49+ Osamu Dazai Quotes On Tragic, Melancholic And Poetic

Osamu Dazai was a Japanese author active in the early 20th century. He wrote many novels and short stories, often exploring themes of alienation, suicide, and the difficulty of finding meaning in life. His works include No Longer Human, The Setting Sun, and Run, Melos! Following is our collection on famous quotes by Osamu Dazai on love, life, tragic.

Top 10 Osamu Dazai Quotes

1. What uneasiness lies in being loved.
2. The weak fear happiness itself. They can harm themselves on cotton wool. Sometimes they are wounded even by happiness
3. A true artist is an ugly man.
4. For someone like myself in whom the ability to trust others is so cracked and broken that I am wretchedly timid and am forever trying to read the expression on people's faces.
5. Now even if I die, no one will be so grieved as to do himself bodily harm.
6. I like roses best. But they bloom in all four seasons. I wonder if people who like roses best have to die four times over again.
7. Labeled a delinquent. That's the only kind of label I want to be crucified under.
8. To be a friend of the weak-that is the artist's point of departure as well as his ultimate goal.
9. Scoundrels [...] simply don't die. The ones who die are always the gentle, sweet, and beautiful people. [...] Scoundrels live a long time. The beautiful die young.
10. The real things are apt to be deviant.

Osamu Dazai Short Quotes

• The weak fear happiness itself.
• As for love . . . no, having once written that word I can write nothing more.
• Addiction is perhaps a sickness of the spirit.
• Victims. Victims of a transitional period of morality. That is what we both certainly are.
• What did he mean by "society"? The plural of human beings?

Osamu Dazai Quotes About Life

I am convinced that human life is filled with many pure, happy, serene examples of insincerity, truly splendid of their kind-of people deceiving one another without (strangely enough) any wounds being inflicted, of people who seem unaware even that they are deceiving one another. — Osamu Dazai

Not long ago I learned from a certain person in considerable detail about the worthlessness of your character. All the same, it is you who have given me strength, you who have put the rainbow of revolution in my breast. It is you who have given an object to my life. — Osamu Dazai

Mine has been a life of much shame. I can't even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being. — Osamu Dazai

Osamu Dazai Famous Quotes And Sayings

I drink out of desperation. Life is too dreary to endure. The misery, loneliness, crampedness - they're heartbreaking.[...] 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

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

Is it not true that no two human beings understand anything whatsoever about each other, that those who consider themselves bosom friends may be utterly mistaken about their fellow and, failing to realize this sad truth throughout a lifetime, weep when they read in the newspapers about his death? — Osamu Dazai

Then what's a synonym for woman?" "Entrails." "You're not very poetic, are you? Well, then, what's the antonym for entrails?" "Milk. — Osamu Dazai

It would seem that the more irresponsible and crafty one is, the more likely one is to have a talent for storytelling. — Osamu Dazai

I was afraid to board a streetcar because of the conductor; I was afraid to enter the Kabuki Theater for fear of the usherettes standing along the sides of the red-carpeted staircase at the main entrance; 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. — Osamu Dazai

Any man who criticizes my suicide and passes judgment on me with an expression of superiority, declaring (without offering the least help) that I should have gone on living my full complement of days, is assuredly a prodigy among men quite capable of tranquilly urging the Emperor to open a fruit shop. — Osamu Dazai

I have always found the female of the human species many times more difficult to understand than the male. — Osamu Dazai

I have often felt that I would find it more complicated, troublesome and unpleasant to ascertain the feelings by which a woman lives than to plumb the innermost thoughts of an earthworm. — Osamu Dazai

At times everything grows misty and dark before my eyes, and I feel that the strength of my whole body is oozing away through my finger tips. — Osamu Dazai

I also have the impression that many women have been able, instinctively, to sniff out this loneliness of mine, which I confided to no one, and this in later years was to become one of the causes of my being taken advantage of. — Osamu Dazai

