Quotes from No Longer Human

“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, quote from 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, quote from No Longer Human

“The weak fear happiness itself. They can harm themselves on cotton wool. Sometimes they are wounded even by happiness”
― Osamu Dazai, quote from No Longer Human

“Whenever I was asked what I wanted my first impulse was to answer "Nothing." The thought went through my mind that it didn't make any difference, that nothing was going to make me happy.”
― Osamu Dazai, quote from 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, quote from No Longer Human

“I have always shook with fright before human beings. Unable as I was to feel the least particle of confidence in my ability to speak and act like a human being, I kept my solitary agonies locked in my breast. I kept my melancholy and my agitation hidden, careful lest any trace should be left exposed. I feigned an innocent optimism; I gradually perfected myself in the role of the farcical eccentric.”
― Osamu Dazai, quote from No Longer Human

“For someone like myself in whom the ability to trust others is so cracked and broken that I am wretchedly timid and am forever trying to read the expression on people's faces.”
― Osamu Dazai, quote from No Longer Human

“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, quote from No Longer Human

“As long as I can make them laugh, it doesn’t matter how, I’ll be alright. If I succeed in that, the human beings probably won’t mind it too much if I remain outside their lives. The one thing I must avoid is becoming offensive in their eyes: I shall be nothing, the wind, the sky.”
― Osamu Dazai, quote from No Longer Human

“What did he mean by "society"? The plural of human beings?”
― Osamu Dazai, quote from No Longer Human

“Mine has been a life of much shame. I can't even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being.”
― Osamu Dazai, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from No Longer Human

“The world, after all, was still a place of bottomless horror. It was by no means a place of childlike simplicity where everything could be settled by a simple then-and-there decision.”
― Osamu Dazai, quote from No Longer Human

“Is it not true that no two human beings understand anything whatsoever about each other, that those who consider themselves bosom friends may be utterly mistaken about their fellow and, failing to realize this sad truth throughout a lifetime, weep when they read in the newspapers about his death?”
― Osamu Dazai, quote from No Longer Human

“Though I have always made it my practice to be pleasant to everybody, I have not once actually experienced friendship. I have only the most painful recollections of my various acquaintances with the exception of such companions in pleasure as Horiki. I have frantically played the clown in order to disentangle myself from these painful relationships, only to wear myself out as a result. 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. I know that I am liked by other people, but I seem to be deficient in the faculty to love others. (I should add that I have very strong doubts as to whether even human beings really possess this faculty.) It was hardly to be expected that someone like myself could ever develop any close friends—besides, I lacked even the ability to pay visits. The front door of another person’s house terrified me more than the gate of Inferno in the Divine Comedy, and I am not exaggerating when I say that I really felt I could detect within the door the presence of a horrible dragon-like monster writhing there with a dank, raw smell.”
― Osamu Dazai, quote from 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, quote from No Longer Human

“What, I wondered, did he mean by “society”? The plural of human beings? Where was the substance of this thing called “society”? I had spent my whole life thinkng that society must certainly be something powerful, harsh and severe, but to hear Horiki talk made the words “Don’t you mean yourself?” come to the tip of my tongue. But I held the words back, reluctant to anger him.
‘Society won’t stand for it.’
‘It’s not society. You’re the one who won’t stand for it - right?’
‘If you do such a thing society will make you suffer for it’
‘It’s not society. It’s you, isn’t it?’
‘Before you know it, you’ll be ostracized by society.’
‘It’s not society. You’re going to do the ostracizing, aren’t you?’
Words, words of every kind went flitting through my head. “Know thy particular fearsomeness, thy knavery, cunning and witchcraft!” What I said, however, as I wiped the perspiration from my face with a handkerchief was merely, “You’ve put me in a cold sweat!” I smiled.
From then on, however, I came to hold, almost as a philosophical conviction, the belief: What is society but an individual?”
― Osamu Dazai, quote from 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, quote from No Longer Human

“Living itself is the source of sin.”
― Osamu Dazai, quote from No Longer Human

“Whenever I was asked what I wanted my first impulse was to answer “Nothing.” The thought went through my mind that it didn’t make any difference, that nothing was going to make me happy. At the same time I was congenitally unable to refuse anything offered to me by another person, no matter how little it might suit my tastes. When I hated something, I could not pronounce the words, “I don’t like it.” When I liked something I tasted it hesitantly, furtively, as though it were extremely bitter. In either case I was torn by unspeakable fear. In other words, I hadn’t the strength even to choose between two alternatives.”
― Osamu Dazai, quote from No Longer Human

