Quotes by Lafcadio Hearn

“The Shadow-maker shapes forever.”

“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 li...”

“The poet or the story-teller who cannot give the reader a little ghostly pleasure at times never can be either a really great writer or a great thinker.”

“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.”

“A great many things which in times of lesser knowledge we imagined to be superstitious or useless, prove today on examination to have been of immense value to mankind.”

“For this reason, to study English literature without some general knowledge of the relation of the Bible to that literature would be to leave one's literary education very incomplete.”

“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.”

“It has been wisely observed by the greatest of modern thinkers that mankind has progressed more rapidly in every other respect than in morality.”

“How sweet Japanese woman is! All the possibilities of the race for goodness seem to be concentrated in her.”

“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?”

“Japanese affection is not uttered in words; it scarcely appears even in the tone of voice; it is chiefly shown in acts of exquisite courtesy and kindness.”

“My friends are much more dangerous than my enemies. These latter – with infinite subtlety – spin webs to keep me out of places where I hate to go, – and tell stories of me to people whom it would b...”

“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 mask...”

“With the acceptance of the doctrine of evolution, old forms of thought crumbled; new ideas everywhere arose to take the place of worn-out dogmas; and we now have the spectacle of a general intellec...”

“After the first recognition even by theology of physical evolution, it was easy to predict that the recognition of psychical evolution could not be indefinitely delayed; for the barrier erected by ...”

“It may remain for us to learn … that our task is only beginning; and that there will never be given to us even the ghost of any help, save the help of unutterable unthinkable Time. We may have to l...”

“Any idealism is a proper subject for art.”

“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.”