Frank Harris
Librarian Note:
Frank Harris was an editor, journalist and publisher, who was friendly with many well-known figures of his day. Born in Ireland, he emigrated to America early in life, working in a variety of unskilled jobs before attending the University of Kansas to read law. He eventually became a citizen there. After graduation he quickly tired of his legal career and returned to Europe in 1882.
He travelled on continental Europe before settling in London to pursue a career in journalism. Though he attracted much attention during his life for his irascible, aggressive personality, editorship of famous periodicals, and friendship with the talented and famous, he is remembered mainly for his multiple-volume memoir My Life and Loves, which was banned in countries around the world for its sexual explicitness.
“The truth is that the fever of desire in youth is fleeting disease that intimacy promptly cure.”
“(...) the easiest to conquer were also more worthy of it, because women have better intuition than men for the love affinity.”
“I will, however, establish that success in love, as in all other aspects of life, belongs, as a rule, to the persistent and fiber man. Chaucer had reason to make the Old Bath confess: 'The truth is, more or less, we always succumb to attention and perseverance'.”
“For the first time, vague doubts assaulted me, the shattering suspicion that for all pleasure and joy in life we had to pay ... I repel fear. If I had to pay I would pay, after all, the memory of ecstasy while pungisse its pain could never be erased.”
“What will happen to those who stone the prophets and persecute the masters? His fate is written in flaming letters on each page of the history.”
“(...) always regretted that good memory often prevents us from thinking for ourselves.”
“Memory is the mother of the muses, prototype Artist. As a rule picks and highlights what is important, omitting what is accidental or trivial. Occasionally, however, is mistaken as all the other artists. Nevertheless it is what I take as a guide page.”
“Orang-orang kuat ditempa oleh pelbagai tantangan, seperti layang-layang yang dilambungkan ke langit oleh terpaan angin.”
“Such actions are beyond praise: it is the perfume of such sweet and noble human sympathy that makes this wild beasts' cage a world habitable for men.”
“[Referring to the imprisonment of Oscar Wilde] ... Will civilization never reach humane ideals? Will men always punish most severely the sins they do not understand and which hold forth for them no temptation? Did Jesus suffer in vain?”