Lin Yutang
“Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.”
—Lin Yutang (1895-1976)
“If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live”
—Lin Yutang (1895-1976)
“Those who are wise won't be busy, and those who are too busy can't be wise.”
—Lin Yutang (1895-1976)
“When Small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set.”
—Lin Yutang (1895-1976)
“The busy man is never wise and the wise man is never busy.”
—Lin Yutang (1895-1976)
“Anyone who reads a book with a sense of obligation does not understand the art of reading.”
—Lin Yutang (1895-1976)
“If one's bowels move, one is happy, and if they don't move, one is unhappy. That is all there is to it.”
—Lin Yutang (1895-1976)
“Of all the rights of woman, the greatest is to be a mother”
—Lin Yutang (1895-1976)
“Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do, than what one can do.”
—Lin Yutang (1895-1976)
“The moment a student gives up his right of personal judgment, he is in for accepting all the humbugs of life”
—Lin Yutang (1895-1976)
“The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of the nonessentials.”
—Lin Yutang (1895-1976)
“The outstanding characteristic of Western scholarship is its specialization and cutting up of knowledge into different departments. The over-development of logical thinking and specialization, with its technical phraseology, has brought about the curious fact of modern civilization, that philosophy has been so far relegated to the background, far behind politics and economics, that the average man can pass it by without a twinge of conscience. The feeling of the average man, even of the educated person, is that philosophy is a "subject" which he can best afford to go without. This is certainly a strange anomaly of modern culture, for philosophy, which should lie closest to men's bosom and business, has become most remote from life. It was not so in the classical civilization of the Greeks and Romans, and it was not so in China, where the study of wisdom of life formed the scholars' chief occupation. Either the modern man is not interested in the problems of living, which are the proper subject of philosophy, or we have gone a long way from the original conception of philosophy.”
—Lin Yutang (1895-1976)
“The passion fades, the remorse is eternal.”
—Lin Yutang (1895-1976)
“Nobody is right and nobody is wrong. Only one thing is right, and that is the Truth, but nobody knows what it is. It is a thing that changes all the time, and then comes back to the same thing.”
—Lin Yutang (1895-1976)
“Much as I like reasonable persons, I hate completely rational beings. For that reason, I am always scared and ill at ease when I enter a house in which there are no ash trays. ”
—Lin Yutang (1895-1976)
“In contrast to logic, there is common sense, or still better, the Spirit of Reasonableness.”
—Lin Yutang (1895-1976)
"I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because its leaves are a little yellow, its tone mellower, its colours richer, and it is tinged a little with sorrow and a premonition of death. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor of the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and is content."
—Lin Yutang (1895-1976)
"Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials."
—Lin Yutang (1895-1976)
"Where there are too many policemen, there is no liberty. Where there are too many soldiers, there is no peace. Where there are too many lawyers, there is no justice."
—Lin Yutang (1895-1976)
"The Chinese do not draw any distinction between food and medicine."
—Lin Yutang (1895-1976)
"This I conceive to be the chemical function of humor: to change the character of our thought."
—Lin Yutang (1895-1976)
"I am here to speak on freedom of speech. It is a great topic, and I am going to make my speech as free as possible. But you know that this cannot be done, for when anyone announces that he is going to speak his mind freely, everyone is frightened. This shows that there is no such thing as true freedom of speech. No one can afford to let his neighbors know what he is thinking about them. Society can exist only on the basis that there is some amount of polished lying and that no one says exactly what he thinks."
—Lin Yutang (1895-1976)
"I distrust all dead and mechanical formulas for expressing anything connected with human affairs and human personalities. Putting human affairs in exact formulas shows in itself a lack of the sense of humor and therefore a lack of wisdom."
—Lin Yutang (1895-1976)
"Any good practical philosophy must start out with the recognition of our having a body."
—Lin Yutang (1895-1976)
"If there is anything we are serious about, it is neither religion nor learning, but food."
—Lin Yutang (1895-1976)
"A tendency to fly too straight at a goal, instead of circling around it, often carries one too far."
—Lin Yutang (1895-1976)
"Once Confucius was walking on the mountains and he came across a woman weeping by a grave. He asked the woman what here sorrow was, and she replied, We are a family of hunters. My father was eaten by a tiger. My husband was bitten by a tiger and died. And now my only son! Why don't you move down and live in the valley? Why do you continue to live up here? asked Confucius. And the woman replied, But sir, there are no tax collectors here! Confucius added to his disciples, You see, a bad government is more to be feared than tigers."
—Lin Yutang (1895-1976)