Lu Xun
Lu Xun (1881-1936) (Chou Shu-jen) was a Chinese writer. He is considered literary innovator. He was proponent of literary realism in vernacular not in classical style. He authored a famous book Ah Q chen chuan (The True Story of Ah Q).Wisdom & Quotes
- The most painful thing in life is to wake up from a dream and find no way out. Dreamers are fortunate people. If no way out can be seen, the important thing is not to awaken the sleepers.
- If men refuse to be kindled, sparks can only burn themselves out, just as paper images and carriages burn out on the street during funerals.
- Creation, even when it is a mere outpouring from the heart, wishes to find a public. By definition, creation is sociable. Yet it can be satisfied with merely one single reader: an old friend, a lover.
- When a great man has become petrified, and everyone begins to proclaim his greatness, he has already turned into a puppet.
- When the Chinese suspect someone of being a potential trouble maker, they always resort to one of two methods: they crush him, or they hoist him on a pedestal.
- Hope can be neither affirmed nor denied. Hope is like a path in the countryside: originally there was no path - yet, as people are walking all the time in the same spot, a way appears.
- It is in the nature of things that some people should be unlucky enough to get their heads chopped off.
- Women have a mother-nature and a daughter-nature; there are no women with a wife-nature. The quality of wife is an acquired character; it is a combination of mother and daughter.
- If we want to work out a policy for present, we must examine the past and prepare for the future, discard the material and elevate the spirit, rely on the individual and exclude the mass.
- Whoever thinks he is objective must already be half drunk.
- As long as there shall be stones, the seeds of fire will not die.
- To protect myself from the rear, I have to stand slantwise.
- Trust only him who doubts.
- The most horrible thing is not a government that stages public executions, but a government that secretly disposes of its victims.
- It seems to me that the polemics aimed at the vices of an era should drop out of sight at the same time as their targets. My writings can be compared with the white corpuscles that form a scrab over a wound: as long as they do not eliminate themselves of their own accord, it is a sign that the infection remains active.
- It seems to me that the spoken and written words are signs of failure. Whoever is truly measuring himself against fate has no time for such things. As to those who are strong and winning, most of the time they keep silent. Consider, for instance, the eagle when it swoops upon a rabbit: it is the rabbit that squeals, not the eagle.
- Only today do I realize that this world in which I have moved about for half a lifetime has been for over four thousand years a man-eating world.
Anna Pavlova