Lin Yutang: Trending quotes (page 3)

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Lin Yutang: 134   quotes 14   likes

“If life is all subjective, why not be subjectively happy rather than subjectively sad?”

Lin Yutang

On the Wisdom of America (1950), p. 155

Life , Sadness , Happiness

“To the West, it seems hardly imaginable that the relationship between man and man (which is morality) could be maintained without reference to a Supreme Being, while to the Chinese it is equally amazing that men should not, or could not, behave toward one another as decent beings without thinking of their indirect relationship through a third party.”

Lin Yutang

Source: My Country and My People (1935), p. 106

Men , Imagination , Thinking

“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.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 193

Women , Children , People , Feeling

“Human life can be lived like a poem.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 32

Life

“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.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), Ch. I : The Awakening, p. 4

“While 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, as anybody who has a knowledge of Chinese literature will testify.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), Ch. I : The Awakening, p. 3

Literature , Knowledge

“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.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), Ch. I : The Awakening, p. 5

Wisdom , Sense , Personality , Dead

“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.”

Lin Yutang

Source: My Country and My People (1935), p. 43

Life , Understanding , Nature

“He who perceives death perceives a sense of the human comedy, and quickly becomes a poet.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), pp. 39–40

Death , Sense

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

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), Ch. I : The Awakening, pp. 4–5

Dreams

“These influences of my young childhood were greatest: 1, the mountain landscape, 2, my father the impossible idealist, and 3, the upringing of a closely-knit Christian home.”

Lin Yutang

Memoirs of an Octogenarian (1975), pp. 8–9

Home , Mountain , Childhood

“I am here to speak on freedom of speech. It is a great topic, and I am going to make my speech as free as possible. But you know that this cannot be done, for when anyone announces that he is going to speak his mind freely, everyone is frightened. This shows that there is no such thing as true freedom of speech. No one can afford to let his neighbors know what he is thinking about them. Society can exist only on the basis that there is some amount of polished lying and that no one says exactly what he thinks.”

Lin Yutang

" Of Freedom of Speech http://books.google.com/books?id=OM4eT2epYzwC&q="Society+can+exist+only+on+the+basis+that+there+is+some+amount+of+polished+lying+and+that+no+one+says+exactly+what+he+thinks"&pg=PA95#v=onepage", lecture given in China (4 March 1933)

Lying , Thinking , Freedom

“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.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 163

“The scamp will be the last and most formidable enemy of dictatorships. He will be the champion of human dignity and individual freedom, and will be the last to be conquered. All modern civilization depends entirely upon him.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), Ch. I : The Awakening, p. 12
Context: I am doing my best to glorify the scamp or vagabond. I hope I shall succeed. For things are not so simple as they sometimes seem. In this present age of threats to democracy and individual liberty, probably only the scamp and the spirit of the scamp alone will save us from being lost in serially numbered units in the masses of disciplined, obedient, regimented and uniformed coolies. The scamp will be the last and most formidable enemy of dictatorships. He will be the champion of human dignity and individual freedom, and will be the last to be conquered. All modern civilization depends entirely upon him.

Freedom , Dependency

“Such religion as there can be in modern life, every individual will have to salvage from the churches for himself.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 397

Life , Religion

“I do not think that any civilization can be called complete until it has progressed from sophistication to unsophistication, and made a conscious return to simplicity of thinking and living, and I call no man wise until he has made the progress from the wisdom of knowledge to the wisdom of foolishness, and become a laughing philosopher, feeling first life's tragedy and then life's comedy. For we must weep before we can laugh. Out of sadness comes the awakening, and out of the awakening comes the laughter of the philosopher, with kindliness and tolerance to boot.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

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

Life , Wisdom , Sadness , Feeling

“How many of us are able to distinguish between the odors of noon and midnight, or of winter and summer, or of a windy spell and a still one? If man is so generally less happy in the cities than in the country, it is because all these variations and nuances of sight and smell and sound are less clearly marked and lost in the general monotony of gray walls and cement pavements.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 129

Winter , Summer , Country , Happiness

“If compelled to indicate my religion on an immigration blank, I might be tempted to put down the word "Taoist," to the amazement of the customs officer who probably never heard of it.”

Lin Yutang

The Wisdom of Laotse (1948), Introduction, p. 15

Religion

“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.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

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

Life , Personality

“The greatest ideal that man can aspire to is not to be a show-case of virtue, but just to be a genial, likable and reasonable human being.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 242