Top 350 Osamu Dazai Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “To be alive. To be alive. An intolerably immense undertaking before which one can only gasp in apprehension.”

— Osamu Dazai

252. “I was plagued by a heavy sense of loss, as if my heart had become empty.”

— Osamu Dazai

253. “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.”

— Osamu Dazai

254. “I have only to shut my eyes after looking at it to forget the face. I can remember the wall of the room, the little heater, but all impression of the face of the principal figure in the room is blotted out; I am unable to recall a single thing about it.”

— Osamu Dazai

255. “Drinkers tend to say inane and obnoxious things when they’re drunk, but most of them are in fact harmless, innocent souls like this.”

— Osamu Dazai

256. “There was in his nature a tendency to display a taste for fairness and justice – not the “fairness and justice” that politicians are forever carrying on about, but fairness and justice in the true, original sense of the words. As a consequence, the people of Mishima regarded him as a troublemaker and kept their distance.”

— Osamu Dazai

257. “Extremely tragic is a good description of you.”

— Osamu Dazai

258. “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

259. “I think that even a death mask would hold more of an expression, leave more of a memory. That effigy suggests nothing so much as a human body to which a horse’s head has been attached. Something ineffable makes the beholder shudder in distaste. I have never seen such an inscrutable face on a man.”

— Osamu Dazai

260. “I am happy now. Even if I were to hear the four walls all shriek in anguish, my feeling of happiness would still be at the saturation point. I am so happy I could sneeze.” Mr. Uehara laughed. “But it’s too late now. It’s dusk already.” “It’s morning!” That morning my brother Naoji committed suicide.”

— Osamu Dazai

261. “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.”

— Osamu Dazai

262. “Without mutual respect, there can be no true nuptial bond.”

— Osamu Dazai

263. “I wonder how it would be if I let go and yielded myself to depravity.”

— Osamu Dazai

264. “It is true, I suppose, that nobody finds it exactly pleasant to be criticised or be shouted at, but I see in the face of the human being raging at me a wild animal in its true colour, one more horrible than any lion, crocodile, or lion. People normally seem to be hiding his true nature, but an occasion will arise when anger makes them reveal in a flash human nature in all its horror.”

— Osamu Dazai

265. “Across from me four or five salarymen who all looked about the same age were just sitting there. They must have been around 30. I didn’t like any of them. Their eyes were empty and dull. They had no vigor. But now, if I so much as grinned at them, I could very well be dragged off by one of these men, falling into the chasm of compulsory marriage. A mere smile can determine a woman’s fate. It is frightening. Fascinatingly so. I have to be careful.”

— Osamu Dazai

266. “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.”

— Osamu Dazai

267. “The clash between rich and poor is a hackneyed enough subject, but I am now convinced that it really is one of the eternal themes of drama.”

— Osamu Dazai

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

— Osamu Dazai

269. “It seems, regrettably, that not even genius can overcome the debilitating effects of a mild fever.”

— Osamu Dazai

270. “He would never say something in the shadows that he cannot say directly to a person. If there is something he wants to say, he will always tell the person to their face. He was like that at the university, and he is like that now. That is why he is always losing out.”

— Osamu Dazai

271. “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.”

— Osamu Dazai

272. “The truth is that I secretly love what seems to be my own individuality, and I hope I always will, but fully embodying it is another matter.”

— Osamu Dazai

273. “It’s a faculty absolutely unique to man – having secrets.”

— Osamu Dazai

274. “Ah! Are not all authors the same? So quick to dress up their confessions. I barely qualify as human. Will I ever be a functional member of society? Even as I write these words, I worry how the sentences will sound.”

— Osamu Dazai

275. “I’ve been subjected to ridicule and derision every day of my life. In spite of which, did I not take courage and boldly present myself at that examination? Yes! Only to fail miserably... In a world like this, where the brazen, the shameless, the evil-hearted alone prosper, a weak and penniless scholar like myself is destined forever to be a failure and a laughingstock.”

— Osamu Dazai

276. “What do you think the path of your predecessors was, but the path of adventure?”

