Lin Yutang Quotes
Top 96 wise famous quotes and sayings 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.
A cocktail party is a place where you talk with a person you do not know about a subject you have no interest in.
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.
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.
Once [China] had a destiny. Once she was a conqueror. Now her greatest destiny seems to be merely to exist, to survive.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
True peace of mind comes from accepting the worst. Psychologically, I think it means a release of energy.
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.
There is no proper time and place for reading. When the mood for reading comes, one can read anywhere
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.
Not until we see the richness of the Hindu mind and its essential spirituality can we understand India
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.
I have a hankering to go back to the Orient and discard my necktie. Neckties strangle clear thinking.
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.
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.
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.
To glorify the past and paint the future is easy, to survey the present and emerge with some light and understanding is difficult.
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.
Society can exist only on the basis that there is some amount of polished lying and that no one says exactly what he thinks.