Crackling Mountain and Other Stories Quotes

“Real thought takes courage more than intelligence.”
― Osamu Dazai, Crackling Mountain and Other Stories

“Every family,” he jested, “has a fool—just to keep it in touch with reality.”
― Osamu Dazai, Crackling Mountain and Other Stories

“Masks in one layer after another—as many as ten or twenty—had fastened themselves upon me, and I could no longer tell how sad any one of them really was.”
― Osamu Dazai, Crackling Mountain and Other Stories

“Just to see all the books lining the shelves would lighten my mood as if by magic. Of course, I didn’t go to bookstores just to read articles on anatomy. I went because any book gave me comfort and solace at the time.”
― Osamu Dazai, Crackling Mountain and Other Stories

“I was a petal quivering in the slightest breeze, about to fall any moment. Even the slightest insult made me think of dying.”
― Osamu Dazai, Crackling Mountain and Other Stories

“Life itself is bound to be dreary if you carry a lot of baggage about.”
― Osamu Dazai, Crackling Mountain and Other Stories

“I believed that the gloom of our daily lives could not be dispelled, no matter how much one declaimed about society and politics.”
― Osamu Dazai, Crackling Mountain and Other Stories

“Regardless of the cause, those in charge always seemed to be seeking power and glory for themselves.”
― Osamu Dazai, Crackling Mountain and Other Stories

“Even if you die, don’t become his plaything!”
― Osamu Dazai, Crackling Mountain and Other Stories

“He must live up to his friend’s trust— that alone mattered.”
― Osamu Dazai, Crackling Mountain and Other Stories

“I realize that you, so helpful to me always, feel pangs of loneliness. But you mustn’t keep looking so depressed. It’s the hypocrite, wishing others to know of his melancholy, who lets his feelings show. You may be lonely, but you can wash your face, smooth your hair with pomade, and smile as if nothing is wrong. That’s the way of the true believer. You don’t quite understand? Let me put it this way, then. We may not be able to see our True Father, but He can see even into our hearts. Isn’t that enough for you? No? It isn’t? But everyone gets lonely.” At these words I felt like crying out, “I don’t care whether the Heavenly Father knows about me or not. Or people too, for that matter. I’m satisfied so long as you know. I love you.”
― Osamu Dazai, Crackling Mountain and Other Stories

“No matter how often I tried, she never once complimented me.”
― Osamu Dazai, Crackling Mountain and Other Stories

“I don’t know about life,” he replied, “but the world’s nothing but sex and greed.”
― Osamu Dazai, Crackling Mountain and Other Stories

“He just wanted to run—to do something for nothing.”
― Osamu Dazai, Crackling Mountain and Other Stories

“A leader pompously voices his own views without the least hesitation. Do as I say, he proclaims. Then you, as well as your family and your village and your country and the whole world too will be secure. Gesturing grandly, he roars on about how disaster will come from ignoring him. But then, as has happened time after time, his favorite prostitute gives him the cold shoulder, and this makes him cry out desperately for the abolition of her kind.”
― Osamu Dazai, Crackling Mountain and Other Stories

“That faint and distant sound of hammering was like a miracle, stripping me of every militaristic illusion. Never again would I become intoxicated by that nightmare with its so-called pathos and glory.”
― Osamu Dazai, Crackling Mountain and Other Stories

“It was merely that a ne’er-do-well such as Harada will bungle things whenever good fortune smiles upon him. People like him become fidgety and sheepish at the sudden appearance of fortune.
“Good luck brings bad,”
― Osamu Dazai, Crackling Mountain and Other Stories

“I grew up loyal, so don’t let me die a traitor.”
― Osamu Dazai, Crackling Mountain and Other Stories

“Where waste occurs, want will follow”
― Osamu Dazai, Crackling Mountain and Other Stories

“I hated school and never read a textbook. I only read entertaining books.”
― Osamu Dazai, Crackling Mountain and Other Stories

“Spin the wheel once, Také explained, and if it clattered round and round and came to a stop without turning back, then you would go to heaven. But, she warned, if the wheel started back, you’d end up in hell. When I tried, however, the wheel sometimes turned back. I think it was in the autumn that I went alone to the temple to test my luck. The wheels seemed to be in league with one another, for they all turned back regardless of which one I pushed. Though tired and angry, I kept myself under control and stubbornly pushed them time after time. As dusk fell, I finally gave up and left the graveyard in despair.”
― Osamu Dazai, Crackling Mountain and Other Stories

“I learned to read silently too. That’s why I could finish one book after another without getting tired.”
― Osamu Dazai, Crackling Mountain and Other Stories

“As the saying goes, pull in your belly and your rump sticks out—and it works the same way with self-respect too.”
― Osamu Dazai, Crackling Mountain and Other Stories

“Harada seemed quite menacing. But men of his type are sometimes so intimidated by their own grandeur that they turn into cowards.”
― Osamu Dazai, Crackling Mountain and Other Stories

“The man even says that he who exalts himself shall be humbled and he who humbles himself shall be exalted. Does anyone in the real world get away with such cajolery? Deceiver! I only believe in happiness in this world. I’m not afraid of any judgment hereafter.”
― Osamu Dazai, Crackling Mountain and Other Stories

“And always there were those impossible commands: “Feed the multitude!” he insisted, when all we had were five loaves and two fishes.”
― Osamu Dazai, Crackling Mountain and Other Stories

“That’s because he’s desperate to have others believe him omnipotent. Pure stupidity! The world’s not like that. You’ve got to bow before someone to get on. That’s the only way—struggle ahead one step at a time while keeping the others back.”
― Osamu Dazai, Crackling Mountain and Other Stories

“He pointed to an actress next, calling her an old hag. He told me how she played her own life more dramatically than any stage role. And there, he continued, goes a landlord, a coward who always grumbles about how hard he works.”
― Osamu Dazai, Crackling Mountain and Other Stories

“There’s a scholar, he went on, a creature who earns his bread by footnoting a dead genius or sniping at a living one.”
― Osamu Dazai, Crackling Mountain and Other Stories

“That one’s a wife, he began, and she knows only two ways to live—either she’s the husband’s boss or else his toy.”
― Osamu Dazai, Crackling Mountain and Other Stories