Zitate von Dazai Osamu

„Ich habe ein schändliches Leben geführt. Was menschlich leben heißt, weiß ich nicht.“

—  Dazai Osamu, buch Gezeichnet

Quelle: Gezeichnet. Übersetzt von Jürgen Stalph. Frankfurt, Insel Verlag 1997, ISBN 3-4581-6871-0, S.11 (人間失格, Ningen shikkaku)

„Wann immer ich gefragt wurde, was ich wollte, war mein erster Impuls, "Nichts" zu antworten. Der Gedanke ging mir durch den Kopf, dass es keinen Unterschied machte, dass nichts mich glücklich machen würde.“

—  Dazai Osamu

„I thought, “I want to die. I want to die more than ever before. There’s no chance now of a recovery. No matter what sort of thing I do, no matter what I do, it’s sure to be a failure, just a final coating applied to my shame. That dream of going on bicycles to see a waterfall framed in summer leaves—it was not for the likes of me. All that can happen now is that one foul, humiliating sin will be piled on another, and my sufferings will become only the more acute. I want to die. I must die. Living itself is the source of sin.“

—  Osamu Dazai, buch Gezeichnet

The Third Notebook:Part Two
No Longer Human

„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, buch The Setting Sun

Quelle: The Setting Sun

„What did he mean by "society"? The plural of human beings?“

—  Osamu Dazai, buch Gezeichnet

Quelle: No Longer Human

„The weak fear happiness itself. They can harm themselves on cotton wool. Sometimes they are wounded even by happiness.“

—  Osamu Dazai, buch Gezeichnet

Quelle: No Longer Human

„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, buch Gezeichnet

Quelle: No Longer Human

„My unhappiness was the unhappiness of a person who could not say no. I had been intimidated by the fear that if I declined something offered me, a yawning crevice would open between the other person's heart and myself which could never be mended through all eternity.“

—  Osamu Dazai, buch Gezeichnet

The Third Notebook: Part Two
No Longer Human

„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, buch Gezeichnet

Quelle: No Longer Human

„This I want to believe implicitly: Man was born for love and revolution.“

—  Osamu Dazai, buch The Setting Sun

Quelle: The Setting Sun

„I am convinced that human life is filled with many pure, happy, serene examples of insincerity, truly splendid of their kind-of people deceiving one another without (strangely enough) any wounds being inflicted, of people who seem unaware even that they are deceiving one another.“

—  Osamu Dazai, buch Gezeichnet

Quelle: No Longer Human

„Society. I felt as though even I were beginning at last to acquire some vague notion of what it meant. It is a struggle between one individual to another, a then-and-there struggle, in which the immediately triumph is everything.“

—  Osamu Dazai, buch Gezeichnet

‘Human beings never submit to human beings.’ Even slaves practice their mean retaliations. Human beings cannot conceive of any mean retaliations. Human beings cannot conceive of any means of survival except of a single then-and-there contest. They speak of duty to one’s country and such like things, but the object of their effort is invariably the individual, and, even once the individual’s needs have been met, again the individual comes in. The incomprehensibility of society is the incomprehensibility of the individual. The ocean is not society; it is individuals. This is how I managed to gain a modicum of freedom from my terror of the illusion of the ocean called the world. I learned to behave rather aggressively, without the endless anxious worrying I knew before, responding as it were to the needs of the moment.
Third Notebook: Part One
No Longer Human

„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, buch Gezeichnet

The Second Notebook
No Longer Human

„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, buch Gezeichnet

The Third Notebook: Part Two
Quelle: No Longer Human

„Unhappiness. There are all kinds of unhappy people in the world. I suppose it would be no exaggeration to say that the world is composed entirely of unhappy people. But those people can fight their unhappiness with society fairly and squarly, and society for its part easily understands and sympathizes with such struggles. My unhappiness stemmed entirely from my own vices, and I had no way of fighting anybody.“

—  Osamu Dazai, buch Gezeichnet

The Third Notebook: Part Two
No Longer Human

„After being hurt by the world so much, they began to see the demons within humans. So without hiding it through trickery, they worked to express it.“

—  Osamu Dazai, buch Gezeichnet

Quelle: No Longer Human

„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, buch The Setting Sun

Quelle: The Setting Sun

„I am afraid because I can so clearly foresee my own life rotting away of itself, like a leaf that rots without falling, while I pursue my round of existence from day to day.“

—  Osamu Dazai, buch The Setting Sun

Quelle: The Setting Sun

„Is it painful to be the person who waits? Or is it more painful to be the person who makes others wait? Either way, there's no need to wait anymore. That's what is most painful." - Osamu Dazai“

—  Osamu Dazai

Quelle: Run, Melos! and Other Stories