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21 " At times everything grows misty and dark before my eyes, and I feel that the strength of my whole body is oozing away through my finger tips. "
― Osamu Dazai , The Setting Sun
22 " 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. "
23 " It is painful for the plant which is myself to live in the atmosphere and light of this world. Somewhere an element is lacking which would permit me to continue. "
24 " In our lives we know joy, anger, sorrow, and a hundred other emotions, but these emotions altogether occupy a bare one per cent of our time. The remaining ninety-nine per cent is just living in waiting. "
25 " The courageous testimony of Dr. Faust that a maiden's smile is more precious than history, philosophy, education, religion, law, politics,economics, and all the other branches of learning. Learning is another name for vanity. It is the effort of human beings not to be human beings. "
26 " Any connoisseur knows you've got to be drunk to really enjoy a good romance. "
― Osamu Dazai , Blue Bamboo: Japanese Tales of Fantasy
27 " I wonder if I have ever actually been happy. People have told me, really more times than I can remember, ever since I was a small boy, how lucky I was, but I have always felt as if I were suffering in hell. It has seemed to me in fact that those who called me lucky were incomparably more fortunate than I. "
― Osamu Dazai
28 " Even now it comes as a shock if by chance I notice in the street a face resembling someone I know however slightly, and I am at once seized by a shivering violent enough to make me dizzy. "
― Osamu Dazai , No Longer Human
29 " I have sometimes thought that I have been burdened with a pack of ten misfortunes, any one of which if borne by my neighbor would be enough to make a murderer out of him. "
30 " 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. "
31 " I yearned for everything long gone. "
― Osamu Dazai , Schoolgirl
32 " I go about saying how pained and tormented, how lonely and sad I feel, but what do I really mean by that? If I were to speak the truth, I would die. "
33 " I felt as though the vessel if my suffering had become empty, as if nothing could interest me now. I had lost even the ability to suffer. "
34 " Any man who criticizes my suicide and passes judgment on me with an expression of superiority, declaring (without offering the least help) that I should have gone on living my full complement of days, is assuredly a prodigy among men quite capable of tranquilly urging the Emperor to open a fruit shop. "
35 " I am sure that the reason why I wept and stormed as if I had gone off my head was that the combination of physical exhaustion and my unhappiness had made me hate and resent everything. "
36 " 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. Most of all I dreaded paying a bill-my awkwardness when I handed over the money after buying something did not arise from my stinginess, but from excessive tension, excessive embarrassment, excessive uneasiness and apprehension. "
37 " 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. "
38 " To break free from this vexatious and awful never-ending cycle, this flood of outrageous thoughts, and to long for nothing more than simply to sleep--how clean, how pure, the mere thought of it is exhilarating. "
39 " It would seem that the more irresponsible and crafty one is, the more likely one is to have a talent for storytelling. "
40 " When you find yourself looking ridiculous, reasoning isn't worth a damn. "