Self-Portraits Quotes

“All I could do was look helplessly on. Those who suffer shall suffer. Those who fall shall fall.
It had nothing to do with me, it was just the way the world was.”
― Osamu Dazai, Self-Portraits: Tales from the Life of Japan's Great Decadent Romantic

“People do not necessarily think and consider in a prescribed way before choosing the path they'll walk. For the most part they simply wander, at some point, into a different meadow.”
― Osamu Dazai, Self-Portraits: Tales from the Life of Japan's Great Decadent Romantic

“Young men, if ever the one you love bursts out laughing the moment she sees you, you are to be congratulated.”
― Osamu Dazai, Self-Portraits: Tales from the Life of Japan's Great Decadent Romantic

“The “literary world” was a place I was grateful for, and blessed, I thought, were those who could spend their lives there.”
― Osamu Dazai, Self-Portraits: Tales from the Life of Japan's Great Decadent Romantic

“I wanted to maintain the illusion of peace and harmony even one day, even one moment. Longer. Dreading above all the thought of giving people such a frightful shock, I acted out the temporizing lie as if my life depended on it. I was forever doing that: backing myself further into a corner as I contemplated my own death.”
― Osamu Dazai, Self-Portraits: Tales from the Life of Japan's Great Decadent Romantic

“To deceive someone who trusts you is to enter a hell that can take you to the brink of madness.”
― Osamu Dazai, Self-Portraits: Tales from the Life of Japan's Great Decadent Romantic

“I wanted to write only what I wanted to write.”
― Osamu Dazai, Self-Portraits: Tales from the Life of Japan's Great Decadent Romantic

“I was so crazed by my own sufferng that I became blind to the obvious fact that other people, too, were living for all they were worth.”
― Osamu Dazai, Self-Portraits: Tales from the Life of Japan's Great Decadent Romantic

“Ah! I do have things to say. I have lots to say. It's just that suddenly I don't feel like saying them. I just don't want to. Hell with it. I don't care if my hometown never understands me. I'm resigned to that. I give up on the robes of gold.”
― Osamu Dazai, Self-Portraits: Tales from the Life of Japan's Great Decadent Romantic

“I've caused people a lot of grief. I haven't written anything worthwhile. It's all bluster. Dishonesty. Cravenness. Lies. Lechery. Cowardice. I don't need to wait for God's judgment, I'm already constantly spilling out lame excuses.”
― Osamu Dazai, Self-Portraits: Tales from the Life of Japan's Great Decadent Romantic

“Art is 'I'.”
― Osamu Dazai, Self-Portraits: Tales from the Life of Japan's Great Decadent Romantic

“I live solely on my writing now. On signing the registers at inns when I travel, I have no hesitation about listing “writer” as my occupation. If I suffer, I don’t talk much about it much. I may suffer even more than before, but I wear a smile.”
― Osamu Dazai, Self-Portraits: Tales from the Life of Japan's Great Decadent Romantic

“The blue sky is most beautiful when see through a prison cell window.”
― Osamu Dazai, Self-Portraits: Tales from the Life of Japan's Great Decadent Romantic

“Artist, writer - it's the same thing.”
― Osamu Dazai, Self-Portraits: Tales from the Life of Japan's Great Decadent Romantic

“Life is an awful ordeal. So many chains to bind you. Try to move an inch and the blood comes spurting out.”
― Osamu Dazai, Self-Portraits: Tales from the Life of Japan's Great Decadent Romantic

“To drown your sorrows is to drink out of the fretfulness and frustration of not being able to say what you're thinking. Those who can always assert and express themselves clearly don't need to drown their sorrows. (Which is why there are so few female drunks.)”
― Osamu Dazai, Self-Portraits: Tales from the Life of Japan's Great Decadent Romantic

“Though I continue to wage my solitary battle, I can now no longer deny that I seem destined to lose, and loneliness and sorrow overwhelm me. But, having come this far, I can hardly turn to those who I have until now shown nothing but contempt and beg them to be admitted into the flock, telling them I've finally seen the error of my ways. No, I have no choice but to continue drinking my cheap liquor and fighting my losing battle.”
― Osamu Dazai, Self-Portraits: Tales from the Life of Japan's Great Decadent Romantic

