Top 280 Osamu Dazai Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “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

102. “Long personal experience had taught me that when a woman suddenly bursts into hysterics, the way to restore her sprits is to give her something sweet.”

— Osamu Dazai

103. “I have tried insofar as possible to avoid getting involved in the sordid complications of human beings. I have been afraid of being sucked down into their bottomless whirlpool.”

— Osamu Dazai

104. “Of late a gloomy rain has been falling almost incessantly. Whatever I do depresses me.”

— Osamu Dazai

105. “The wound has gradually become dearer to me than my own flesh and blood, and I have thought its pain to be the emotion of the wound as it lived or even its murmur of affection.”

— Osamu Dazai

106. “I hope I meet lots of people with lovely eyes.”

— Osamu Dazai

107. “They were happy, the two of them. I’d been a fool to come between them. I might destroy them both if I were not careful. A humble happiness. A good mother and child. God, I thought, if you listen to the prayers of people like myself, grant me happiness once, only once in my whole lifetime will be enough! Hear my prayer!”

— Osamu Dazai

108. “What a holy thing uncorrupted virginity is, I thought.”

— Osamu Dazai

109. “From then on, however, I came to hold, almost as a philosophical conviction, the belief: What is society but an individual?”

— Osamu Dazai

110. “In our lives we know joy, anger, sorrow, and a hundred other emotions, but these emotions altogether occupy a bare one per cent of our time. The remaining ninety-nine per cent is just living in waiting.”

— Osamu Dazai

111. “I go about saying how pained and tormented, how lonely and sad I feel, but what do I really mean by that? If I were to speak the truth, I would die.”

— Osamu Dazai

112. “People talk of “social outcasts.” The words apparently denote the miserable losers of the world, the vicious ones, but I feel as though I have been a “social outcast” from the moment I was born. 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

113. “A life free of lies! Ah, but that, too, was, by definition, a lie. Surely a lie already dwelled in the heart of anyone who sought to make such distinctions and stand in judgment.”

— Osamu Dazai

114. “I wanted to maintain the illusion of peace and harmony even one day, even one moment. Longer. Dreading above all the thought of giving people such a frightful shock, I acted out the temporizing lie as if my life depended on it. I was forever doing that: backing myself further into a corner as I contemplated my own death.”

— Osamu Dazai

115. “When I pretended to be precocious, people started the rumor that I was precocious. When I acted like an idler, rumor had it I was an idler. When I pretended I couldn’t write a novel, people said I couldn’t write. When I acted like a liar, they called me a liar. When I acted like a rich man, they started the rumor I was rich. When I feigned indifference, they classed me as the indifferent type. But when I inadvertently groaned because I was really in pain, they started the rumor that I was faking suffering. The world is out of joint.”

— Osamu Dazai

116. “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.”

— Osamu Dazai

117. “Or maybe it’s not about right and wrong at all but simply a humorous story suggesting that in our daily lives the people of this world abuse one another, punish one another, praise one another, and serve one another all on the basis of feelings – their likes and dislikes.”

— Osamu Dazai

118. “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

119. “Heaven forbid if beauty were to have substance.”

— Osamu Dazai

120. “They say that love flies out the window when poverty comes in the door, but people generally get the sense backwards.”

— Osamu Dazai

121. “The blue sky is most beautiful when see through a prison cell window.”

— Osamu Dazai

122. “Good night. I’m Cinderella without her prince. Do you know where to find me in Tokyo? You won’t see me again.”

— Osamu Dazai

123. “By living this way, what will my fortune be? There is nothing. Am I simply a sickly man? What should I do? I had no direction, nothing. I thought that this reckless life of mine was only a nuisance to others and devoid of meaning. This was quite hard to bear.”

— Osamu Dazai

124. “To break free from this vexatious and awful never-ending cycle, this flood of outrageous thoughts, and to long for nothing more than simply to sleep – how clean, how pure, the mere thought of it is exhilarating.”

— Osamu Dazai

125. “Falling asleep is such a strange feeling. It’s like a carp or an eel is tugging on a fishing line, or something heavy like a lead weight is pulling on the line that I’m holding with my head, and as I doze off to sleep, the line slackens up a bit. When that happens, it startles me back to awareness. Then it pulls me again. I doze off to sleep. The line loosens a bit again. This goes on three or four times, and then, with the first really big tug, this time it lasts until morning.”