— Osamu Dazai

277. “All my friends have left me. They look back at me with eyes of pity. Come back, friends. Let’s talk together, laugh together. But no, you turn away as if we’ve never met. Speak up, friends. Ask away. I’ll tell you anything. It was me.”

— Osamu Dazai

278. “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.”

— Osamu Dazai

279. “I can’t stand how poor and pathetic he is, and because of that I am cruel to him.”

— Osamu Dazai

280. “I live solely on my writing now. On signing the registers at inns when I travel, I have no hesitation about listing “writer” as my occupation. If I suffer, I don’t talk much about it much. I may suffer even more than before, but I wear a smile.”

— Osamu Dazai

281. “I wanted once in my lifetime to know that great savage joy, no matter how immense the suffering that might ensue.”

— Osamu Dazai

282. “If my life could be of some use, I would offer it to anyone.”

— Osamu Dazai

283. “They say that people who like summer flowers die in the summer. I wonder if it’s true.”

— Osamu Dazai

284. “Ojii-san’s wen has been his only confidant, and he’s conscious of a certain loneliness without it.”

— Osamu Dazai

285. “Irrationality. I found the thought faintly pleasurable. Or rather, I felt at ease with it. What frightened me was the logic of the world; in it lay the foretaste of something incalculably powerful. Its mechanism was incomprehensible, and I could not possibly remain closeted in that windowless, bone-chilling room. Though outside lay the sea of irrationality, it was far more agreeable to swim in its waters until presently I drowned.”

— Osamu Dazai

286. “The agonies I have suffered night after night have made for a hell composed of an infinite diversity of tortures, but – though this is a very strange way to put it – 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

287. “And then – no, that’s all I have.”

— Osamu Dazai

288. “Even such uncivilized actions seem not only charming but strangely erotic when Mother performs them. The real things are apt to be deviant.”

— Osamu Dazai

289. “That’s all right. I’ll eat it cold. No need to warm it up.” Ojii-san shrinks guiltily into himself as he sits down. He’s dying to tell his wife about all the marvelous things that happened last night, but in the stern and austere atmosphere of her presence he finds the words sticking in his throat. He eats with head bowed, feeling perfectly wretched.”

— Osamu Dazai

290. “He looks happy. Away from home like this, he seems a different person.”

— Osamu Dazai

291. “The clouds were beautiful, maybe because it was so windy. There were four roses blooming in a corner of the yard. One was yellow, two were white, and one was pink. I sat there agape, looking at the flowers, and thought to myself, There are really good things about human beings. I mean, it’s humans who discovered the beauty of flowers, and humans who admire them.”

— Osamu Dazai

292. “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.”

— Osamu Dazai

293. “I drop steadily, inevitably, into unhappiness, and I have no specific plan to stave off my descent.”

— Osamu Dazai

294. “A man crushed by reality puts on a show of endurance. If that’s beyond your comprehension, dear reader, then you and I will never understand each other.”

— Osamu Dazai

295. “It may be true that in any society defective types with low vitality like myself are doomed to perish, not because of what they think or anything else, but because of themselves. I have, however, some slight excuse to offer. I feel the overwhelming pressure of circumstances which make it extremely difficult for me to live.”

— Osamu Dazai

296. “Something hard about her gives you the impression less of a beautiful woman than of a handsome young man.”

— Osamu Dazai

297. “Beautiful feelings make bad literature. In which case, this precious state of prose is proof that I’m no devil after all. Ah, blessed be the man who coined this phrase! It is a treasure of the language. An author can get away with using it but once in his career. Sad to say. The first time, it’s endearing. If you insist on using it a second or a third time, though, dear reader, hiding behind it like a shield, you can expect nothing but misery.”

— Osamu Dazai

298. “Beautiful feelings make bad literature.”

— Osamu Dazai

299. “At that same moment, I became convinced that somewhere another sad and pitiful girl was doing the wash and smiling softly at this very moon.”

— Osamu Dazai

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

— Osamu Dazai