whose dread of human beings is so morbid that they reach a point where they yearn to see with their own eyes monsters of ever more horrible shapes. And the more nervous they are -the quicker to take fright- the more violent they pray that every storm will be...”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“[...] I even watched in silence when my own wife was violated.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“Anything I would never want to lose is always lost.”
― Kafka Asagiri, Bungo Stray Dogs, Vol. 1 -9 (light novel) by Kafka Asagiri collection set

“No less than myself, though in a different way, he was entirely removed from the activities of the human beings of the world. We were of one species if only in that we were both disoriented.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“Artist, writer - it's the same thing.”
― Osamu Dazai, Self-Portraits: Tales from the Life of Japan's Great Decadent Romantic

“Zaman zaman yaşadığım deneyimler sayesinde, içgüdülerimizin büyüklüğünü ve bu güce karşı koyma konusunda ne kadar çaresiz olduğumuzu anladığım zamanlarda çıldıracak gibi oluyorum.”
― Osamu Dazai, Schoolgirl

“Eat or die, the saying goes, but to my ears it sounded like just one more unpleasant threat.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human