Lin Yutang Quotes
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If man be sensible and one fine morning, while he is lying in bed, counts at the tips of his fingers how many things in this life truly will give him enjoyment, invariably he will find food is the first one.
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The fonder you are of your ideals, the greater your heartbreaks.
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The humour of the Chinese people in inventing gunpowder and finding its best use in making firecrackers for their grandfathers' birthdays is merely symbolical of their inventiveness along merely pacific lines.
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I rather despise claims to objectivity in philosophy; the point of view is the thing.
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Somewhere in [China's] soul lurks the cunning of an old dog, and it is a cunning that is strangely impressive. What a strange old soul! What a great old soul!
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The end of living is the true enjoyment of it.
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Not until we see the richness of the Hindu mind and its essential spirituality can we understand India
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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.
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Happiness has always seemed like a bluebird, and consists of moments.
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It is important that man dreams, but it is perhaps equally important that he can laugh at his own dreams.
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The more we justify our beliefs, the more narrow-minded we become.
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Happiness for me is largely a matter of digestion.
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Since the invention of the flush toilet and the vacuum carpet cleaner, the modern man seems to judge a man's moral standards by his cleanliness, and thinks a dog the more highly civilized for having a weekly bath and a winter wrapper round his belly.
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Of all the rights of women, the greatest is to be a mother
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Sometimes there are more tears than laughter, and sometimes there is more laughter than tears, and sometimes you feel so choked you can neither weep nor laugh. For tears and laughter there will always be so long as there is human life. When our tear wells have run dry and the voice of laughter is silenced, the world will be truly dead.
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China is the greatest mystifying and stupefying fact in the modern world.
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To me personally the only function of philosophy is to teach us to take life more lightly and gayly than the average businessman does, for no businessman who does not retire at fifty, if he can, is in my eyes a philosopher.
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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.
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In contrast to logic, there is common sense, or still better, the Spirit of Reasonableness.
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The human mind is a curious thing. It can take just so much and no more.
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The man who has not the habit of reading is imprisoned in his immediate world.
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A solemn funeral is inconceivable to the Chinese mind.
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We all have obligations and duties toward our fellow men. But it does seem curious enough that in modern neurotic society, men's energies are consumed in making a living and rarely in living itself. It takes a lot of courage for a man to declare, with clarity and simplicity, that the purpose of life is to enjoy it.
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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.
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Anyone who reads a book with a sense of obligation does not understand the art of reading.
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I have done my best. That is about all the philosophy of living one needs.
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To glorify the past and paint the future is easy, to survey the present and emerge with some light and understanding is difficult.
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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.
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Only friendship which can stand occasional plain speaking is worth having.
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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.
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