“I discovered that, for me, what might become art was not the scenery of Tokyo, but the "I" inside the scenery. Had I become deluded by art? Had I deluded art? Conclusion: Art is "I".”
― Osamu Dazai, Self-Portraits: Tales from the Life of Japan's Great Decadent Romantic

“The literary world pointed at me and said I had talent but lacked morality, but I believed it was the other way around: I had the seeds of morality, but no talent. I do not possess what is called "literary genius." I know no technique other than to ram ahead with my entire being. I'm boorish and unrefined. One of those who adheres with misguided scrupulousness to the rigid ethic of earning one's own livelihood, but who despairs of living up to that ethic and ends up behaving in the most shameless, self-degrading way.”
― Osamu Dazai, Self-Portraits: Tales from the Life of Japan's Great Decadent Romantic

“A hometown is like a mole on your face,' he said. Once you start letting it bother you, there's no end. You can cut it off, but the scar will always remain.”
― Osamu Dazai, Self-Portraits: Tales from the Life of Japan's Great Decadent Romantic

“Agony is the night of submission. The morning of resignation. What is life. The endurance of misery? The struggle to surrender? Thus youth is eaten by the worm and happiness is said to be found in squalid alleyways.”
― Osamu Dazai, Self-Portraits: Tales from the Life of Japan's Great Decadent Romantic

“Was not the last bastion of man's pride his ability to state that he has known near-fatal suffering?”
― Osamu Dazai, Self-Portraits: Tales from the Life of Japan's Great Decadent Romantic

“I tell you, those shit-eating bastards, with their primping and posing and pompous speeches, have gone and destroyed the whole country. If they’d all been timid, bashful little fellows, we wouldn’t be in this mess today.”
― Osamu Dazai, Self-Portraits: Tales from the Life of Japan's Great Decadent Romantic

“Men are strange creatures. Can’t a man be satisfied without having to beat everybody at everything?”
― Osamu Dazai, Self-Portraits: Tales from the Life of Japan's Great Decadent Romantic

“Japan's "Fujiyama" is ''wonderful" to Westerners simply
because they've heard so much about it and yearned so long to
see it; but how much appeal would Fuji hold for one who's never
been exposed to such popular propaganda, for one whose heart is
simple and pure and free of preconceptions? It would, perhaps,
strike that person as almost pathetic, as mountains go. It's short. In
relation to the width of its base, quite short. Any mountain with a
base that size should be at least half again as tall.”
― Osamu Dazai, Self-Portraits: Tales from the Life of Japan's Great Decadent Romantic

“What a truly, truly hopeless man I am. There's nothing worthwhile about me. I'm a spoiled child when it comes to my hometown. When I come in contact with that hometown atmosphere, I grow limp, my selfishness gets the better of me, I lose all self-control. I become so useless that it's amazing even to me. My willpower goes out the window, my brakes fail. My heart pounds frightfully, every joint in my body goes slack, and it becomes impossible for me to put on airs.”
― Osamu Dazai, Self-Portraits: Tales from the Life of Japan's Great Decadent Romantic

“Allow me to confess the truth. I wanted to see myself in a hakama. Getting all worked up, causing my own heart to pound by imagining myself making some great, earthshaking speech, and then coming suddenly back to my senses and realizing what a worthless nobody I am, I'd begin to to wish I could crawl into a hole and disappear, but then, once again, my breast would swell and, unable to shake my wordly attachments, I'd think—well, at least let me wear a hakama in public. If I'm going to appear, it might as well be in a proper hakama.”
― Osamu Dazai, Self-Portraits: Tales from the Life of Japan's Great Decadent Romantic

“I'm in no position to stand above humanity, acting as prosecutor, or a judge. I have no right to condemn others. I am a child of evil. Beyond redemption. I suspect my past sins are fifty or a hundred times greater than yours. And even now I continue to sin. However I try to watch myself, it's hopeless. Not a day goes by that I don't do something evil. I could postrate myself before God, my hands bound together with ropes, and devote myself to prayer, but even then, before I knew it, I'd be committing some atrocious deed.”
― Osamu Dazai, Self-Portraits: Tales from the Life of Japan's Great Decadent Romantic

“Agony is the night of submission. The morning of resignation. What is life—the struggle to surrender? The endurance of misery? Thus youth is eaten by the worm, and happiness is said to be found in squalid alleyways.”
― Osamu Dazai, Self-Portraits: Tales from the Life of Japan's Great Decadent Romantic