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Meditations
by
The Stoics aspired to the repression of all emotion, and the Epicureans to freedom from all disturbance; yet in the upshot the one has become a synonym of stubborn endurance, the other for unbridled licence.
“It’s because people have aspirations and ambitions that solitude wears on them. If you don’t have a damn about what the rest of the world is up to, you can be alone for a hundred years- a thousand years- with no difficulty whatsoever. At least, you can if you don’t let criticism bother you.”
― Otogizōshi: The Fairy Tale Book of Dazai Osamu
― Otogizōshi: The Fairy Tale Book of Dazai Osamu
“Robbers, thieves, smugglers, and cheats know their own local and personal circumstances and conditions extremely well, and pay the most active attention to their business; but it by no means follows therefrom, that society is in the best condition where such individuals are at least restrained in the exercised of their private industry.”
― National System of Political Economy
― National System of Political Economy
“I’m afraid I don’t really have a clear understanding of the psychology of the powerful- particularly the absolutely invincible variety, which I’ve never met or known to exist. I’m a story writer with such feeble imaginative powers that unless I myself have experienced something, I can’t write one line- I can’t write a word- about it.”
― Otogizōshi: The Fairy Tale Book of Dazai Osamu
― Otogizōshi: The Fairy Tale Book of Dazai Osamu
“Shall I have to go there ten years hence to keep my old bones warm against the rheumatism and to scorch my bald pate in the heat of the noonday sun?
Shall I die without having seen anything?”
― Letters And Reminiscences
Shall I die without having seen anything?”
― Letters And Reminiscences
“Speech blossoms from anxiety… words were fermented from the uncertainty of existence, like poisonous red mushrooms sprout from the rotting earth. It’s true we have words of joy and pleasure, but aren’t those the most unnatural and contrived of them all? Apparently, human beings experience anxiety even in the midst of joy. But in a place without anxiety, there’s no need for such ignoble contrivances.”
― Urashima san
― Urashima san
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