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

252. “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

253. “Inside every woman is a merciless bunny, and inside every man a virtuous tanuki who’s forever floundering as he tries to keep his head above water.”

— Osamu Dazai

254. “The five brothers and sisters, and I myself, have gradually grown more adult, more polite, more guarded – have become, in short, “members of society” – and when we do on occasion meet, it’s not the least bit fun.”

— Osamu Dazai

255. “I should like to record that as I manipulated the peeling lacquer chopsticks to eat my jelly, I felt unbearably lonely.”

— Osamu Dazai

256. “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

257. “To be alive. To be alive. An intolerably immense undertaking before which one can only gasp in apprehension.”

— Osamu Dazai

258. “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

259. “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

260. “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

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

— Osamu Dazai

262. “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

263. “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

264. “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

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

— Osamu Dazai

266. “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

267. “Revolution and love are in fact the best, most pleasurable things in the world, and we realize it is precisely because they are so good that the older and wiser heads have spitefully fobbed off in us their sour grapes of a lie. This I want to believe implicitly: man was born for love and revolution.”

— Osamu Dazai

268. “I just need one more year to finish my suicide note.”

— Osamu Dazai

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

— Osamu Dazai

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

— Osamu Dazai

271. “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

272. “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

273. “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

274. “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

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

— Osamu Dazai

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

— Osamu Dazai

277. “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

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

— Osamu Dazai

279. “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

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

— Osamu Dazai

281. “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

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

— Osamu Dazai

283. “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

284. “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.”

— Osamu Dazai

285. “I want to love everyone,” I thought, almost tearfully. If you stare at the sky, it changes little by little. Gradually it turns bluish. Then, with nothing more than a sigh, I felt the urge to be naked. I had never seen anything as beautiful as the translucent leaves and grass. Gently, I reached out to touch the grass. I want to live beautifully.”

— Osamu Dazai

286. “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

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

— Osamu Dazai

288. “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

289. “Beautiful feelings make bad literature.”

— Osamu Dazai

290. “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

291. “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

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

— Osamu Dazai

293. “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

294. “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.”

— Osamu Dazai

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

— Osamu Dazai

296. “It has seemed to me in fact that those who called me lucky were incomparably more fortunate than I.”

— Osamu Dazai

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

— Osamu Dazai

298. “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. Life’s a farce, so we might as well make it a good one. But real life is a realm that I may never reach. The best that I can hope for is to loiter in the memory of these four days, so steeped with empathy. Four days that count more than five or ten years of my life. Four days that count more than a lifetime.”

— Osamu Dazai

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

— Osamu Dazai

300. “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