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The Western poet and writer of romance has exactly the same kind of difficulty in comprehending Eastern subjects as you have in comprehending Western subjects.

Lafcadio Hearn

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Lafcadio Hearn
Age: 54 †
Born: 1850
Born: June 27
Died: 1904
Died: September 26
Collector Of Fairy Tales
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Poet
Professor
Screenwriter
Writer
Lefkas
Koizumi Yakumo
Yakumo Koizumi
Patrick Lafcadio Hearn
Romance
Difficulty
Western
Exactly
Poet
Subjects
Writer
Comprehending
Kind
Eastern

More quotes by Lafcadio Hearn

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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.
Lafcadio Hearn
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The time of illusion, then, is the beautiful moment of passion it represents the artistic zone in which the poet or romance writer ought to be free to do the very best that he can.
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Contemporary literature in the West has shown some signs of ethical change.
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One thing is always wrong-always: to cause suffering in others for the purpose of gratifying one's own pleasures that is everlastingly wrong.
Lafcadio Hearn
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Any idealism is a proper subject for art.
Lafcadio Hearn
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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.
Lafcadio Hearn
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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.
Lafcadio Hearn
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The highest duty of the man is not to his father, but to his wife and for the sake of that woman he abandons all other earthly ties, should any of these happen to interfere with that relation.
Lafcadio Hearn
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The fact, however, to which I want to call attention is that the master of Judo never relies upon his own strength. He scarcely uses his own strength in the greatest emergency. Then what does he use? Simply the strength of his antagonist. The force of the enemy is the only means by which that enemy is overcome.
Lafcadio Hearn
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Times are not good here. The city is crumbling into ashes. It has been buried under taxes and frauds and maladministrations so that it has become a study for archaeologists...but it is better to live here in sackcloth and ashes than to own the whole state of Ohio.
Lafcadio Hearn
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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
Lafcadio Hearn
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But what is after all the happiness of mere power? There is a greater happiness possible than to be lord of heaven and earth that is the happiness of being truly loved.
Lafcadio Hearn
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A proof of really great art is that it is generally true - it seldom falls into the misapprehensions to which minor art is liable.
Lafcadio Hearn
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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.
Lafcadio Hearn
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In order to comprehend the beauty of a Japanese garden, it is necessary to understand - or at least to learn to understand - the beauty of stone.
Lafcadio Hearn
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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.
Lafcadio Hearn
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But every great scripture, whether Hebrew, Indian, Persian, or Chinese, apart from its religious value will be found to have some rare and special beauty of its own and in this respect the original Bible stands very high as a monument of sublime poetry and of artistic prose.
Lafcadio Hearn
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As a result, the highly civilized man can endure incomparably more than the savage, whether of moral or physical strain. Being better able to control himself under all circumstances, he has a great advantage over the savage.
Lafcadio Hearn
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To ancient Chinese fancy, the Milky Way was a luminous river, - the River of Heaven, - the Silver Stream.
Lafcadio Hearn
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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