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[bsd-bibliophile]

Each and every living being is well-intentioned, and deserves compassion. It is wrong for anyone to hate him.

Miyazawa Kenji, “The Thirty Frogs” from Once and Forever: The Tales of Kenji Miyazawa

[bsd-bibliophile]

Day in and day out, the people of this world Occupy their time and efforts trying to resolve

Concerns like how to come out ahead And how to keep from losing face

And I can certainly relate to how they feel After having tried to go with the flow myself

Nakahara Chūya, “Exhaustion” from Poems of the Goat

[bsd-bibliophile]

All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.

Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

[bsd-bibliophile]

But to hesitate before a difficult task is not the way of a courageous person…

Fukuzawa Yukichi, “Keio Inaugural Pronouncement” from Fukuzawa Yukichi on Education

[bsd-bibliophile]

What makes me sick is that both applause and complaints are based on misunderstanding.

Nakajima Atsushi, Light, Wind, and Dreams

[bsd-bibliophile]

Don’t fail. I don’t mind if you cheat, but just do not fail. If you fail, it will be a blemish upon your name for your entire life. Even when you’re older, and you’ve taken some respectable and important position, people may forget the time you cheated long ago, but they won’t forget that you failed… . A school is, after all, designed for students not to fail. If a student manages to fail at such a place, it means he is being unreasonable and wishes to fail himself. He’s just trying to get attention. He’s rebelling against the teacher. It is vanity. And it is a ridiculous sense of self-righteousness.

Dazai Osamu, A New Hamlet

[bsd-bibliophile]

Human beings are never satisfied with themselves just as they are. The desire to become a dashing prince, a knight, or a lovely princess is the most common in the world, so it is fair to say that the heroes and heroines who appear in popular literature are created to satisfy those aspirations. Children’s dreams are more daring.

Edogawa Ranpo, “A Desire for Transformation” essay (1954) from The Edogawa Rampo Reader

[bsd-bibliophile]

Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our truer life, and that our vain presence on the terraqueous globe is itself the secondary or merely virtual phenomenon.

H.P. Lovecraft, “Beyond the Wall of Sleep”

[bsd-bibliophile]

If you can’t help but do bad things, don’t use others. Act on your own. Good or bad, you’ve got to do things on your own.

Sakaguchi Ango, Wind, Light, and the Twenty-Year-Old Me

[bsd-bibliophile]

Oda wanted to die. . . . I, above all other men, felt and understood deeply the sadness of Oda. The first time I met him on the Ginza, I thought, "God, what an unhappy man," and I could scarcely bear the pain. He gave the vivid impression that there was across his path nothing but the wall of death. He wanted to die. But there was nothing I could do. A big-brotherly warning - what hateful hypocrisy. There was nothing to do but watch. The "adults" of the world will probably criticize him smugly, saying he didn't have enough self-respect. But how dare they think they have the right! Yesterday I found record in Mr. Tatsuno [Yutaka]'s introductory essay on Senancour the following words: "People say it is a sin to flee by throwing life away. However, these same sophists who forbid me death often expose me to the presence of death, force me to proceed toward death. The various innovations they think up increase the opportunities for death around me, their preaching leads me toward death, and the laws they establish present me with death." You are the ones who killed Oda, aren't you? His recent sudden death was a poem of his final, sorry resistance. Oda! You did well.

Dazai’s published eulogy for Odasaku. I found it in The Saga of Dazai Osamu: A Critical Study and Translation by Phyllis I. Lyons, pages 49-50.

[bsd-bibliophile]

However, sickness wasn’t like military exercises at school, something you can be exempt from if you were frail and unable to take it. Whether people liked it or not, and no matter how grand or humble they might be, everybody shuffled alone in the same column until they reached the final goal of death.

Kajii Motojirō, “The Carefree Patient” from The Youth of Things: Death and Life in the Age of Kajii Motojirō

[bsd-bibliophile]

Given my lack of experience, if my books were taken away from me, I would be utterly devastated. That’s how much I depend on what’s written in books. I’ll read one book and be completely wild about it - I’ll trust it, I’ll assimilate it, I’ll sympathize with it, I’ll try to make it a part of my life. Then, I’ll read another book and instantly, I’ll switch over to that one.

Dazai Osamu, Schoolgirl

[bsd-bibliophile]

Everybody does evil: some openly, others in secret.

Ozaki Kōyō, The Gold Demon

[bsd-bibliophile]

Up ahead they’s a thousan’ lives we might live, but when it comes it’ll on'y be one.

John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

[bsd-bibliophile]

Amiable smiles radiate from his rather narrow eyes, so crystal clear that they appear as if they had caught the bright glow of full-blown cherry-blossoms. However, a closer look may bring to light the sober truth that complete happiness does not always dwell therein. For his smiles seem to yearn after something far away and to frown upon everything nearby.

Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, “Heichu, the Amorous Genius” from Japanese Short Stories by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke

[bsd-bibliophile]

It’ll be fine, she thought. We’re going to support each other. We’ll fight - together.

Tsujimura Mizuki, Lonely Castle in the Mirror

[bsd-bibliophile]

Sometimes he would think to himself, ‘At any rate, even if he might have been unhappy, to be written up in the papers like this upon your death is a real honor,’ and he would compare this with the vast majority of ordinary people, who were born, lived, and died without causing the smallest ripple. Meanwhile the rain fell and the winds blew.

Tayama Katai, Country Teacher