Born Shūji Tsushima, Osamu Dazai is considered one of the titans of Japanese literature. A pioneer of the I-novel, it was only recently that his works gained international recognition. Among these works is No Longer Human, a poignant portrait of a man at odds with himself and those around him. It was also the last novel he published before taking his own life. No Longer Human is a deceptively slender volume that probes into seminal subjects. It is also semi-autobiographical. Because of its probe into the human psyche, the book is brimming with memorable quotes, some of which I am featuring in this quotable quote update. Without ado, here are some of the memorable lines from No Longer Human

Do check out my complete review of Osamu Dazai’s beloved classic by clicking here.

“People also talk of a “criminal consciousness.” All my life in this world of human beings I have been tortured by such a consciousness, but it has been my faithful companion, like a wife in poverty, and together, just the two of us, we have indulged in our forlorn pleasures. This, perhaps, has been one of the attitudes in which I have gone on living. People also commonly speak of the “wound of a guilty conscience.” In my case, the wound appeared of itself when I was an infant, and with the passage of time, far from healing it has grown only the deeper, until now it has reached the bone. The agonies I have suffered night after night have made for a hell composed of an infinite diversity of tortures but – though this is a very strange way to put it – the wound has gradually become dearer to me than my own flesh and blood, and I have thought its pain to be the emotion of the wound as it lived or even its murmur of affection.”

~ Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human 

“One of my tragic flaws is the compulsion to add some sor of embellishment to every situation – a quality which has made people call me at times a liar – but I have almost never emebellished in order to bring myself any advantage; it was rather that I had a strangulating fear of that cataclysmic change in the atmosphere the instant the flow ofa conversation flagged, and even when I knew that it would later turn to my disadvantage, I frequently felt obliged to add, almost inadvertently, my word of embellishment, out of a desire to please born of my usual desperate mania for service. This may have been a twisted form of my weakness, an idiocy, but the habit it engendered was taken full advantage by the so-called honest citizens of the world.”

~ Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human 

“Unhappipness. 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 squarely, 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, No Longer Human

“Having said that, I must now admist that I was still afraid of human beings, and before I could meet even the customers in the bar I had to fortify myself by gulping down a glass of liquor. The desire to see frightening things – that was what drew me every night to the bar where, like the child who squeezes his pet all the harder when he actually fears it a little, I proclaimed to the customers standing at the bar my drunken, bungling theories of art.”

~ Osamu Dazai, 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, No Longer Human

“It’s true, I suppose, that nobody finds it exactly pleasant to be criticized or shouted at. But I see in the face of the human being raging at me a wild animal in its true colors, one more horrible than any lion, crocodile, or dragon. People normally seem to be hiding this true nature, but an occasion will arise (as when an ox sedately ensconced in a grassy meadow suddenly lashes out with its tail to kill a horsefly on its flank) when anger makes them reveal in a flash human nature in all its horror.”

~ Osamu Dazai, 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, 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 immediate triumph is everything. ‘Human beings never submit to human beings.’ Even slaves practice their 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.”

~ Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“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 reallly felt I could detect within the door the presence of a horrible dragon-like moster writhing there with a dank, raw smell.”

~ Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“I simply don’t understand. I have not the remotest clue what the nature or extent of my neighbor’s woes can be. Practical troubles, griefs that can be assuaged if only there is enough to eat – these may be the most intense of all burning hells, horrible enough to blast to smithereens my ten misfortunes, but that is precisely what I don’t understand: if my neighbors manage to survive without killing themselves, without going mad, maintaining an interest in political parties, not yeilding to despair, resolutely pursuing the fight for existence, can their griefs really be genuine? Am I wrong in thinking that these people have become such complete egoists and are so convinced of the normality of their way of life that they have never once doubted themselves?”

~ Osamu Dazai, 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 my unspeakable fear. In other words, I hadn’t the strength even to choose between two alternatives.”

~ Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human