East

“ The truth is completely the opposite: The West has yet to find the East. The East, which provided the foundation of contemporary Western civilization, literacy and Christianity, still hibernates within its traditional values as an essential element of the endurance of the people and perhaps as the unique salvation of mankind. The West has to burst into the wisdom of the East to keep the very roots of life, the wisdom to live in peace and in harmony with God and with nature. ”

“ The answer lies, I think, like the answer to all these questions of religion, in the varying instincts of the people. It is an idea with us in the West that the East is the land of enchantment, of mystery, of the unknown, of miracle and all that is akin to it. We are never tired of talking of the mysterious East; it seems to us one vast wonderland full of things we cannot understand, full of marvels of the unknowable, the very home of superstition; while the West is matter of fact, material and reasonable, and easily understood. ”

“ The West has taken strength, thought, training, selected aptitudes out of the old treasures of the East,—as if out of a new Orient; while the East has itself been kept fresh, vital, alert, originative by the West, her blood quickened all the while, her youth through every age renewed. Who can say in a word, in a sentence, in a volume, what destinies have been variously wrought, with what new examples of growth and energy, while, upon this unexampled scale, community has passed beyond community across the vast reaches of this great continent! ”

“ And there was a sort of feeling of truth in the fancy after all. We talk of the changeless East; but in one sense the impression of it is really rather changing, with its wandering tribes and its shifting sands, in which the genii of the East might well build the palace or the paradise of a day. As I saw the low and solid English cottages rising around me amid damp delightful thickets under rainy skies, I felt that in a deeper sense it is rather we who build for permanence or at least for a sort of peace. ”

“ Calculations and conjectures—what may the East do without the South, and what may the South do without the East?—sneers, menaces, reproaches, and recriminations—all tend to the same fatal end. What can the East do without the South? What can the South do without the East? They may do much; they may exhibit to the curiosity of political anatomists, and the pity and wonder of the world, the disjecta membra—the sundered, bleeding limbs of a once gigantic body instinct with life, and strength, and vigor. ”

“ The warmth of the East, that goes through, not over, the lazy body, is added to the light of the East—the splendid lavish light that clears but does not bewilder the eye. Then the new leaves of the spring wink like fat emeralds and the loaded branches of cherry-bloom grow transparent and glow as a hand glows held up against flame. ”

“ What shall my west hurt me? As west and east
In all flat maps (and I am one) are one,
So death doth touch the resurrection.
Is the Pacific Sea my home? Or are
The eastern riches? Is Jerusalem?
Anyan, and Magellan, and Gibraltar,
All straits, and none but straits, are ways to them,
Whether where Japhet dwelt, or Cham, or Shem. ”

“ The East, as their leader, was also the supposed ruler of the winds, and thus god of the air and rain. As more immediately connected with the advent and departure of light, the East and West are twins, the one of which sends forth the glorious day-orb, which the other lies in wait to conquer. Yet the light-god is not slain. The sun shall rise again in undiminished glory, and he lives, though absent. ”

“ I found it a great relief to be again on the sweet, blue sea, out of sight of land, and free from the tussle and worry and bustle for life which we are daily, hourly even, forced to gaze upon on land. Although the East is, in a very great measure, free from the dreadful crowding for life, still one is bound to see signs of it even among the most indolent of people. ”

“ The new life of the West has reacted all the while—who shall say how powerfully?—upon the older life of the East; and yet the East has moulded the West as if she sent forward to it through every decade of the long process the chosen impulses and suggestions of history. ”

“ To judge the East aright, we must know not only what she is, but also how she has become what she is; know, in short, some of the principal phases of her spiritual history as they are reflected in her ancient literature, especially that of India. To interpret to the West the thought of the East, to bring her best and noblest achievements to bear upon our life,—that is today the problem of Oriental philology. ”

“ The East is submissive, the West is creative; The East is conservative, the West is progressive; The East is intuition, the West is reason; The East is spiritual, the West is empirical; The East is humanistic, the West is scientific ”

