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The Life of a Stupid Man QUOTES

The Life of a Stupid Man QUOTES

1 " 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

2 " 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

3 " He wanted to live life so intensely that he could die at any moment without regrets. "

― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa , The Life of a Stupid Man

4 " 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

5 " Life is not worth a single line of Baudelaire. "

― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa , The Life of a Stupid Man

6 " 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

7 " A shimmering of heat—
Outside the grave
Alone I dwell. "

― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa , The Life of a Stupid Man

8 " 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

9 " 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

10 " It’s scary what greed can do to people, don’t you think? "

― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa , The Life of a Stupid Man

11 " 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

12 " 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

13 " 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

14 " 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

15 " 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

16 " 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

17 " 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

18 " 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

19 " 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

20 " 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