Lafcadio Hearn quotes - page 2

To denounce Hearn is the same thing as a denunciation of Japan. Lafcadio Hearn was as Japanese as haiku. (Lafcadio Hearn)
He is the writer in our language who can best be compared with Hans Christian Andersen and the brothers Grimm. View quote
Lafcadio Hearn
Mr Hearn began really to count as a writer only when his Hellenic qualities of mind, stunted at first by the conditions of life in North America, were at last developed among a people distinguished by somewhat of that instinctive feeling for beauty which formed an incomparable element in the genius of ancient Greece. His æsthetic sense luxuriated in a land where fineness of taste is still a common characteristic. Through the gate of their art he entered, not only into the ways of life of the Japanese, but into their moods and their religion. View quote
Lafcadio Hearn
Times are not good here. The city is crumbling into ashes. It has been buried under a lava flood of taxes and frauds and maladministrations so that it has become only a study for archaeologists. Its condition is so bad that when I write about it, as I intend to do soon, nobody will believe I am telling the truth. But it is better to live here in sackcloth and ashes than to own the whole state of Ohio. View quote
Lafcadio Hearn
They are hideous Golgothas, these old intermural cemeteries of ours. In other cities cemeteries are beautiful with all that the art of the gardener and sculptor can give....There the horror is masked. Here it glares at us with empty sockets. The tombs are fissured, or have caved in, or have crumbled down into shapeless bricks and mortar...[and] crawfish undermine the walls to feast upon what is hidden within. View quote
Lafcadio Hearn
At last, in 1611, was made, under the auspices of King James, the famous King James version; and this is the great literary monument of the English language. View quote
Lafcadio Hearn
French novels generally treat of the relations of women to the world and to lovers, after marriage; consequently there is a great deal in French novels about adultery, about improper relations between the sexes, about many things which the English public would not allow. View quote
Lafcadio Hearn
A proof of really great art is that it is generally true - it seldom falls into the misapprehensions to which minor art is liable. View quote
Lafcadio Hearn
There was very little suicide among the men of the North, because every man considered it his duty to get killed, not to kill himself; and to kill himself would have seemed cowardly, as implying fear of being killed by others. View quote
Lafcadio Hearn
There is one type of ideal woman very seldom described in poetry - the old maid, the woman whom sorrow or misfortune prevents from fulfilling her natural destiny. View quote
Lafcadio Hearn
It is true that short forms of poetry have been cultivated in the Far East more than in modern Europe; but in all European literature short forms of poetry are to be found - indeed quite as short as anything in Japanese. (Lafcadio Hearn)
I often imagine that the longer he studies English literature the more the Japanese student must be astonished at the extraordinary predominance given to the passion of love both in fiction and in poetry. View quote
Lafcadio Hearn
It is no exaggeration to say that the English Bible is, next to Shakespeare, the greatest work in English literature, and that it will have much more influence than even Shakespeare upon the written and spoken language of the English race. View quote
Lafcadio Hearn
Perhaps there is an idea among Japanese students that one general difference between Japanese and Western poetry is that the former cultivates short forms and the latter longer ones, gut this is only in part true. View quote
Lafcadio Hearn
The great principle of Western society is that competition rules here as it rules in everything else. The best man - that is to say, the strongest and cleverest - is likely to get the best woman, in the sense of the most beautiful person. View quote
Lafcadio Hearn
Some persons have ventured to say that it is only since Englishmen ceased to believe in the Bible that they began to discover how beautiful it was. View quote
Lafcadio Hearn
One of the great defects of English books printed in the last century is the want of an index. View quote
Lafcadio Hearn
Of course, the simple explanation of the fact is that marriage is the most important act of man's life in Europe or America, and that everything depends upon it. View quote
Lafcadio Hearn
But the history of the changes produced by a universal idea is not a history of changes in the individual, but of changes brought about by the successive efforts of millions of individuals in the course of many generations. View quote
Lafcadio Hearn
Accordingly the Northern races of Europe found their inspiration in the Bible; and the enthusiasm for it has not yet quite faded away. View quote
Lafcadio Hearn
No man can possibly know what life means, what the world means, until he has a child and loves it. And then the whole universe changes and nothing will ever again seem exactly as it seemed before. (Lafcadio Hearn)
All good work is done the way ants do things Little by little. View quote
Lafcadio Hearn
One thing is always wrong-always: to cause suffering in others for the purpose of gratifying one's own pleasures; that is everlastingly wrong. View quote
Lafcadio Hearn
Literary success of any enduring kind is made by refusing to do what publishers want, by refusing to write what the public wants, by refusing to accept any popular standard, by refusing to write anything to order. View quote
Lafcadio Hearn