“ The east was glowing with a narrow, but ill-defined crescent of light, the blue of the zenith mingling in all possible proportions with the salmon color of the horizon. And now the neighboring hilltops telegraph to us poor crawlers of the plain, the monarch's golden ensign in the east.
How indispensable to a correct study of Nature is a perception of her true meaning. The fact will one day flower out into a truth. ”

“ Yes, born East myself, raised all along, know the West—a great country, gentlemen. The place for a young fellow of spirit to pick up a fortune, simply pick it up, it's lying round loose here. Not a day that I don't put aside an opportunity, too busy to look into it. ”

“ The East at its best has weighed conduct in delicate balances and traced the play of cause and effect in character far, far beyond the West; it has been content with simple things and found its true wealth in the inner life. ”

“ It is the East not of to-day but of antiquity with which I have to deal, and, therefore, I plead that it is not unreasonable to understand by "The East" what in antiquity European historians understood by that term. To Herodotus and his contemporary Greeks Egypt, Arabia and India were the South; Thrace and Scythia were the North; and Hither Asia was the East: for they conceived nothing beyond except the fabled stream of Ocean. It can be pleaded also that my restriction, while not in itself arbitrary, does, in fact, obviate an otherwise inevitable obligation to fix arbitrary bounds to the East. ”

“ The North invents, the South supplies the tools, the East the hands, the West the patrons and critics of the work, while out of the yellow heart of the city comes the gold, the incentive to the North, South, and East. ”

“ I seem to live in the heart of two distinct civilizations, those of the East and the West, but the East is my spirit's fatherland. My mind still turns for companionship to the great ones of the Past, the heroines of my country's history. ”

“ You long for some signs of life, and tread the ground more heavily, as though you would wake the sleepers with the heel of your boot; but the foot falls noiseless upon the crumbling soil of an Eastern city, and silence follows you still. ”

“ Well, so when you have travelled for days and days over an Eastern desert without meeting the likeness of a human being, and then at last see an English shooting-jacket and his servant come listlessly slouching along from out of the forward horizon, you stare at the wide unproportion between this slender company and the boundless plains of sand through which they are keeping their way. ”

“ The real wonder and the mystery of the East lie not upon the surface, but beneath it. And beneath the East of to-day lies the East of yesterday."
The speaker's expression grew rapt, and he spoke in the mystic manner which she knew and now dreaded. ”

“ Looking at ‘World History’ - on the one side the rational, incredible West who ends all other ‘histories’ and promotes the universal language, English, and on the other side the intuitive, incredible East who closes the historic circuit and integrates the universal language, English - in this century, the 21st, it is nevertheless the East who holds a considerable advantage: It is the bigger phenomenon. ”

“ I always liked the men who attended me on these Eastern travels, for they were all of them brave, cheery-hearted fellows; and although their following my career brought upon them a pretty large share of those toils and hardships which are so much more amusing to gentlemen than to servants, yet not one of them ever uttered or hinted a syllable of complaint, or even affected to put on an air of resignation. I always liked them, but never perhaps so much as when they were thus grouped together under the light of the bivouac fire. ”

“ It is good to see you place your hands together. To me it is a symbol of the marriage of the East and West, for the East and West must mate. Long ago the East went up to God and the West went down to men. The East has learned Vision and the West has learned Action. These two [100] must meet and mate again for the glory of God and the splendour of earth. The East has lifted its soul to the hills and held fast to its memory of the Father's house. The West has descended into the folds of the valley, and won from agony and isolation its efficacy in material things. ”

“ The West has witnessed more changes than has the East. The common impression, and one to which all Americans are bred, leaves paleface Western occupation to a modern day. Whenever one’s thought wanders to what is old in this country one inevitably sets his face towards the East. ”

“ The Orient is already feeling the thrill of renewed life. It is responding to the touch of the youth and vigor of the West and becoming rejuvenated; it is drawing closer and closer in its eagerness for the warmth of new interests. The West is no longer alone in seeking a union; the East is coming to the West. ”

