Top 350 Osamu Dazai Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “This world can be a boring place. Who can blame them for wanting something exciting to happen?”

— Osamu Dazai

302. “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

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

— Osamu Dazai

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

— Osamu Dazai

305. “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

306. “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

307. “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

308. “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

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

— Osamu Dazai

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

— Osamu Dazai

311. “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

312. “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

313. “That faint and distant sound of hammering was like a miracle, stripping me of every militaristic illusion. Never again would I become intoxicated by that nightmare with its so-called pathos and glory.”

— Osamu Dazai

314. “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

315. “Even now, I barely have the strength to reread what I’ve written.”

— Osamu Dazai

316. “The likable weeds and the not likable weeds looked exactly the same but were somehow clearly divided into those that seemed innocuous and those that seemed horrible. It didn’t stand to reason. What a girl likes and what she hates seems rather arbitrary to me.”

— Osamu Dazai

317. “When one’s life begins to unravel, one is tempted, sadly enough, to cling to the thread of prophecy.”

— Osamu Dazai

318. “This novel was doomed from the start. All posture and no substance. Whether I write one page or a hundred, it amounts to the same thing. Though I knew this from the start.”

— Osamu Dazai

319. “I was so crazed by my own sufferng that I became blind to the obvious fact that other people, too, were living for all they were worth.”

— Osamu Dazai

320. “I am convinced that human life is filled with many pure, happy, serene examples of insincerity, truly splendid of their kind.”

— Osamu Dazai

321. “Ah! I do have things to say. I have lots to say. It’s just that suddenly I don’t feel like saying them. I just don’t want to. Hell with it. I don’t care if my hometown never understands me. I’m resigned to that. I give up on the robes of gold.”

— Osamu Dazai

322. “What feelings do you suppose a man has when he realizes that he will never know happiness or glory as long as he lives? Hard work. All that amounts to is food for the wild beasts of hunger.”

— Osamu Dazai

323. “It may require courage to say what they said, but were they really able to take responsibility for the consequences?”

— Osamu Dazai

324. “You do not know that you are loved.”

— Osamu Dazai

325. “Even if you die, don’t become his plaything!”

— Osamu Dazai

326. “I felt my heart would burst with longing for Tokyo especially when it grew dark. Then everything seemed to go blank before me. It wasn’t an ordinary sickness. God killed me, and only after he had made me into someone entirely different from the person I had been, did he call me back to life.”

— Osamu Dazai

327. “Where waste occurs, want will follow.”

— Osamu Dazai

328. “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.”

— Osamu Dazai

329. “In their conversations, “major” was frequently employed as an intensifying adjective. This world can be a boring place. Who can blame them for wanting something exciting to happen?”

— Osamu Dazai

330. “I felt so grateful, so happy for that gentle smile that I averted my face and wept. I was completely shattered and smothered by that one gentle smile.”

— Osamu Dazai

331. “Just when I was beginning to forget, that bird of ill-omen came flapping my way, to rip open with its beak the wounds of memory. All at once shame over the past and the recollection of sin unfolded themselves before my eyes and, seized by a terror so great it made me want to shriek, I could not sit still a moment longer. “How about a drink?” I asked.”

— Osamu Dazai

332. “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

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

— Osamu Dazai

334. “Adults are thoroughly schooled in this way of seeing, which makes it quite easy for them to empathize with others. Each teardrop is a source of pride. Young people, it’s true, will also sometimes indulge in this kind of trivial emotionality. But if adults acquire this ability only after making compromises with their lives, to put it generously, where do young people pick it up? From junk novels like this one?”

— Osamu Dazai

335. “It’s probably true. There definitely is something wrong with me. I have become petty. I am no good at all. I am pathetic. Out of the blue I nearly cried out at the top of my lungs. Pshaw... as if a loud holler was going to cover my gutlessness. I have to do something more. Maybe I am in love. I lay back on the green meadow.”

— Osamu Dazai

336. “The roar of laughter at civilization’s end.”

— Osamu Dazai

337. “I felt at the mercy of these waves, a light and beautiful feeling that I would be able to live on this way.”

— Osamu Dazai

338. “Shame on me for making such a mockery of myself. Blame it on my wounded pride. The fact is that my fear of being ridiculed is so intense I’d rather beat my critics to the punch. That’s the epitome of cowardice.”

— Osamu Dazai

339. “Let me be natural, let me be genuine.”

— Osamu Dazai

340. “Tomorrow will probably be another day like today. Happiness will never come my way. I know that. But it’s probably best to go to sleep believing that it will surely come, tomorrow it will come. You wait and wait for happiness, and when finally you can’t bear it any longer, you rush out of the house, only to hear later that a marvelous happiness arrived the following day at the home you had abandoned, and now it was too late. Sometimes happiness arrives one night too late. Happiness...”

— Osamu Dazai

341. “I grew up loyal, so don’t let me die a traitor.”

— Osamu Dazai

342. “Me cuesta entender que el ser humano viva o quiera vivir con pureza, claridad y felicidad en medio de toda esta mentira mutua.”

— Osamu Dazai

343. “It was only natural for Yozo to vacillate when asked about the reason behind his suicide – it was everything to him.”

— Osamu Dazai

344. “We all remain children, no matter how much time goes by. We don’t understand anything.”

— Osamu Dazai

345. “He just wanted to run – to do something for nothing.”

— Osamu Dazai

346. “I find it difficult to understand the kind of human being who lives, or who is sure he can live, purely, happily, serenely while engaged in deceit.”

— Osamu Dazai

347. “What am I but a tangle of uncertainty and pride?”

— Osamu Dazai

348. “I’ve caused people a lot of grief. I haven’t written anything worthwhile. It’s all bluster. Dishonesty. Cravenness. Lies. Lechery. Cowardice. I don’t need to wait for God’s judgment, I’m already constantly spilling out lame excuses.”

— Osamu Dazai

349. “I learned to read silently too. That’s why I could finish one book after another without getting tired.”

— Osamu Dazai

350. “Poverty is nothing. As long as you love me, all I want is to spend my whole life by your side.”

— Osamu Dazai