Lafcadio Hearn > Quotes

“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, Inventing New Orleans: Writings of Lafcadio Hearn

“The Shadow-maker shapes forever.”
― Lafcadio Hearn

“We owe more to our illusions than to our knowledge”
― Lafcadio Hearn, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan

“also in the boom of the big bell there is a quaintness of tone which wakens feelings, so strangely far-away from all the nineteenth-century part of me, that the faint blind stirrings of them make me afraid, - deliciously afraid. never do I hear that billowing peal but I become aware of a striving and a fluttering in the abyssal part of my ghost, - a sensation as of memories struggling to reach the light beyond the obscurations of a million million deaths and births. I hope to remain within hearing of that bell... and, considering the possibility of being doomed to the state of a jiki-ketsu-geki, I want to have my chance of being reborn in some bamboo flower-cup, or mizutame, whence I might issue softly, singing my thin and pungent song, to bite some people that I know.”
― Lafcadio Hearn, Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things

“The tea ceremony requires years of training and practice ... yet the whole of this art, as to its detail, signifies no more than the making and serving of a cup of tea. The supremely important matter is that the act be performed in the most perfect, most polite, most graceful, most charming manner possible.”
― Lafcadio Hearn, Lafcadio Hearn's Japan: An Anthology of his Writings on the Country and Its People

“There is scarcely any great author in European literature, old or new, who has not distinguished himself in his treatment of the supernatural. In English literature, I believe there is no exception from the time of the Anglo-Saxon poets to Shakespeare, and from Shakespeare to our own day. And this introduces us to the consideration of a general and remarkable fact, a fact that I do not remember to have seen in any books, but which is of very great philosophical importance: there is something ghostly in all great art, whether of literature, music, sculpture, or architecture. It touches something within us that relates to infinity”
― Lafcadio Hearn

“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 learn that the infinite whirl of death and birth, out of which we cannot escape, is of our own creation, of our own seeking;--that the forces integrating worlds are the errors of the Past;--that the eternal sorrow is but the eternal hunger of insatiable desire;--and that the burnt-out suns are rekindled only by the inextinguishable passions of vanished lives.”
― Lafcadio Hearn, Out of the East

“But I confess that "my mind to me a kingdom is"--not! Rather it is a fantastical republic, daily troubled by more revolutions than ever occurred in South America ...”
― Lafcadio Hearn, Gleanings in Buddha-Fields

“Perhaps, after trillions of ages burning in different dynasties of suns, the very best of me may come together again.”
― Lafcadio Hearn

“It is an atmosphere peculiar to the place; and, because of it, the sunshine in Horai is whiter than any other sunshine, - a milky light that never dazzles, - astonishingly clear, but very soft. This atmosphere is not of our human period: it is enormously old, - so old that I feel afraid when I try to think how old it is; - and it is not a mixture of nitrogen and oxygen. It is not made of air at all, but of ghost, - the substance of quintillions of quintillions of generations of souls blended into one immense translucency, - souls of people who thought in ways never resembling our ways.”
― Lafcadio Hearn, Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things

“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.”
― Lafcadio Hearn

“Considering the possibility of being doomed to the state of a Jiki-ketsu-gaki, I want to have my chance of being reborn in some bamboo flower-cup, or mizutame, whence I might issue softly, singing my thin and pungent song, to bite some people that I know.”
― Lafcadio Hearn

“Now I, like that Chinese devotee, must confess myself a very ignorant person, and naturally unable to hear the conversation of Ants. But the Fairy of Science sometimes touches my ears and eyes with her wand; and then, for a little time, I am able to hear things inaudible, and to perceive things imperceptible.”
― Lafcado Hearn, Kwaidan

“How divine the coming of the morning,—the coming of the Sun,—exorcising the shadowy terrors of the night with infinite restoration of color! I look upon the woods, and they are not the same: the palms have vanished; the cypresses have fled away; trees young and comely and brightly green replace them. A hand is laid upon my shoulder,—the hand of the gray Captain: 'Go forward, and see what you have never seen before.' Even as he speaks, our boat, turning sharply, steams out of the green water into—what can I call it?—a flood of fluid crystal,—a river of molten diamond,—a current of liquid light?”
― Lafcadio Hearn, Leaves from the Diary of an Impressionist

“Eίμαι εγώ ένας;.
Είμαι μια και μόνη ψυχή;.
Όχι, εγώ είμαι ένα πλήθος,
ένα ασύλληπτο πλήθος.
Είμαι γενεά των γενεών.
αιώνας των αιώνων.
Αμέτρητες είναι οι φορές.
που η συρροή όλων αυτών που είμαι.
σκορπίστηκε στο άπειρο.
για να συγκεντρωθεί και πάλι.
΄Ισως, αφού στο μεταξύ καώ.
Επί τρισεκατομμύρια αιώνες.
στις διάφορες δυναστείες των ήλιων.
τα καλύτερα από αυτά που είμαι.
θα μπορέσουν να σμίξουν και πάλι.”
― Lafcadio Hearn

“Nature has no consolation for us. Out of her formlessness issues forms which return to formlessness,——that is all. The plant becomes clay; the clay becomes a plant. When the plant turns to clay, what becomes of the vibration which was its life? Does it go on existing viewlessly, like the forces that shape spectres of frondage in the frost upon a window-pane?”
― Lafcadio Hearn

