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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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Labeled a delinquent. That's the only kind of label I want to be crucified under.
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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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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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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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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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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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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As for love . . . no, having once written that word I can write nothing more.
Osamu Dazai
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What did he mean by society? The plural of human beings?
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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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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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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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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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.
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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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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Addiction is perhaps a sickness of the spirit.
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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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