Mustahil bagi seorang manusia – tidak, seorang lelaki – untuk terus hidup tanpa merenung “Aku ini salah satu orang pilihan”, “Aku ini punya kelebihan”, dan lain-lain.
Young men, if ever the one you love bursts out laughing the moment she sees you, you are to be congratulated.
Thirty. “Something of the maiden’s fragrance lingers with a woman until she is twenty-nine, but nothing is left about the body of the woman of thirty years.
En mi existencia ya no existe la felicidad o el sufrimiento. Todo pasa.
All men are alike... I believe that all of the so-called “anxiety of the age” – men frightened by one another, every known principle violated, effort mocked, happiness denied, beauty defiled, honor dragged down – originates in this one incredible expression.
It may be true that in any society defective types with low vitality like myself are doomed to perish, not because of what they think or anything else, but because of themselves. I have, however, some slight excuse to offer. I feel the overwhelming pressure of circumstances which make it extremely difficult for me to live.
She must be unhappy too. Unhappy people are sensitive to the unhappiness of others.
To be alive. To be alive. An intolerably immense undertaking before which one can only gasp in apprehension.
From here it’s hundreds of miles to home.
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 even in 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.
I have always shook with fright before human beings. Unable I was 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.
Good night. I’m Cinderella without her prince. Do you know where to find me in Tokyo? You won’t see me again.
Extremely tragic is a good description of you.
A stranger full of secrets.
Nobody in the world understood our suffering. In time, when we became adults, we might look back on this pain and loneliness as a funny thing, perfectly ordinary, but – but how were we expected to get by, to get through this interminable period of time until that point when we were adults? There was no one to teach us how. Was there nothing to do but leave us alone, like we had the measles? But people died from the measles, or went blind. You couldn’t just leave them alone.
People have told me, really more times that I can remember, ever since I was a small boy, how lucky I was, but I have always felt as if I were suffering in hell.
I have almost never embellished 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 of a 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.
My definition of a “respected” man was one who had succeeded almost completely in hoodwinking people, but who was finally seen through by some omniscient, omnipotent person who ruined him and made him suffer a shame worse than death.
How cruel of you. What part of what you see here is carefree? If only you could understand the sadness of the ones who grow the delicate flowers of buffoonery, protecting them from but the slightest gust of wind and always on the verge of despair!
Doesn’t that mean in effect that i have no choice but suicide?