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Quote by Osamu Dazai

“What superficiality- and what stupidity- there is in trying to depict in a pretty manner things which one has thought pretty. The masters through their subjective perceptions created beauty out of trivialities. They did not hide their interest on things which were nauseatingly ugly, but soaked themselves in the pleasure of depicting them. In other words, they seemed not to rely in the least on the misconceptions of others.”

Quote by Osamu Dazai

Work

No Longer Human

This book delves into the introspective mind of a character grappling with the duality of his human nature and his desire to transcend it. The narrative examines themes of self-discovery, existentialism, and the human condition. more

Author

Osamu Dazai
Osamu Dazai

Osamu Dazai was a renowned Japanese author born on June 19, 1909, in Takamatsu, Shikoku, Japan. His works are known for their profound social criticism and unique literary style, with notable titles including 'The Buried Alive' and 'Fostering'. Dazai passed away on June 13, 1948. more

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“So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, powerless, hairless, expressionless. We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam. Even fireworks, for all their prettiness, come from the chemistry of the earth. Yet somehow we think we can grow, feeding on flowers and fireworks, without completing the cycle back to reality.”

“The things you’re looking for, Montag, are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine percent of them is in a book. Don’t ask for guarantees. And don’t look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for the shore.”

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there. It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts the lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”

“There was a silly damn bird called a Phoenix back before Christ. Every few hundred years, he built a pyre and burned himself up. He must have been first cousin to Man. But every time he burnt himself up, he sprang out of the ashes; he got himself born all over again. And it looks like we’re doing the same thing, over and over, but we’ve got one damn thing the Phoenix never had. We know the damn silly things we just did. We know all the damn silly things we’ve done for thousand years and as long as we know that and always have it around where we can see it, some day we’ll stop making the goddamn funeral pyres and jumping in the middle of them. We pick up a few more people that remember, every generation.”