Цитаты из книги 人間失格

God, I ask you. Is trustfulness a sin?

"Actions punishable by jail sentences are not the only crimes. If we knew the antonym of crime, I think we would know its true nature. God . . . salvation . . . love . . . light. But for God there is the antonym Satan, for salvation there is perdition, for love there is hate, for light there is darkness, for good, evil. Crime and prayer? Crime and repentance? Crime and confession? Crime and . . . no, they're all synonymous. What is the opposite of crime?"

Society won't stand for it. It's not society. You're the one who won't stand for it—right? If you do such a thing society will make you suffer for it. It's not society. It's you, isn't it? Before you know it, you'll be ostracized by society. It's not society. You're going to do the ostracizing, aren't you?

...for the first time in my life I was conscious of a positive (if feeble) movement of love in my heart. I vomited. I passed out. This was also the first time I had ever drunk so much as to lose consciousness.

People talk of "social outcasts." The words apparently denote the miserable losers of the world, the vicious ones, but I feel as though I have been a "social outcast" from the moment I was born. If ever I meet someone society has designated as an outcast, I invariably feel affection for him, an emotion which carries me away in melting tenderness.

In my case such an expression as "to be fallen for" or even "to be loved" is not in the least appropriate; perhaps it describes the situation more accurately to say that I was "looked after."

During the course of my life I have wished innumerable times that I might meet with a violent death, but I have never once desired to kill anybody. I thought that in killing a dreaded adversary I might actually be bringing him happiness.

I had succeeded in appearing mischievous. I had succeeded in escaping from being respected.

I thought, "As long as I can make them laugh, it doesn't matter how, I'll be all right. If I succeed in that, the human beings probably won't mind it too much if I remain outside their lives. The one thing I must avoid is becoming offensive in their eyes: I shall be nothing, the wind, the sky."

Whenever anyone criticized me I felt certain that I had been living under the most dreadful misapprehension.

As a child I had absolutely no notion of what others, even members of my own family, might be suffering or what they were thinking. I was aware only of my own unspeakable fears and embarrassments. Before anyone realized it, I had become an accomplished clown, a child who never spoke a single truthful word.

This was how I happened to invent my clowning. It was the last quest for love I was to direct at human beings. Although I had a mortal dread of human beings I seemed quite unable to renounce their society. I managed to maintain on the surface a smile which never deserted my lips; this was the accommodation I offered to others, a most precarious achievement performed by me only at the cost of excruciating efforts within.

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 people. What should I talk about, how should I say it?—I don't know.

Am I wrong in thinking that these people have become such complete egoists and are so convinced of the normality of their way of life that they have never once doubted themselves?

...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?

Eat or die, the saying goes, but to my ears it sounded like just one more unpleasant threat.

I can't even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being.

Mine has been a life of much shame.

No Longer Human is not a cheerful book, yet its effect is far from that of a painful wound gratuitously inflicted on the reader.

(Translator's Introduction)

К Богу обращаю вопрощающий взор свой: непротивление - греховно?