— Osamu Dazai

126. “Forgive me. I didn’t mean to kill you, Polonius. The blade slipped out of the sheath, and it struck you.”

— Osamu Dazai

127. “I was afraid to go into a restaurant because I was intimidated by the waiters furtively hovering behind me waiting for my plate to be emptied. Most of all I dreaded paying a bill-my awkwardness when I handed over the money after buying something did not arise from my stinginess, but from excessive tension, excessive embarrassment, excessive uneasiness and apprehension.”

— Osamu Dazai

128. “Every family,” he jested, “has a fool – just to keep it in touch with reality.”

— Osamu Dazai

129. “You’ve treated me nicely, yes, but only because you find me curious and amusing. It’s made me feel so lonely, somehow.”

— Osamu Dazai

130. “Whenever I let the slightest thing make me forget myself, I can’t help but be disappointed.”

— Osamu Dazai

131. “Genuine beauty is always meaningless, without virtue.”

— Osamu Dazai

132. “Human beings never submit to human beings.”

— Osamu Dazai

133. “Despair is impossible in humans. They often are deceived by hope, but are also deceived by the notion of despair.”

— Osamu Dazai

134. “They scolded us for not having any real hopes or real ambitions, but if we were to pursue our true ideals, would these people watch and guide us along the way?”

— Osamu Dazai

135. “No. You won’t do. You’ve treated me nicely, yes, but only because you find me curious and amusing. It made me feel so lonely, somehow... I’m really just a foolish and useless person.”

— Osamu Dazai

136. “I felt as though the vessel if my suffering had become empty, as if nothing could interest me now. I had lost even the ability to suffer.”

— Osamu Dazai

137. “Haven’t we known for a long time that it’s a mistake to attach meaning to each and every action of a person? Forced explanations often end in a distortion of lies.”

— Osamu Dazai

138. “Unhappiness. There are all kinds of unhappy people in the world. I suppose it would be no exaggeration to say that the world is composed entirely of unhappy people. But those people can fight their unhappiness with society fairly and squarly, and society for its part easily understands and sympathizes with such struggles.”

— Osamu Dazai

139. “Isn’t it said that memories only grow more beautiful with time?”

— Osamu Dazai

140. “Excessively passionate characters have a tendency to behave poorly.”

— Osamu Dazai

141. “Mustahil bagi seorang manusia – tidak, seorang lelaki – untuk terus hidup tanpa merenung “Aku ini salah satu orang pilihan”, “Aku ini punya kelebihan”, dan lain-lain.”

— Osamu Dazai

142. “I didn’t know whether it was better to maintain a fierce distinction between yourself and your acquaintances in society in order to deal with and respond properly to things in a pleasant manner, or rather never to hide yourself, to remain true to yourself always, even if they say bad things about you.”

— Osamu Dazai

143. “One lies to seek a bit of relief from a ponderous, suffocating reality, but the liar, like the drinker, gradually comes to need larger and larger doses. The lies become blacker and more complex, and they mesh and rub together until in the end they shine with the luster of truth.”

— Osamu Dazai

144. “I have never derived the least joy out of amusements. Perhaps that is a sign of the impotence of pleasure. I ran riot and threw myself into wild diversions out of the simple desire to escape from my own shadow.”

— Osamu Dazai

145. “Most drinkers are lonely men, isolated in their own homes. To ask whether they drink because they’re isolated or isolated because the rest of the family disapprove of their drinking would be like clapping and trying to decide which hand made the sound – it can only lead to a lot of vain quibbling.”

— Osamu Dazai

146. “Are “people in the world”, I wonder, creatures that spend their whole lives greeting each other in stiff, formal patterns, being cautious about each other, then growing tired of each other? I hate meeting people.”

— Osamu Dazai

147. “He must live up to his friend’s trust – that alone mattered.”

— Osamu Dazai

148. “Now, I will make better use of my body and be useful by increasing food production just a little, then I will bid farewell to this world. It would be good to lighten the burden on this country. That is my path to best serve my country as a useless invalid. I want to die soon.”

— Osamu Dazai

149. “How cruel of you. What part of what you see here is carefree? If only you could understand the sadness of the ones who grow the delicate flowers of buffoonery, protecting them from but the slightest gust of wind and always on the verge of despair!”

— Osamu Dazai

150. “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