Hearn Quotes

What does the blessing of heaven mean? We know the kirin is just an animal, not a mythical creature.
It has become a symbol now ... That is the way human beings deal with the world. ~ Lian Hearn

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

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

It was my sister's fault. She brought...books home before I was old enough to check them out of the library myself. ~ Michael Patrick Hearn

We all have a past. We all have a future. But all we really have is right now. You can change your destiny in one moment, if only you refuse to do what you once did. ~ Bonnie Hearn Hill

To ancient Chinese fancy, the Milky Way was a luminous river, - the River of Heaven, - the Silver Stream. ~ Lafcadio Hearn

The dollar that's being paid the players has hurt the game. The players take advantage of coaches. The players' attitude is, "I make more than you, so don't tell me what to do." ~ Chick Hearn

I guess I never grew up. I was still reading kids' books in high school and college. I was always interested in writing or illustrating children's books, and I started collecting out-of-print books when I was about 10 years old. ~ Michael Patrick Hearn

Any idealism is a proper subject for art. ~ Lafcadio Hearn

Recycle the body through fire; scatter the remains back into the earth. ~ Denis Hearn

Chick Hearn taught me how to play basketball, how to think about basketball. He taught me how to love basketball. ~ Roland Lazenby

Then came upon an incredible essay by Lafcadio Hearn, something entitled "Gaki," detailing the curious Japanese belief that insects are really demons or the ghosts of evil men. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

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

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

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 be vanity and vexation to meet; - and they help me so much by their unconscious aid that I almost love them. ~ Lafcadio Hearn

We owe more to our illusions than to our knowledge ~ Lafcadio Hearn

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

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

I learned embroidery," Kaede said, "But you can't kill anyone with a needle."
"You can," Shizuka said offhandedly. "I'll show you one day. ~ Lian Hearn

I've got to be right on top of the action, or else all those people watching the game will say, 'This guy's not very good.' ~ Chick 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. ~ 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. ~ Lafcadio Hearn

I really loved Kiyoyori-in the way you people love each other, and we, not so much. I had never felt that before. I should be able to pass away without regret, as easily as the leaf falls from the tree in autumn, but the idea of never seeing him again, in whatever form, fills me with sorrow. I cling to life for his sake. This is what love does to you Shikanoko. See how the false wolf grows more real every day, because it has become attached to you. It shivers at your approach and wags its tail at the sound of your voice. It has made you its master, it lives for your affection. But, as your saints teach and we have always known, attachment enslaves you. Only those free from it see the world as it really is and have power over themselves and all things. ~ Lian Hearn

I am not made for despair ~ Lian Hearn

Forget trying to pass for normal. Follow your geekdom. Embrace nerditude. In the immortal words of Lafcadio Hearn, a geek of incredible obscurity whose work is still in print after a hundred years, "Woo the muse of the odd." You may be a geek. You may have geek written all over you. You should aim to be one geek they'll never forget. Don't aim to be civilized. Don't hope that straight people will keep you on as some sort of pet. To hell with them. You should fully realize what society has made of you and take a terrible revenge. Get weird. Get way weird. Get dangerously weird. Get sophisticatedly, thoroughly weird, and don't do it halfway. Put every ounce of horsepower you have behind it. Don't become a well-rounded person. Well-rounded people are smooth and dull. Become a thoroughly spiky person. Grow spikes from every angle. Stick in their throats like a pufferfish. ~ Bruce Sterling

The painter had achieved what we would all like to do: capture time and make it stand still ~ Lian Hearn

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. ~ Lafcadio Hearn

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

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

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

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

Like young fern shoots
my child's fingers curled.
I did not expect,
in the fifth month, frost. ~ Lian 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. ~ Lafcadio Hearn

Read Hearn, the most eloquent and truthful interpreter of the Japanese mind, and you see the working of that mind to be an example of the working of Bushido. ~ Inazo Nitobe

The bonds between husband and wife spring from deep laws of destiny and should not be broken lightly. ~ Lian Hearn

The less people think of you, the more they will reveal to you or in your presence. ~ Lian Hearn