“ Nothing could have been more natural than that, as the West hove in sight larger and richer, the cry for better means of communication between the East and the West should have grown louder and more incessant. ”

“ For thousands of years the great mountain chains of mid-Europe cut off the man in the North from the man in the South, as completely as the barren steppes of Eastern Europe and Western Asia divided East from West. ”

“ To travel in the East is to realise that life on the soil and in the village is there still the normal life, as it has been almost everywhere and always, throughout civilisation, until the last century in the West. But though there is thus in the East a common way of life, there is not a common organisation nor a common spirit. ”

“ We are thankful to the East because everyone feels good in the morning when they awake, and see the bright light coming from the East, and when the Sun goes down in the West we feel good and glad we are well ”

“ For a traveller to attempt anything so grossly just as that would be too outrageous. The truth is, that the usage of the East, in old times, required the people of the village, at their own cost, to supply the wants of travellers, and the ancient custom is now adhered to, not in favour of travellers generally, but in favour of those who are deemed sufficiently powerful to enforce its observance. ”

“ All you need to do to steak or fish or fowl is to fry it. The art of selection, arrangement, combination are still mysteries of the decadent East. The West is above these things—the new West—God bless it! ”

“ Sentimental people in the East will talk of the romance of the West, and of these simple, brave pioneers who have wrung a living from the soil, and are properly proud of the rude little towns that mark their conquest over nature. ”

“ The East has, indeed, given the key-note to most of our popular thinking, but the West has invariably furnished the chief chorus, and spontaneously extemporized every variation whose brilliant originality has elicited thrilling applause. ”

“ And inasmuch as feeling, the East's gift,
Is quick and transient—comes, and lo, is gone—
While Northern thought is slow and durable,
Surely a mission was reserved for me,
Who, born with a perception of the power
And use of the North's thought for us of the East,
Should have remained, turned knowledge to account,
Giving thought's character and permanence
To the too transitory feeling there—
Writing God's message plain in mortal words. ”

“ As is well known the East has its various sects and schools of philosophy, with subtle discriminations of qualities, essences, god-heads, devilhoods, etc., into which I do not propose to go, and which I should feel myself quite incompetent to deal with. Leaving all these aside, I will keep simply to these two rough Western terms, and try to consider further the question of the methods by which the Eastern student sets himself to obtain the cosmic state, or such higher order of consciousness as he does encompass. ”

“ In the East the sunshine drags and becomes tedious: it goes on blazing all day long without change.{v.1-12424} But the North is dramatic, individual, full of vicissitude, making a new combination every minute, never for half an hour the same. ”

“ Some of the learned may not disdain to look into the ‘Personal Impressions’ which the East—its scenes, its associations, and present condition, made upon even a common-place English tourist of ordinary intelligence and observation, if original and honestly expressed. My aim is, so far as I may, to interest in the East ordinary readers like myself, those especially to whom time is important, and thus induce them to read the larger works of the great writers—some, perhaps, in view of undertaking a similar tour, to see for themselves. ”

“ East, one of the four cardinal points, being the point in the heavens where the sun is seen to rise at the equinox, or the corresponding point on the earth; that point of the horizon lying on the right hand when one's face is turned towards the north pole. By the East, in an indefinite sense, is often meant Syria, Arabia, Persia, India, and the eastern part of the world generally. ”

“ You know now that you are well on your way to the East, where a minimum value of time and an element of fiction mixed up with every action or statement of fact constitute two of the many differences between the easy-going East and the matter-of-fact West. ”

“ The east is subjective. When an easterner tells a story, he locates himself emotionally with much concern. He may be vague as to time and place, but you know his moods and impressions with subtle exactness. Every westerner I ever knew begins his first sentence of a story with his location and objective. Then he adds dates and follows with an anecdote of bare facts, untinged by his emotions. His audience fills in the chinks with what he does not say. For example, a guide, telling of a trip, might say——
“I was headed north over Eagle Pass with an outfit of geologists in a northwest storm. ”