“There are some people whose dread of human beings is so morbid that they reach a point where they yearn to see with their own eyes monsters of ever more horrible shapes. And the more nervous they are-the quicker to take fright-the more violent they pray that every storm will be … Painters who have had this mentality, after repeated wounds and intimidations at the hands of the apparitions called human beings, have often come to believe in phantasms-they plainly saw monsters in broad daylight, in the midst of nature. And they did not fob people off with clowning; they did their best to depict these monsters just as they had appeared. Takeichi was right: they had dared to paint pictures of devils.”
― Osamu Dazai, quote from No Longer Human

“I also have the impression that many women have been able, instinctively, to sniff out this loneliness of mine, which I confided to no one, and this in later years was to become one of the causes of my being taken advantage of.”
― Osamu Dazai, quote from No Longer Human

“Then what's a synonym for woman?"
"Entrails."
"You're not very poetic, are you? Well, then, what's the antonym for entrails?"
"Milk.”
― Osamu Dazai, quote from No Longer Human

“I’m going to paint too. I’m going to paint pictures of ghosts and devils and horses out of hell.”
― Osamu Dazai, quote from No Longer Human

“What is society but an individual? [...] The ocean is not society; it is individuals. This was how I managed to gain a modicum of freedom from my terror at the illusion of the ocean called the world.”
― Osamu Dazai, quote from No Longer Human

“I feel so unhappy.”

I am sure that this one phrase whispered to me would arouse my sympathy more than the longest, most painstaking account of a woman’s life. It amazes and astonishes me that I have never once heard a woman make this simple statement. This woman did not say, “I feel so unhappy” in so many words, but something like a silent current of misery an inch wide flowed over the surface of her body. When I lay next to her my body was enveloped in her current, which mingled with my own harsher current of gloom like a “withered leaf settling to rest on the stones at the bottom of a pool.” I had freed myself from fear and uneasiness.”
― Osamu Dazai, quote from No Longer Human

“I was frightened even by God. I could not believe in His love, only in His punishment. Faith. That, I felt, was the act of facing the tribunal of justice with one’s head bowed to receive the scourge of God. I could believe in hell, but it was impossible for me to believe in the existence of heaven.”
― Osamu Dazai, quote from No Longer Human

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“Construyendo los pensamientos de esta manera y, particularmente, si tu deseo es aprovechar la muerte para el bien de todos los seres, será necesario que reconozcas la Luz, a fin de alcanzar con ella la sublime coronación del Estado del Gran Símbolo4. Para ello, debes decir: ‘Puede que no pueda comprenderlo, pero conoceré este Bardo y dominando al Gran Cuerpo de Unión en él, renaceré en cualquiera de las formas que beneficie a los seres sensibles. Serviré a todos ellos que se extienden hasta los confines del espacio. Sin interrumpir el pensamiento de la disposición del espíritu de la vigilia’ ”. Es en este momento cuando el moribundo debe tratar de recordar las enseñanzas religiosas que le fueron impartidas durante su vida. Al decir estas palabras, el guía debe colocar sus labios cerca del oído y repetirlas claramente, dejando una huella en la mente del moribundo para que no tenga oportunidad de extraviarse y se mantenga recta en su camino. Por esa razón, tras el cese completo de la espiración, debe presionarse firmemente el nervio del sueño; luego, si quien muere es un lama o una persona con mayor instrucción, se le grabarán las siguientes palabras: “Reverendo Señor, ahora te encuentras en la experiencia de la Luz Clara Fundamental; permanece en ese estado”. Si se trata de una persona cualquiera, el guía deberá decir: “Oh, noble nacido (nombre), escucha lo que tengo para decirte: estás experimentando el Resplandor de la Luz Clara de la Realidad Pura. Debes reconocerla. Tu intelecto actual, ya vacío por completo y sin formas que condicionen el color, la sustancia o el pensamiento, vacío hasta la naturalidad más absoluta, es la Realidad y el Todo Bueno. El propio intelecto, ahora ya por completo vacío pero manteniendo su existencia en sí, está libre de limitaciones y brilla. Es el intelecto mismo y no el vacío de la nada, la bienaventurada conciencia, el Buda Todo Bondad. La conciencia tuya, ahora sin formación y vacía de toda realidad, y tu intelecto en pleno brillo, son dos esencias inseparables cuya unión es el estado Dharma-Käya, la Iluminación Perfecta. La conciencia tuya, unida al Cuerpo Grande que Resplandece, vacía por completo y luminosa, no tiene principio ni fin, y es una Luz Perdurable, el Buda Amitabha. Será necesario y suficiente que reconozcas el vacío de tu intelecto en el Estado Búdico, y que comprendas que se trata de tu conciencia, para que te mantengas con la mente en su estado divino”.”
― Padmasambhava, quote from Tibetan Book of the Dead

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