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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

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Osamu Dazai
Age: 38 †
Born: 1909
Born: June 19
Died: 1948
Died: June 13
Author
Novelist
Writer
Tsushima Shuji
Going
Went
Mind
Happy
Impulse
Make
Didn
Whenever
Thought
Answer
Wanted
Asked
Firsts
Difference
Nothing
Answers
First
Differences

More quotes by Osamu Dazai

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What did he mean by society? The plural of human beings?
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Now even if I die, no one will be so grieved as to do himself bodily harm.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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As for love . . . no, having once written that word I can write nothing more.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Last year nothing happened The year before nothing happened And the year before that nothing happened.
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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.
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Virtue and vice are concepts invented by human beings, words for a morality which human beings arbitrarily devised.
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To be a friend of the weak-that is the artist's point of departure as well as his ultimate goal.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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A true artist is an ugly man.
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Addiction is perhaps a sickness of the spirit.
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The real things are apt to be deviant.
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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