263 Quotes by Osamu Dazai

Victims. Victims of a transitional period of morality. That is what we both certainly are.

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.

That was a really rare event. I don’t think It’s an exaggeration to say that It was the one and only time in my life that I refused something offered to me. My unhappiness was the happiness of a person who could not say no. I had been intimidated by the fear that if I declined something offered me, a yawning crevice would open between the other person’s heart and myself which could never be mended through all eternity.

Even the servants, when asked by my mother about the meeting, answered as if it were their spontaneous thought, that it had been really interesting. These were the self-same servants who had been bitterly complaining on the way home that political meetings are the most boring thing in the world.

Now, I will make better use of my body and be useful by increasing food production just a little, then I will bid farewell to this world. It would be good to lighten the burden on this country. That is my path to best serve my country as a useless invalid. I want to die soon.

I thought, “I want to die. I want to die more than ever before. There’s no chance now of a recovery. No matter what sort of thing I do, no matter what I do, it’s sure to be a failure, just a final coating applied to my shame. That dream of going on bicycles to see a waterfall framed in summer leaves – it was not for the likes of me. All that can happen now is that one foul, humiliating sin will be piled on another, and my sufferings will become only the more acute. I want to die. I must die. Living itself is the source of sin.

The real things are apt to be deviant.

The smile of one flower permeates those who live next to death more than the problem of life and death.

Haven’t we known for a long time that it’s a mistake to attach meaning to each and every action of a person? Forced explanations often end in a distortion of lies.