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"Any idealism is a proper subject for art."
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"The capacity to be puzzled is the premise of all creation, be it in art or in science."

"Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding."

"As useful as an unhappy artist. As useless as a happy philosopher."

"You do not need a boyfriend or a girlfriend to write an emotional poet, because poetry is beyond hooks and holes."

"To see things as the poet sees them I must share his consciousness and not attend to it; I must look where he looks and not turn round to face him; I must make of him not a spectacle but a pair of spectacles; in fine, as Professor Alexander would say, I must enjoy him and not contemplate him."
Explore more quotes by Lafcadio 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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"A proof of really great art is that it is generally true - it seldom falls into the misapprehensions to which minor art is liable."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."
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