bsd-bibliophile

[bsd-bibliophile]

But happiness is being able to hope, however faintly, for happiness.

Dazai Osamu, “On Love and Beauty” from Blue Bamboo and Other Stories

[bsd-bibliophile]

As I ponder these questions, a hundred doubts well up in me. It is as if I were now groping for something in the dark.

Fukuzawa Yukichi, An Encouragement of Learning

[bsd-bibliophile]

But, young man, you need not fear so much. Those who are swept away by the waves will drown, but those who ride the waves will go over them. It is not impossible to ride over these ups and downs of life…

Nakajima Atsushi, “The Rebirth of Wujing” from The Moon over the Mountain and Other Stories

[bsd-bibliophile]

Next time life gets you down, curl up in a blanket in your rented room and open a good book.

Dazai Osamu, The Beggar Student

[bsd-bibliophile]

I thought deeply, deeply, over my own attitude of the bystander which has been with me since I was born. I possess no incurable illness. Yet I am one fated since birth to be a bystander. From the time when I first began to play with other children, and even when I grew to adulthood and made my way in the world, and with every kind of person in society, I have never been able to throw myself into the whirlpool and enjoy myself to the depths of my being, no matter what kind of excitement may have stirred in me.

Mori Ōgai, “Ghost Stories” from Youth and Other Stories

[bsd-bibliophile]

Within these ten square miles: is this in Hinuki alone? The rice ripe and for three festival days                       the whole sky clear

Because of an illness, crumbling,                                     this life— if I could give it for the dharma                   how glad I would be

- Miyazawa Kenji, the last two poems he wrote from Miyazawa Kenji: Selections

[bsd-bibliophile]

Happy Birthday Dazai Osamu-sensei!

To celebrate Dazai Osamu’s birthday here are his top three quotes from my blog:

Quote #3:

Grown-ups are lonely people. Even if we love each other, we must be careful not to show it publicly. And why all this caution? The answer is simple: because people are too often betrayed and put to public shame. The discovery that you cannot trust people is the first lesson young people learn as they grow up into adults. Adults are adolescents who have been betrayed.

- Dazai Osamu, Tsugaru

Quote #2:

It made me miserable that I was rapidly becoming an adult and that I was unable to do anything about it.

- Dazai Osamu, Schoolgirl

Quote #1:

I was a flower petal about to fall. I trembled and quivered at the slightest breeze; at the slightest insult, I writhed about and considered dying. 

- Dazai Osamu, “Recollections” from The Saga of Dazai Osamu

[bsd-bibliophile]

I was unable to accept such a beauty. On the contrary, I became anxious and fell into a state of melancholy, and a feeling of emptiness overtook me.

Kajii Motojirō, “Under the Cherry Blossoms”

[bsd-bibliophile]

People’s hearts are really so trivial. They bend easily to the left and right like grass that is blown by the wind.

Dazai Osamu, A New Hamlet

[bsd-bibliophile]

He was too bored of life, too much a hunter of the grotesque.

Edogawa Ranpo, The Hunter of the Grotesque: From the casebook of Akechi Kogoro

[bsd-bibliophile]

O - In all our cowardice for a long, so very long time, We have occupied ourselves with vanity, forgetting to cry - how we have forgotten to cry…

- Nakahara Chūya, “Let the Old” from Poems of Days Past

[bsd-bibliophile]

Compared to the old days, this place too had become just another part of the fleeting, changing world, but Gen seemed unmoved by this-neither happy nor sad.

Kunikida Doppo, “Old Gen” from Five Stories by Kunikida Doppo

[bsd-bibliophile]

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…

Dazai Osamu, No Longer Human

[bsd-bibliophile]

Ah, what is the life of a human being - a drop of dew, a flash of lightning? This is so sad, so sad. What can I say?

Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, “In a Bamboo Grove”, The Oxford Book of Japanese Short Stories

[bsd-bibliophile]

Nowadays, when the cherries bloom, people think it’s time for a party. They go under the tress and eat and drink and mouth the old sayings about spring and pretty blossoms, but it’s all one big lie…In the old days - the really old days - nobody gave a damn about the view. They were scared to go under the blossoms….Without people, a forest of cherries in full bloom is not pretty, just something to be afraid of.

Sakaguchi Ango, In the Forest, Under Cherries in Full Bloom

[bsd-bibliophile]

My life on a bed of nails went by one day at a time, and now I’m extremely lonely.

Dazai Osamu, “Lantern”

[bsd-bibliophile]

And this rain coming down - whether people pray for rain or don’t pray for rain, it will go on raining as long as it likes. We know that, yet we look up at the sky and hope and pray it will clear up. That’s the human heart for you.

Taneda Santōka, For All My Walking