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

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
Vices
Concepts
Morality
Beings
Virtue
Arbitrarily
Words
Devised
Human
Invented
Humans
Vice

More quotes by 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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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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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
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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
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The real things are apt to be deviant.
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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The weak fear happiness itself. They can harm themselves on cotton wool. Sometimes they are wounded even by happiness
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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Now even if I die, no one will be so grieved as to do himself bodily harm.
Osamu Dazai
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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.
Osamu Dazai
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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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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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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
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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 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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A true artist is an ugly man.
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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Labeled a delinquent. That's the only kind of label I want to be crucified under.
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