Quotes by Osamu Dazai

About Osamu Dazai:

Osamu Dazai is considered one of the foremost fiction writers of 20th-century Japan. He is incredibly illustrious in Japan and a number of his most popular works, such as Shay? and Ningen Shikkaku, are considered modern-day classics. With a semi-autobiographical style and transparency into his personal life, Dazai’s stories have intrigued the minds of many readers. His books also bring about awareness to a number of important topics such as human nature, mental illness, social relationships, and postwar Japan.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

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.

Osamu Dazai

Even if Mary gives birth to a child who is not her husband's, if she has a shining pride, they become a holy mother and child.

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

In spite of my suffering, at the thought that I was sure to end up by killing myself, I cried aloud and burst into tears.

Osamu Dazai

It is painful for the plant which is myself to live in the atmosphere and light of this world. Somewhere an element is lacking which would permit me to continue.

Osamu Dazai

I am afraid because I can so clearly foresee my own life rotting away of itself, like a leaf that rots without falling, while I pursue my round of existence from day to day.

Osamu Dazai

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...

Osamu Dazai

I would far prefer to be told simply to go and die. It's straightforward. But people almost never say, "Die!" Paltry, prudent hypocrites!

Osamu Dazai

In our lives we know joy, anger, sorrow, and a hundred other emotions, but these emotions altogether occupy a bare one per cent of our time. The remaining ninety-nine per cent is just living in waiting.

Osamu Dazai

When I pretended to be precocious, people started the rumor that I was precocious. When I acted like an idler, rumor had it I was an idler. When I pretended I couldn't write a novel, people said I couldn't write. When I acted like a liar, they called...

Osamu Dazai

The courageous testimony of Dr. Faust that a maiden's smile is more precious than history, philosophy, education, religion, law, politics,economics, and all the other branches of learning. Learning is another name for vanity. It is the effort of huma...

Osamu Dazai

Humanity? Don't be silly. I know. It is knocking down your fellow-men for the sake of your own happiness.

Osamu Dazai

Anyway, you can be sure of one thing, a man's got to fake just to stay alive.

Osamu Dazai

I wonder if there is anyone who is not depraved. A wearisome thought. I want money. Unless I have it.... In my sleep, a natural death!

Osamu Dazai

[...] Just because a person has a title doesn't make him an aristocrat. Some people are great aristocrats who have no other title than the one that nature has bestowed on them, and others like us, who have nothing but titles, are closer to being pari...

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 respe...

Osamu Dazai

This I want to believe implicitly: Man was born for love and revolution.

Osamu Dazai

I must go on living. And, though it may be childish of me, I can't go on in simple compliance. From now on I must struggle with the world. I thought that Mother might well be the last of those who can end their lives beautifully and sadly, struggling...

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...

Osamu Dazai

Last year nothing happened The year before nothing happened And the year before that nothing happened.

Osamu Dazai

Author Bio

  • NameOsamu Dazai
  • DescriptionJapanese author
  • BornJune 19, 1909
  • DiedJune 13, 1948
  • CountryJapan
  • ProfessionWriter; Novelist