“Our task is not the training of interpreters, nor the indulgence of exotic tastes, nor the revelation of some arcane Truth which the Orient possesses but we do not, nor the mastery of a sterile Asiatic scholasticism, but literature. If universities are not to teach language by means of literature—by means of books which are intrinsically worth-while reading, I for one do not want to be a university teacher.”

— David Hawkes (sinologist)

Source: Inaugural Lecture, Oxford, 1961, p. 27

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David Hawkes (sinologist) 8

British sinologist 1923–2009

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