Top 350 Osamu Dazai Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “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

252. “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

253. “My unhappiness was the unhappiness of a person who could not say no.”

— Osamu Dazai

254. “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

255. “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 perfected myself in the role of the farcical eccentric.”

— Osamu Dazai

256. “Perhaps, then, most lovers of drink are not what we today would call egoists but rather guardians of the sort of generous spirit that inspires all of us to toast, at times, our neighbor’s happiness. We do this because we want to drink, yes, but if our neighbor gets drunk along with us, our pleasure is double.”

— 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. “You takes things too seriously. It seems you’re not satisfied unless you always make yourself the protagonist in some tragedy.”

— Osamu Dazai

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

— Osamu Dazai

261. “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

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

— Osamu Dazai

263. “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

264. “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

265. “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

266. “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

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

— Osamu Dazai

268. “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

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

— Osamu Dazai

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

— Osamu Dazai

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

— Osamu Dazai

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

— Osamu Dazai

273. “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

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

— Osamu Dazai

275. “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

276. “Despising each other as we did, we were constantly together, thereby degrading ourselves.”

— Osamu Dazai

277. “The reason I hate glasses so much is because I think the beauty of your eyes is the best thing about people. Even if they can’t see your nose or if your mouth is hidden, I think all I need are your eyes – the kind eyes that will inspire others, when they are looking into them, to live more beautifully.”

— Osamu Dazai

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

— Osamu Dazai

279. “The recognition of any reality begins with trust.”

— Osamu Dazai

280. “Communal living had proved quite impossible for me. It gave me chills just to hear such words as “the ardor of youth” or “youthful pride”: I could not by any stretch of the imagination soak myself in “college spirit.” The classrooms and the dormitory seemed like the dumping grounds of distorted sexual desires, and even my virtually perfected antics were of no use there.”

— Osamu Dazai

281. “This world can be a boring place. Who can blame them for wanting something exciting to happen?”

— Osamu Dazai

282. “It would have been better had I turned into a character from my own stories. An idle womaniser.”

— Osamu Dazai

283. “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

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

— Osamu Dazai

285. “The problem with tradition is that it can cause even an error of great magnitude to go unnoticed.”

— Osamu Dazai

286. “Welcome to Sadness. Population one.”

— Osamu Dazai

287. “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

288. “If things went well I would like to become his inseparable friend; but if this proved utterly impossible, I had no choice but to pray for his death.”

— Osamu Dazai

289. “Although I had a moral dread of human beings I seemed quite unable to renounce their society. I managed to maintain on the surface a smile which never deserted my lips; this was the accommodation I offered to others, a most precarious achievement preformed by me only at the cost of excruciating efforts within.”

— Osamu Dazai

290. “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.”

— Osamu Dazai

291. “I wish I could be glad that I was born, that I am alive, that there are people in the world.”

— Osamu Dazai

292. “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.”

— Osamu Dazai

293. “Perhaps by depravity he actually meant tenderness.”

— Osamu Dazai

294. “The sly ability to steal someone else’s experience and recreate it as if it were my own is the only real talent I possess.”

— Osamu Dazai

295. “It takes an egomaniac like me to play the fool convincingly.”

— Osamu Dazai

296. “Even if one is not “qualified to be loved,” one is eternally “qualified to love.” To seek only the joy of being adored is to surrender to savagery and ignorance.”

— Osamu Dazai

297. “The fact is that my fear of being ridiculed is so intense I’d rather beat my critics to the punch.”

— Osamu Dazai

298. “But there is no limit to a proud and beautiful maiden’s capacity for cruelty.”

— Osamu Dazai

299. “I lived so carefully, thinking someone was watching. But the stage was empty, the audience never came.”

— Osamu Dazai

300. “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