Chick Hearn was my favorite broadcaster ever - he's the one who taught me to think basketball, how to love basketball. ~ Bill Walton

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

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

--Haitian proverb ~ 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. ~ Lafcadio Hearn

Can we ever hope for a Natural History with colored plates that will show us how the world appears to the faceted eyes of a dragon-fly? ~ Lafcadio Hearn

The proverbial philosophy of a people helps us to understand more about them than any other kind of literature. ~ Lafcadio Hearn

Radio is the art form of sports casting. If you're any good, you can do a great job on radio. ~ Chick Hearn

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

It was as hot as ever, even the turn of the moon bringing no relief, and the cries of cicadas fell like showers around me. ~ Lian Hearn

You should never despise people because they haven't had your opportunities. ~ Lian Hearn

..and Umétsu remembered that goblins were wont to assume feminine shapes after dark, in order to deceive and destroy men. ~ Lafcadio Hearn

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. ~ Lafcadio Hearn

Most people can't talk as fast as I do. I'm not proud of that. That's God-given. ~ Chick 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. ~ Lafcadio Hearn

His polish-black hair was so silky that my first impulse was to stroke it. That's what beauty does to us. Our first thought is that of the child. Touch it. Make it mine. But the child grows up and learns what happens when you reach for those bright balloons bursting with colour. ~ Bonnie Hearn Hill

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

Is woman a religion? Well, perhaps you will have the chance of judging for yourselves if you go to America. There you will find men treating women with just the same respect formerly accorded only to religious dignitaries or to great nobles. ~ Lafcadio Hearn

There is no Hell, other than that which men make on earth. ~ Lian Hearn

I believe the test of government is the contentment of the people. ~ Lian Hearn

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

One of the great defects of English books printed in the last century is the want of an index. ~ Lafcadio Hearn

Let those who want to hatch hatch their own eggs.

----Martinique proverb ~ Lafcadio Hearn

It's like a spell. It's so strong I can't fight it. Is love always like this? ~ Lian Hearn

The game's in the refrigerator, the door's closed, the light's out, the eggs are cooling, the butter's getting hard and the Jell-O's jiggling, ~ Chick Hearn

They reminded me of the people of my village, their indomitable spirit in the face of disaster, their unshakable belief that no matter what might befall them, life was basically good and the world benign. ~ Lian 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. ~ Lafcadio Hearn

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

Absolutely delightful, at first for its unspoiled picture of late-nineteenth-century Japan as seen through the eyes of three remarkable but very different Americans, [the missionary William Elliot Griffis [1843-1928], the scientist Edward Sylvester Morse [1838-1925], and the writer Lafcadio Hearn], and then for the marvelous reconstruction of how Japan worked on their minds, radically changing their perceptions of the country and the whole relationship between East and West
between the barbarian and the civilized. The book is a tour de force. ~ Edwin O. Reischauer

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

Woo the muse of the odd. ~ 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

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. ~ Lafcadio Hearn

The world is always outside. And it is in the world that we must live. ~ Lian Hearn

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

I am what I am and what I have always been, a poor soul on a journey. ~ Lian Hearn

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

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

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

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

There are two methods for the literary study of any book - the first being the study of its thought and emotion; the second only that of its workmanship. A student of literature should study some of the Bible from both points of view. ~ Lafcadio Hearn

Don't you know the man whose life you spare will always hate you? ~ Lian Hearn

Samuel Marshak was one of the founders of modern Russian children's literature. Soviet children used to know his poems by heart, but only since glasnost have American editors shown any interest in issuing his poems here. ~ Michael Patrick 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. ~ Lafcadio Hearn

Let your ideas be second-hand, and if possible tenth-hand, for then they will be far removed from that disturbing element - direct observation. Do not learn anything about this subject of mine - the French Revolution. Learn instead what I think that Enicharmon thought Urizen thought Gutch thought Ho-Yung thought Chi-Bo-Sing thought Lafcadio Hearn thought Carlyle thought Mirabeau said about the French Revolution. ~ E. M. Forster

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

For someone who made such an enormous contribution to American literature, Mark Twain has been the subject of many books but few major biographies. ~ Michael Patrick Hearn