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.

[…] Just because a person has a title doesn’t make him an aristocrat. Some people are great aristocrats who have no other title than the one that nature has bestowed on them, and others like...

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...

It would seem that the more irresponsible and crafty one is, the more likely one is to have a talent for storytelling.

If my neighbors manage to survive without killing themselves, without going mad, maintaining an interest in political parties, not yielding to despair, resolutely pursuing the fight for existence, can their griefs really be genuine?

I drink out of desperation. Life is too dreary to endure. The misery, loneliness, crampedness — they’re heartbreaking.[…] What feelings do you suppose a man has when he realizes that he will never know happiness...

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.

Anyway, you can be sure of one thing, a man’s got to fake just to stay alive.

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...

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.

I wonder if there is anyone who is not depraved. A wearisome thought.I want money. Unless I have it….In my sleep, a natural death!

He could only consider me as the living corpse of a would-be suicide, a person dead to shame, an idiot ghost.

I must go on living. And, though itmay be childish of me, I can’t go on insimple compliance. From now on I muststruggle with the world. I thought thatMother might well be the last of...

[…] I was afraid to board a streetcar because of the conductor; I was afraid to enter the Kabuki Theater for fear of the usherettes standing along the sides of the red-carpeted staircase at the...

I would far prefer to be told simply to go and die. It’s straightforward. But people almost never say, “Die!” Paltry, prudent hypocrites!

In spite of my suffering, at the thought that I was sure to end up by killing myself, I cried aloud and burst into tears.

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.

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...

It isn’t that I dislike artists, but I can’t stand anyone who puts on those ponderous airs of a man of character.

Despising each other as we did, we were constantly together, thereby degrading ourselves. If that is what the world calls friendship, the relations between Horiki and myself were undoubtedly those of friendship.

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...

Last year nothing happenedThe year before nothing happenedAnd the year before that nothinghappened.

Humanity? Don’t be silly. I know. It is knocking down your fellow-men for the sake of your own happiness.

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.

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...

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.

Even if Mary gives birth to a child who is not her husband’s, if she has a shining pride, they become a holy mother and child.

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...

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...

Scoundrels […] simply don’t die. The ones who die are always the gentle, sweet, and beautiful people. […] Scoundrels live a long time. The beautiful die young.

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...

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...

This I want to believe implicitly: Man was born for love and revolution.

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.

Any connoisseur knows you’ve got to be drunk to really enjoy a good romance.

Show me what you’ve written,” I said, although I wanted desperately to avoid looking at it.

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...

When I pretended to be precocious, people started the rumor that I was precocious. When I acted like an idler, rumor had it I was an idler. When I pretended I couldn’t write a novel,...

I have no desire for others to take it on themselves to analyze my thoughts. I am without thoughts. I have never, not even once, acted on the basis of any doctrine or philosophy.I am...

I despised him as one fit only for amusement, a man with whom I associated for that sole purpose.

When you find yourself looking ridiculous, reasoning isn’t worth a damn.