Lafcadio Hearn

LAFCADIO HEARN is almost as Japanese as haiku. Both are an art form, an institution in Japan. Haiku is indigenous to the nation; Hearn became a Japanese citizen and married a Japanese, taking the name Yakumo Koizumi

He spoke to her; and she responded in a soft, clear voice of which the sweetness saddened him with a sadness of other days.

and he saw that she was very beautiful, — though her eyes made him afraid.

Minokichi soon felt charmed by this strange girl; and the more that he looked at her, the handsomer she appeared to be.

Everything there is beautiful with a beauty of exceeding and startling queerness;

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.

the only possible pleasure is the pleasure of unselfishaction.

Will humanity ever be able, on this planet, to reach an ethical condition beyond all its ideals, — a condition in which everything that we now call evil will have been atrophied out of existence, and everything that we call virtue have been transmuted into instinct; — a state of altruism in which ethical concepts and codes will have become as useless as they would be, even now, in the societies of the higher ants.