“On the Gulf side of these islands you may observe that the trees—where there are any trees—all bend away from the sea; and, even of bright, hot days when the wind sleeps, there is something grotesquely pathetic in their look of agonized terror. A group of oaks . . . I remember as especially suggestive: five stooping silhouettes in line against the horizon, like fleeing women with streaming garments and wind-blown hair,—bowing grievously and thrusting out arms desperately northward as to save themselves from falling. And they are being pursued indeed;—for the sea is devouring the land.”
― Lafcadio Hearn, Chita: A Memory of Last Island

“Whoever pretends not to believe in ghosts of any sort, lies to his own heart. Every man is haunted by ghosts... thought most of us (poets excepted) are unwilling to confess the acquaintance.”
― Lafcadio Hearn, Japanese Ghost Stories

“I an individual—an individual soul! Nay, I am a population—a population unthinkable for multitude, even by groups of a thousand millions! Generations of generations I am, aeons of aeons! Countless times the concourse now making me has been scattered, and mixed with other scattering. Of what concern, then, the next disintegration? Perhaps, after trillions of ages of burning in different dynasties of suns, the very best of me may come together again.”
― Lafcadio Hearn

“If you see your neighbor's beard on fire, water your own.

--Martinique proverb”
― Lafcadio Hearn

“We owe more to our illusions than to our knowledge.”
― Lafcadio Hearn, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan

“There is no loss-because there is not any Self that can be lost. Whatsoever was, that you have been;- whatsoever is, that you are;- whatsoever will be, that you must become. Personality!- individuality!- the ghosts of a dream in a dream! Life infinite only there is; and all that appears to be is but the thrilling of it, -sun, moon, and stars, -earth, sky, and sea,-and Mind and Man, and Space and Time. All of them are shadows. The shadows come and go;- the Shadow-Maker shapes forever.”
― Lafcadio Hearn, Kotto: Being Japanese Curios, with Sundry Cobwebs

“..and Umétsu remembered that goblins were wont to assume feminine shapes after dark, in order to deceive and destroy men.”
― Lafcadio Hearn, A Japanese Miscellany: Strange Stories, Folklore Gleanings, Studies Here & There

“upon the civilization of the world. The best one can do is to estimate, as intelligently as possible, the national characteristics of the peoples engaged,”
― Lafcadio Hearn, Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things

“Spoon goes to bowl's house; bowl never goes to spoon's house.

--Haitian proverb”
― Lafcadio Hearn, Gombo Zhebes: Little Dictionary of Creole Proverbs

“Blue vision of depth lost in height, - sea and sky interblending through luminous haze. The day is of spring, and the hour morning.

Only sky and sea, - one azure enormity... In the fore, ripples are catching a silvery light, and threads of foam are swirling. But a little further off no motion is visible, nor anything save color: dim warm blue of water widening away to melt into blue of air. Horizon there is none: only distance soaring into space, - infinite concavity hollowing before you, and hugely arching above you, - the color deepening with the height.

But far in the midway-blue there hangs a faint, faint vision of palace towers, with high roofs horned and curved like moons, - some shadowing of splendor strange and old, illumined by a sunshine soft as memory.”
― Lafcadio Hearn, Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things

“The art department proper I thought much inferior to that of the Tokyo Exhibition of 1890. Fine things there were, but few. Evidence, perhaps, of the eagerness with which the nation is turning all its energies and talents in directions where money is to be made; for in those larger departments where art is combined with industry,—such as ceramics, enamels, inlaid work, embroideries,—no finer and costlier work could ever have been shown. Indeed, the high value of certain articles on display suggested a reply to a Japanese friend who observed, thoughtfully, "If China adopts Western industrial methods, she will be able to underbid us in all the markets of the world." "Perhaps in cheap production," I made answer. "But there is no reason why Japan should depend wholly upon cheapness of production. I think she may rely more securely upon her superiority in art and good taste. The art-genius of a people may have a special value against which all competition by cheap labor is vain. Among Western nations, France offers an example. Her wealth is not due to her ability to underbid her neighbors. Her goods are the dearest in the world: she deals in things of luxury and beauty. But they sell in all civilized countries because they are the best of their kind. Why should not Japan become the France of the Further East?”
― Lafcadio Hearn, Kokoro: Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life

“[...] carpenter still builds according to Shinto tradition: he dons a priestly costume at a certain stage of his work, performs rites, and chants invocations, and places the new house under the protection of the gods. But the occupation of the swordsmith was in old days the most sacred of the crafts: he worked in priestly garb, and practiced Shinto rites of purification while engaged in the making of a good blade. Before his smithy was then suspended the rope of rice straw, which is the oldest symbol of Shinto; none even of his family might enter there, or speak to him; and he ate only of food cooked with holy fire [...]”
― Lafcadio Hearn

“Βλέπω τα παλιωμένα σκαριά που φτάνουν από τα απόμακρα τροπικά λιμάνια κι ανεβαίνω μυστικά στις κουπαστές τους. Όταν ξεδιπλώνουν τις κατάλευκες φτερούγες τους για να πετάξουν μακριά από δώ, στο Νότο, η ψυχή μου -αυτή η ψυχή που έχω- τα ακολουθεί με τη σκέψη της. Κάποια μέρα θα κρυφτώ στον ίσκιο ενός πανιού, στην κουλούρα ενός σχοινιού και θα σαλπάρω για πάντα μαζί τους.”
― Lafcadio Hearn

“outcome of the present struggle between Russia and Japan, its significance lies in the fact that a nation of the East, equipped with Western weapons and girding itself with Western energy of will, is deliberately measuring strength against one of”
― Lafcadio Hearn, Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things