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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."
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"A tough life needs a tough language-and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers-a language powerful enough to say how it is."

"I suppose that's how it looks in prose. But it's very different if you look at it through poetry and I think it's nicer' Anne recovered herself and her eyes shone and her cheeks flushed 'to look at it through poetry."

"There are many unspeakable words, forgotten, or forbidden.Great thanks to the poets who make them all become reachable."

"I thought all the trees were whispering to each other, passing news and plots along in an unintelligible language; and the branches swayed and groped without any wind. They do say the trees do actually move, and can surround strangers and hem them."

"Poetry involves the mysteries of the irrational perceived through rational words."

"For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming."

"The drama is complete poetry. The ode and the epic contain it only in germ; it contains both of them in a state of high development, and epitomizes both."

"Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting, Here I shade and hide my thoughts, I myself do not expose them, And yet they expose me more than all my other poems."

"Each day before the end of eveshe sought her lover, nor would him leave,until the stars were dimmed, and daycame glimmering eastward silver-grey.Then trembling-veiled she would appear,and dance before him, half in fear;there flitting just before his feetshe gently chid with laughter sweet:'Come! dance now, Beren, dance with me!For fain thy dancing I would see!"
Explore more quotes by 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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."
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