Kwaidan Quotes

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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...”
― Lafcadio Hearn, Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things

“The Russian people have had literary spokesmen who for more than a generation have fascinated the European audience. The Japanese, on the other hand, have possessed no such national and universally recognized figures as Turgenieff or Tolstoy. They need an interpreter. It”
― Lafcadio Hearn, Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things

“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

“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

“Then again she wept aloud,– so bitterly that the voice of her crying pierced into the marrow of the listener’s bones; – and she sobbed out the words of this poem:– Hi kurureba Sasoeshi mono wo – Akanuma no Makomo no kure no Hitori-ne zo uki! (“At the coming of twilight I invited him to return with me –! Now to sleep alone in the shadow of the rushes of Akanuma – ah! what misery unspeakable!”)”
― Lafcado Hearn, Kwaidan

“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. Whatever mortal man inhales that atmosphere, he takes into his blood the thrilling of these spirits; and they change the sense within him,—reshaping his notions of Space and Time,—so that he can see only as they used to see, and feel only as they used to feel, and think only as they used to think. Soft as sleep are these changes of sense; and Horai, discerned across them, might thus be described:—”
― Lafcadio Hearn, Kwaidan - Stories and Studies of Strange Things

“Nympha pudica Deum vidit, et erubuit.”
― Lafcadio Hearn, Kwaidan

“Well, for a considerable time after you were born, you had no such reason for rejoicing in your form. You were then a mere cabbage-insect, a hairy worm; and you were so poor that you could not afford even one robe to cover your nakedness; and your appearance was altogether disgusting. Everybody in those days hated the sight of you.”
― Lafcadio Hearn, Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things