The Life of a Stupid Man Quotes

“He wanted to live life so intensely that he could die at any moment without regrets.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, The Life of a Stupid Man

“What is the life of a human being—a drop of dew, a flash of lightning? This is so sad, so sad.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, The Life of a Stupid Man

“It's not so much that I want to die as that I'm tired of living.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, The Life of a Stupid Man

“Life is not worth a single line of Baudelaire.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, The Life of a Stupid Man

“As he thought about his life, he felt both tears and mockery welling up inside him. All that lay before him was madness or suicide. He walked down the darkening street alone, determined now to wait for the destiny that would come to annihilate him.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, The Life of a Stupid Man

“I may wear the skin of an urbane sophisticate, but in this manuscript I invite you to strip it off and laugh at my stupidity.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, The Life of a Stupid Man

“A shimmering of heat—
Outside the grave
Alone I dwell.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, The Life of a Stupid Man

“But he knew well enough what was wrong with him: he was ashamed of himself and afraid of them – afraid of the society he so despised.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, The Life of a Stupid Man

“It’s scary what greed can do to people, don’t you think?”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, The Life of a Stupid Man

“Why did this one have to be born – to come into the world like all the others, this world so full of suffering? Why did this one have to bear the destiny of having a father like me? This was the first son his wife bore him.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, The Life of a Stupid Man

“Do I still love this woman? he asked himself. He was in the habit of observing himself so closely that the answer came as a surprise to him: I do.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, The Life of a Stupid Man

“He felt something like a sneer for his own spiritual bankruptcy (he was aware of all of his faults and weak points, every single one of them), but he went on reading one book after another.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, The Life of a Stupid Man

“At twenty-nine, life no longer held any brightness for him, but Voltaire supplied him with man-made wings.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, The Life of a Stupid Man

“He envied medieval men’s ability to find strength in God. But for him, believing in God – in God’s love – was an impossibility, though even Cocteau had done it!”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, The Life of a Stupid Man

“He often wondered, in that suburban second story, if people who loved each other had to cause each other pain.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, The Life of a Stupid Man

“One chilly autumn evening, he was reminded of the painter by a stalk of corn: the way it stood there armed in its rough coat of leaves, exposing its delicate roots atop the mounded earth like so many nerves, it was also a portrait of his own most vulnerable self. The discovery only served to increase his melancholy.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, The Life of a Stupid Man

“Just as he reached the point of utter exhaustion, he happened to read Raymond Radiguet’s dying words, ‘God’s soldiers are coming to get me,’ and sensed once again the laughter of the gods.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, The Life of a Stupid Man

“Why do you attack the present social system? Because I see the evils that capitalism has engendered. Evils? I thought you recognized no difference between good and evil. How do you make a living, then? He engaged thus in dialogue with an angel – an angel in an impeccable top hat.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, The Life of a Stupid Man

“Oh come on, killing a man is not as big a thing as people like you seem to think. If you’re going to take somebody’s woman, a man has to die. When I kill a man, I do it with my sword, but people like you don’t use swords. You gentlemen kill with your power, with your money, and sometimes just with your words: you tell people you’re doing them a favor. True, no blood flows, the man is still alive, but you’ve killed him all the same. I don’t know whose sin is greater – yours or mine.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, The Life of a Stupid Man

“He barely made it through each day in the gloom, leaning as it were upon a chipped and narrow sword.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, The Life of a Stupid Man

“True, the Van Gogh was just a book of reproductions, but even in the photographs of those paintings, he sensed the vivid presence of nature.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, The Life of a Stupid Man

“Once he had finished writing ‘The Life of a Stupid Man’, he happened to see a stuffed swan in a secondhand shop. It stood with its head held high, but its wings were yellowed and moth-eaten. As he thought about his life, he felt both tears and mockery welling up inside him. All that lay before him was madness or suicide. He walked down the darkening street alone, determined now to wait for the destiny that would come to annihilate him.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, The Life of a Stupid Man

“He tended to think that Goethe’s title ‘Poetry and Truth’ could serve for anyone’s autobiography, but he knew that not everyone is moved by literature. His own works were unlikely to appeal to people who were not like him and had not lived a life like his – this was another feeling that worked upon him.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, The Life of a Stupid Man

“Beneath these skies, he married his wife anew. This brought them joy, but there was suffering as well. With them, their three sons watched the lightning over the open sea. His wife, holding one of the boys in her arms, seemed to be fighting back tears. ‘See the boat over there?’ he asked her. ‘Yes …’ ‘That boat with the mast cracked in two…”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, The Life of a Stupid Man

“Magic Flute – Mozart.’ All at once it became clear to him: Mozart too had broken the Ten Commandments and suffered. Probably not the way he had, but … He bowed his head and returned to his table in silence.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, The Life of a Stupid Man

“He wanted to live life so intensely that he could die at any moment without regrets. But still, out of deference to his adoptive parents and his aunt, he kept himself in check. This created both light and dark sides to his life. Seeing a comic puppet in a Western tailor’s shop made him wonder how close he himself was to such a figure. His self beyond consciousness, however – his ‘second self’ – had long since put such feelings into a story.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, The Life of a Stupid Man

“He saw his contract, written on a single sheet of yellow paper, as a great source of strength. Later, however, he came to realize that the contract saddled him with all the obligations and the company with none.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, The Life of a Stupid Man

“The day after he married her, he delivered a scolding to his wife: ‘No sooner do you arrive here than you start wasting our money.’ But the scolding was less from him than from his aunt, who had ordered him to deliver it. His wife apologized to him, of course, and to the aunt as well – with the potted jonquils she had bought for him in the room.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, The Life of a Stupid Man

“He had barely read two pages when he caught himself with a sour smile. So – the lies that Strindberg wrote to his lover, the Countess, were hardly different from his own.”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, The Life of a Stupid Man

“Au milieu de mon abattement, je me sentis brutalement soulevé par un besoin de révolte; je me mis alors à feulleter livre après livre avec la frénésie d'un joueur enragé acculé à la dernière extrémité. Mais ce fût au sein d'une phrase ou d'une illustration, tous, comme par un fait exprès, cachaient un poignard plus ou moins acéré. Tous...—même quand je saisis Madame Bovary que j'avais lu et relu, je me sentis confronté à mon propre protrait: je n'étais finalement rien d'autre qu'un Monsieur Bovary, un petit-bourgeois...”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, A Fool's Life