Lin Yutang Quotes
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Human life can be lived like a poem.
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When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set.
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A man may own a thousand acres of land, and yet he still sleeps upon a bed of five feet.
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No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.
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A man who has to be punctually at a certain place at five o'clock has the whole afternoon from one to five ruined for him already.
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It is not when he is working in the office but when he is lying idly on the sand that his soul utters, 'Life is beautiful.'
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There is something in the nature of tea that leads us into a world of quiet contemplation of life.
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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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If life is all subjective, why not be subjectively happy rather than subjectively sad?
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All women's dresses, in every age and country, are merely variations on the eternal struggle between the admitted desire to dress and the unadmitted desire to undress.
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A mellow understanding of life and of human nature is, and always has been, the Chinese ideal of character, and from that understanding other qualities are derived, such as pacifism, contentment, calm and strength of endurance which distinguish the Chinese character.
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A good traveler is one who does not know where he is going to, and a perfect traveler does not know where he came from.
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When the mirror meets with an ugly woman, when a rare ink-stone finds a vulgar owner, and when a good sword is in the hands of a common general, there is utterly nothing to be done about it.
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The world I believe is far too serious, and being far too serious, is it has need of a wise and merry philosophy.
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If the early Chinese people had any chivalry, it was manifested not toward women and children, but toward old people. That feeling of chivalry found clear expression in Mencius in some such saying as, 'The people with gray hair should not be seen carrying burdens on the street,' which was expressed as the final goal of good government.
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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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There are two kinds of animals on earth. One kind minds his own business, the other minds other people's business. The former are vegetarians, like cows, sheep and thinking men. The latter are carnivorous, like hawks, tigers and men of action.
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A vague uncritical idealism always lends itself to ridicule and too much of it might be a danger to mankind, leading it round in a futile wild-goose chase for imaginary ideals.