Lin Yutang quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Lin Yutang

Lin Yutang Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Lin Yutang on Wise Famous Quotes.

If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live

A man who has to be punctually at a certain place at five o'clock has the whole afternoon ruined for him already.

Of all the rights of women, the greatest is to be a mother

He who is afraid to use an "I" in his writing will never make a good writer.

A cocktail party is a place where you talk with a person you do not know about a subject you have no interest in.

There is more hope in a heather rose than in all the tons of Teutonic philosophy.

Make No Distinctions

It is not so much what you believe in that matters, as the way in which you believe it and proceed to translate that belief into action.

It is important that man dreams, but it is perhaps equally important that he can laugh at his own dreams.

The Chinese do not draw any distinction between food and medicine.

Now it is characteristic of play that one plays without reason and there must be no reason for it. Play is its own good reason.

The only test of a soul's salvation is its inward happiness.

Life is too short to make an over-serious business out of it.

The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of the nonessentials.

Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do, than what one can do.

Once [China] had a destiny. Once she was a conqueror. Now her greatest destiny seems to be merely to exist, to survive.

Nothing matters to a man who says nothing matters,

The wise man reads both books and life itself.

Happiness has always seemed like a bluebird, and consists of moments.

Business men who are busy the whole day and immediately go to bed after supper, snoring like cows, are not likely to contribute anything to culture.

Those who are wise won't be busy, and those who are too busy can't be wise.

There is something in the nature of tea that leads us into a world of quiet contemplation of life.

What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child?

I rather despise claims to objectivity in philosophy; the point of view is the thing.

This I conceive to be the chemical function of humor: to change the character of our thought.

Of all the rights of woman, the greatest is to be a mother

Anyone who reads a book with a sense of obligation does not understand the art of reading.

It is that unoccupied space which makes a room habitable, as it is our leisure hours which make life endurable.

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it, and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.

The dog which remembers only to bark and not to bite, and is led through the streets as a lady's pet, is only a degenerate wolf.

We (the Chinese) eat food for its texture, the elastic or crisp effect it has on our teeth, as well as for fragrance, flavor and color.

Such is human psychology that if we don't express our joy, we soon cease to feel it.

We should not expect people to be good, but should make it impossible for them to be bad.

No man is inherently respectable, but all women are by nature.

Our lives are not in the lap of the gods, but in the lap of our cooks.

All I know is that if God loves me only half as much as my mother does, he will not send me to Hell.

As for international understanding, I feel that macaroni has done more for our appreciation of Italy than Mussolini.

The fonder you are of your ideals, the greater your heartbreaks.

The end of living is the true enjoyment of it.

Scholars who are worth anything at all never know what is call "a hard grind" or what "bitter study" means.

In the West, the insane are so many that they are put in an asylum, in China the insane are so unusual that we worship them.

The human mind is a curious thing. It can take just so much and no more.

A solemn funeral is inconceivable to the Chinese mind.

Instead of holding on to the Biblical view that we are made in the image of God, we come to realize that we are made in the image of the monkey.

Simplicity is the outward sign and symbol of depth of thought.

In contrast to logic, there is common sense, or still better, the Spirit of Reasonableness.

True peace of mind comes from accepting the worst. Psychologically, I think it means a release of energy.

There is nothing more beautiful in this world than a healthy, wise old man.

So long as man is man, variety will still be the flavor of life.

China is the greatest mystifying and stupefying fact in the modern world.

A good traveler is one who who does not know where he is going to , and a perfect traveler does not know where he came from.

Any good practical philosophy must start out with the recognition of our having a body.

Every man must find his own philosophy, his attitude towards life.

Why should man bother himself so much about salvation, unless he has a feeling of being doomed?

There is no proper time and place for reading. When the mood for reading comes, one can read anywhere

When Small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set.

When we demand liberty of a person as a constitutional right, we are taking away from the officials their liberty to chop off people's heads.

I regard the discovery of one's favorite author as the most critical event in one's intellectual development.

Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.

The busy man is never wise and the wise man is never busy.

Not until we see the richness of the Hindu mind and its essential spirituality can we understand India

If there is anything we are serious about, it is neither religion nor learning, but food.

A good traveller is one who does not know where he is going to, and a perfect traveller does not know where he came from.

Best behavior means the same thing as the most uncomfortable behavior.

Art is both creation and recreation.

A tendency to fly too straight at a goal, instead of circling around it, often carries one too far.

The more we justify our beliefs, the more narrow-minded we become.

Nobody is ever misunderstood at a fireside; he may only be disagreed with.

The passion fades, the remorse is eternal.

I have a hankering to go back to the Orient and discard my necktie. Neckties strangle clear thinking.

Happiness for me is largely a matter of digestion.

And if the reader has no taste for what he reads, all the time is wasted

Of the many rights of ladies, the best should be to be considered a mother.

Men resort to talking only when they haven't the power to enforce their convictions upon others.

Of all the unhappy people in the world, the unhappiest are those who have not found something they want to do.

The best that we can hope for in this life is that we shall not have sons and grandsons of whom we need to be ashamed.

By association with nature's enormities, a man's heart may truly grow big also.

Few men who have liberated themselves from the fear of God and the fear of death are yet able to liberate themselves from the fear of man.

I have done my best. That is about all the philosophy of living one needs.

Probably the difference between man and the monkeys is that the monkeys are merely bored, while man has boredom plus imagination.

No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.

The world I believe is far too serious, and being far too serious ... it has need of a wise and merry philosophy.

Alas, our rulers are not gods, but puny, fallible men, like the kings who constantly forget their parts, and we common men should be their prompters.

If one's bowels move, one is happy, and if they don't move, one is unhappy. That is all there is to it.

The age calls for simple statements and restatements of simple truths. The prophets of doom are involved, those who would bring light must be clear.

my formula for the Chinese national mind is: R4D1H3S3 There

To glorify the past and paint the future is easy, to survey the present and emerge with some light and understanding is difficult.

Peace of mind is that mental condition in which you have accepted the worst.

Reality + Dreams + Humor = Wisdom So

The moment a student gives up his right of personal judgment, he is in for accepting all the humbugs of life

There is so much to love and to admire in this life that it is an act of ingratitude not to be happy and content in this existence.

Creative work carries with it a form of intense love.

The greater success a man has made, the more he fears a climb down.

Society can exist only on the basis that there is some amount of polished lying and that no one says exactly what he thinks.

No child is born with a really cold heart, and it is only in proportion as we lose that youthful heart that we lose the inner warmth in ourselves.

An educated man is one who has the loves and hatreds together.