Quotes from Osamu Dazai

He would show up not with women but with two or three newspaper or magazine reporters. According to some of these fellows, now that the military had fallen, the impoverished poets and artists were going to be the new public heroes.

hey believe that while they are a student, cheating is the greatest dishonor and failing is the accomplishment of a hero. But once they go out into the real world, they realize that it's the complete opposite. One should realize that cheating is not dishonorable, and flunking is the root of failure in life.

ou must make friends with at least one student from the year above you. This is so that you learn the secrets of how to pass exams. You can learn about the grading methods of the teachers in this way. In addition, find one classmate of the same year who is very talented and become best friends with him. Have him lend his notebook to you, and during exams, have him sit right next to you. Those two are all you need for school friends.

I think that in life you must have a final person who praises you.

When a person has secrets locked inside, he can't help but feel that there are ears embedded in the walls.

Father was talking with a guest in the next room, and my words were meant for him. Needless to say, they never reached his ear, let alone his heart.

Apparently when someone stays in a civilized kingdom too long, even his skin becomes delicate.

As for love … no, having once written that word I can write nothing more.

The roar of laughter at civilization's end.

Eu temia inclusive a Deus. Não podia crer em amor divino, apenas em punição divina. Fé. Isso, para mim, era como encarar cabisbaixo o tribunal dos céus, somente para poder receber uma chicotada de Deus. Ainda que acreditasse no inferno, por mais que tentasse, não podia acreditar na existência do céu.

Everyone kept saying that I was the ugliest boy in the family. And if they had known how fussy I was about clothes, they would surely have had a good laugh at my expense. I pretended not to care about my appearance, and this seemed to do the trick. I gave the impression of being dull and uncouth, no doubt about it. It was awful hearing them remark over and over how ugly I was.

Oh, life is too painful, the reality that confirms the universal belief that it is best not to be born. Thus everyday, from morning to night, I wait in despair for something. I wish I could be glad that I was born, that I am alive, that there are people and a world.

When even a child like me—with no merit—is given respect and affection in such a manner, then he will determine to do the best he can. Your Grace lays too many harsh words upon Lord Hamlet. When you speak in this manner, it leaves him with no legs to stand on. He is the master to whom we subjects will offer up our lives in order to defend our kingdom. You should take better care of him.

Ah! Será que os seres humanos não entendem nada de seus próximos, veem os outros de forma completamente equivocada? E que, mesmo assim, sem se dar conta disso, elegem por toda a vida alguns como melhores amigos, e quando estes morrem, discursam aos prantos no seu funeral?

I opened my trunk and almost burst into tears. At such times I always sought refuge in a bookstore.

When a person falls to the very depths of suffering—where he can find no escape—he is somehow able to find new courage.

Despising each other as we did, we were constantly together, thereby degrading ourselves. If that is what the world calls friendship, the relations between Horiki and myself were undoubtedly those of friendship

That one's a wife, he began, and she knows only two ways to live—either she's the husband's boss or else his toy.

Submission or escape; to keep up the fair-and-square fight or compromise with lies; deception or placation; to be or not to be––which one is better? I don't know. I don't know, so it causes me suffering.

Conheçais vós, vossa própria pusilanimidade, vossos mistérios, vossa perversidade, vossa ardileza e vossa feitiçaria.

There's a scholar, he went on, a creature who earns his bread by footnoting a dead genius or sniping at a living one.

Humans are sorry, pitiful beings. No matter whether we succeed or fail, are intelligent or dimwitted, win or lose: we will harden our expressions and exert our strength, running around sweating from morning to evening, and meanwhile only grow older.

He pointed to an actress next, calling her an old hag. He told me how she played her own life more dramatically than any stage role. And there, he continued, goes a landlord, a coward who always grumbles about how hard he works.

What separates us from insects? It's so stupid. I have lived and worked all my life never forgetting that everything is for the sake of Denmark, no matter what sad or painful things happen. But now I realize I am a fool. I have been deceived—by the late king, the present king, and even by Hamlet. They all have deceived me.