Lin Yutang: Trending quotes (page 2)

“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.”

Lin Yutang

"The Epigrams of Lusin"
Variant: 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.

Hope , People , Hope , Country

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

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living

Books , Art , Understanding , Sense

“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.”

Lin Yutang

Life , Food , Lying

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

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), Ch. I : The Awakening, p. 13

World

“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."”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), Ch. I : The Awakening, p. 2

Life , Beauty , Soul , Lying

“All men and women have passions, natural desires and noble ambitions, and also a conscience; they have sex, hunger, fear, anger, and are subject to sickness, pain, suffering and death. Culture consists in bringing about the expression of these passions and desires in harmony.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 20

Death , Women , Men , Hunger

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

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), Ch. IX : The Enjoyment of Living, p. 249

Food , Drawing

“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.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 317

“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.”

Lin Yutang

As quoted by Tai-yi Lin (Lin Yutang's daughter) in her Foreword (26 March 1950) to The Importance of Living, p. x

Men , People , Business , Thinking

“The secret of contentment is knowing how to enjoy what you have, and to be able to lose all desire for things beyond your reach.”

Lin Yutang

As quoted in Remarks of Famous People (1965) by Jacob Morton Braude, p. 23

Secret

“No, the enjoyment of an idle life doesn't cost any money. The capacity for true enjoyment of idleness is lost in the moneyed class and can be found only among people who have a supreme contempt for wealth. It must come from an inner richness of the soul in a man who loves the simple ways of life and who is somewhat impatient with the business of making money.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 155

Love , Life , Money , People

“Our task is not so much discovery as re-discovery. What one needs is not so much thinking as remembering. Sometimes it suffices to sit quietly and listen well, when venerable men have thought before us. Constant forgettings of truths once perceived are the very charm of the human mind; the history of human thought is nothing more than the story of these forgettings and rememberings and forgettings again.”

Lin Yutang

On the Wisdom of America (1950), p. xiv

Men , Truth , History , Thinking

“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.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 36

God

“A man may own a thousand acres of land, and yet he still sleeps upon a bed of five feet.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 38 (Chinese saying)

Sleep

“The three great American vices seem to be efficiency, punctuality, and the desire for achievement and success. They are the things that make the Americans so unhappy and so nervous.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 162

Success

“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.”

Lin Yutang

In Vogue, as quoted by The Reader's Digest, Vols. 30–31 (1937), p. 69

Women , Age , Country

“I like to think of criticism as the highest intellectual effort that mankind is capable of, and above all, I like to think of self-criticism as the most difficult attainment of an educated man.”

Lin Yutang

"The Function of Criticism at the Present Time", in The China Critic, Vol. III, no. 4 (23 January 1930), p. 81

Education , Thinking , Effort

“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.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), Ch. I : The Awakening, p. 8

Way

“The Chinese believe that when there are too many policemen, there can be no individual liberty, when there are too many lawyers, there can be no justice, and when there are too many soldiers, there can be no peace.”

Lin Yutang

Between Tears And Laughter (1943), p. 71. Variant: "When there are too many policemen, there can be no liberty. When there are too many soldiers, there can be no peace. When there are too many lawyers, there can be no justice.", as quoted in The World's Funniest Laws (2005) by James Alexander, ISBN 1905102100, p. 6.

Peace , Justice

“What is patriotism but love of the good things we ate in our childhood? I have said elsewhere that the loyalty to Uncle Sam is the loyalty to doughnuts and ham and sweet potatoes and the loyalty to the German Vaterland is the loyalty to Pfannkuchen and Christmas Stollen. As for international understanding, I feel that macaroni has done more for our appreciation of Italy than Mussolini… in food, as in death, we feel the essential brotherhood of mankind.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), Ch. IV : On Having A Stomach, p. 46

Love , Death , Food , Feeling