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Whatever doubts or vexations one has in Japan, it is only necessary to ask one's self: Well, who are the best people to live with?

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
Asks
Whatever
Best
Vexations
Live
Vexation
Wells
Doubts
Well
Japan
Self
Necessary
People
Doubt

More quotes by Lafcadio Hearn

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The subject of Finnish poetry ought to have a special interest for the Japanese student, if only for the reason that Finnish poetry comes more closely in many respects to Japanese poetry than any other form of Western poetry.
Lafcadio Hearn
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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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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.
Lafcadio Hearn
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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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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.
Lafcadio Hearn
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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
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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.
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.
Lafcadio Hearn
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In the world of reality the more beautiful a work of art, the longer, we may be sure, was the time required to make it, and the greater the number of different minds which assisted in its development.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Any idealism is a proper subject for art.
Lafcadio Hearn
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Contemporary literature in the West has shown some signs of ethical change.
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