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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.

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
Illusion
Ocean
Called
Modicum
Society
Managed
Freedom
Gain
Individual
Individuals
World
Terror
Gains

More quotes by Osamu Dazai

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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.
Osamu Dazai
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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.
Osamu Dazai
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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.
Osamu Dazai
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Last year nothing happened The year before nothing happened And the year before that nothing happened.
Osamu Dazai
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As for love . . . no, having once written that word I can write nothing more.
Osamu Dazai
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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.
Osamu Dazai
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I have always found the female of the human species many times more difficult to understand than the male.
Osamu Dazai
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The real things are apt to be deviant.
Osamu Dazai
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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
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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
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What did he mean by society? The plural of human beings?
Osamu Dazai
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Addiction is perhaps a sickness of the spirit.
Osamu Dazai
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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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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
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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.
Osamu Dazai
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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.
Osamu Dazai
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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.
Osamu Dazai
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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
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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
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Virtue and vice are concepts invented by human beings, words for a morality which human beings arbitrarily devised.
Osamu Dazai