Quotes from Osamu Dazai

Once you've given in to that whim, your destiny is decided. There's no such thing as 'seeing what happens' in this life. To do something just to see what happens is exactly the same as just plain doing it.

Crime and Punishment. Dostoievski. These words grazed over a corner of my mind, startling me. Just supposing Dostoievski ranged 'crime' and 'punishment' side by side not as synonyms but as antonyms. Crime and punishment-- absolutely incompatible ideas, irreconcilable as oil and water. I felt I was beginning to understand what lay at the bottom of the scum-covered, turbid pond, that chaos of Dostoievski's mind--no, I still didn't quite see...

Please. Fire can't burn underwater." "Think before you speak, young master. Water contains oxygen, doesn't it? Where there's oxygen, there's no reason you can't have fire.

All men are alike... I believe that all of the so-called "anxiety of the age" — men frightened by one another, every known principle violated, effort mocked, happiness denied, beauty defiled, honor dragged down — originates in this one incredible expression.

We have a pearl disposal problem down here, you see. After all, if you think about it, they're just oyster poop.

Ada sebuah kisah tentang bagaimana pada suatu pagi musim semi ketika matahari cerah menyinari dedahanan prem di mana dua atau tiga kembang mekar terdapat seorang pelajar Heidelberg bergelantungan di sana, mati.

Those who wish to go on living can always manage to survive whatever obstacles there may be. That is splendid of them, and I daresay that what people call the glory of mankind is comprised of just such a thing. But I am convinced that dying is not a sin. It is painful for the plant which is myself to live in the atmosphere and light of this world. Somewhere an element is lacking which would permit me to continue. I am wanting. It has been all I could do to stay alive up to now.

What the tanuki doesn't realize is that people who affect to believe all our nonsense often harbor evil and insidious plots in their hearts

That "purity of youth" often turns out, as in the case of this rabbit, to be a frenzied dance—an indecipherable, sensual mishmash that casually combines murderous hatred with self-intoxication.

Valuing physical sensations above moral considerations is evidence of either mental deficiency or demonic evil.

?nsanlar yalan söylerken ciddi bir yüz tak?n?rlar. Bugünkü yöneticilerimizin ciddiyeti gibi!

People do not necessarily think and consider in a prescribed way before choosing the path they'll walk. For the most part they simply wander, at some point, into a different meadow.

Jusque-là dans ma vie, le désir d'être tué m'était venu plus d'une fois, mais l'idée de tuer quelqu'un ne m'avait pas effleuré ; lorsque je me trouvais devant un adversaire terrible je ne pensais, au contraire, qu'à le rendre heureux.

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

Por lo general, las personas no muestran lo terribles que son. Pero son como una vaca pastando tranquila que, de repente, levanta la cola y descarga un latigazo sobre el tábano. Basta que se dé la ocasión para que muestren su horrenda naturaleza. Recuerdo que se me llegaba a erizar el cabello de terror al pensar en que este carácter innato es una condición esencial para que el ser humano sobreviva. Al pensarlo, perdía cualquier esperanza sobre la humanidad.

The Venerable'—isn't that what you call yourself? Trying to find comfort in dreams of a past that will never come again, rather than hope for the future.

I shall become nothing, the wind, the sky.

Forced explanations often end in a distortion of lies.

On the other hand, I was equally afraid that they might not recognize my true self when they saw it, but imagine that it was just some new twist to my clowning-occasion for additional snickers.

That's because I deceived them. I was aware that everybody in the apartment house was friendly to me, but it was extremely difficult for me to explain to Shigeko how much I feared them all, and how I was cursed by the unhappy peculiarity that 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.

From then on, however, I came to hold, almost as a philosophical conviction, the belief: What is society but an individual? From the moment I suspected that society might be an individual I was able to act more in accordance with my own inclinations.

Unhappiness. There are all kinds of unhappy people in this world. I suppose it would be no exaggeration to say that the world is composed entirely of unhappy people.

Just when I was beginning to forget, that bird of ill-omen came flapping my way, to rip open with its beak the wounds of memory. All at once shame over the past and the recollection of sin unfolded themselves before my eyes and, seized by a terror so great it made me want to shriek, I could not sit still a moment longer. "How about a drink?" I asked.

Imagine saying that the law was the antonym of crime! But perhaps everybody in "society" can go on living in self-satisfaction, thanks to just such simple concepts. They think that crime hatches where there are no policemen.