But happiness is being able to hope, however faintly, for happiness. So, at least, we must believe if we are to live in the world of today. — Osamu Dazai

And I was incapable of living all by myself in those lodgings where I didn't know a soul. It terrified me to sit by myself quietly in my room. I felt frightened, as if I might be set upon or struck by someone at any moment. — Osamu Dazai

All I feel are the assaults of apprehension and terror at the thought that I am the only one who is entirely unlike the rest. It is almost impossible for me to converse with other people. What should I talk about, how should I say it? - I don't know. — Osamu Dazai

I soon came to understand that drink, tobacco and prostitutes were all great means if dissipating (even for a few moments) my dread for human beings. I came even to feel that if I had to sell every last possession to obtain these means of escape, it would be well worth it. — Osamu Dazai

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. My unhappiness stemmed entirely from my own vices, and I had no way of fighting anybody. — Osamu Dazai

In my case such an expression as 'to be fallen for' or even 'to be loved' is not in the least appropriate; perhaps it describes the situation more accurately to say that I was 'looked after. — Osamu Dazai

What is society but an individual? [] The ocean is not society; it is individuals. This was how I managed to gain a modicum of freedom from my terror at the illusion of the ocean called the world. — Osamu Dazai

I am convinced that those people whom the world considers good and respects are all liars and fakes. I do not trust the world. My only ally is the tagged dissolute. The tagged dissolute. That is the only cross on which I wish to be crucified. Though ten thousand people criticize me, I can throw in their teeth my challenge: Are you not all the more dangerous for being without tags? — Osamu Dazai

It isn't that I dislike artists, but I can't stand anyone who puts on those ponderous airs of a man of character. — Osamu Dazai

Virtue and vice are concepts invented by human beings, words for a morality which human beings arbitrarily devised. — Osamu Dazai

Last year nothing happened The year before nothing happened And the year before that nothing happened. — Osamu Dazai

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

One day, I went to a soba restaurant outside town, and while I was waiting for the zarusoba I opened an old graph magazine. There was a picture of an exhausted, lonely kneeling woman who wore a checked patterned yukata after the tradegy of a large earthquake. With the intensity of my chest ready to burn up, I fell in love with that poor woman. I also felt a horrifying desire for her. Maybe tragedy and desire are back to back to one another. — Osamu Dazai

Now I have neither happiness nor unhappiness.Everything passes.That is the one and only thing that I have thought resembled a truth in the society of human beings where I have dwelled up to now as in a burning hell.Everything passes. — Osamu Dazai

As long as I can make them laugh, it doesn’t matter how, I’ll be alright. If I succeed in that, the human beings probably won’t mind it too much if I remain outside their lives. The one thing I must avoid is becoming offensive in their eyes: I shall be nothing, the wind, the sky. — Osamu Dazai

I have no desire for others to take it on themselves to analyze my thoughts. I am without thoughts. I have never, not even once, acted on the basis of any doctrine or philosophy.I am convinced that those people whom the world considers good and respects are all liars and fakes. I do not trust the world. — Osamu Dazai

I want to spend my time with people who don't look to be respected. But such good people won't want to spend their time with me. — Osamu Dazai

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

Whenever I was asked what I wanted my first impulse was to answer "Nothing." The thought went through my mind that it didn't make any difference, that nothing was going to make me happy. — Osamu Dazai

The world, after all, was still a place of bottomless horror. It was by no means a place of childlike simplicity where everything could be settled by a simple then-and-there decision. — Osamu Dazai

Life Lessons by Osamu Dazai

1. Osamu Dazai's works emphasize the importance of self-reflection and understanding one's own emotions. He often wrote about the struggles of the individual in a chaotic world.
2. His works also explore the themes of loneliness, alienation, and despair, showing that these feelings are universal and can be overcome with perseverance and self-awareness.
3. Through his works, Dazai teaches readers to be mindful of their own feelings and to strive to find meaning in life despite the chaos and despair that can surround us.