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Lin Yutang cytaty
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Lin Yutang – chiński pisarz, publicysta, wynalazca i uczony, znany na Zachodzie dzięki przekładom chińskiej klasyki i wpływowym publikacjom o Chinach pisanych w języku angielskim. W Polsce ze względu na brak tłumaczeń pozostaje nieznany.

Pochodził z prowincji Fujian, z okolic miasta Xiamen. Ten górzysty region wywarł duże wpływ na jego pisarstwo. Lin określał się chętnie jako dziecko gór. Jego ojciec był aktywnym członkiem miejscowej społeczności protestanckiej.

Lin uzyskał tytuł bakałarza na Uniwersytecie Św. Jana w Szanghaju, a następnie uzyskał stypendium na Harvard University w USA.

Przed jego ukończeniem, przeniósł się jednak do Francji, a następnie do Niemiec, na Uniwersytecie w Lipsku uzyskał doktorat z zakresu sinologii. W latach 1923 - 1926 wykładał literaturę angielską na Uniwersytecie Pekińskim. Po powrocie do USA w 1931 r. zatrzymano go na krótko na Ellis Island.

Lin był aktywnym popularyzatorem klasycznej literatury chińskiej na Zachodzie, chętnie objaśniał również chińską filozofię życia. Zaangażował się również w opracowanie latynizacji języka chińskiego i stworzył własny system indeksowania chińskich znaków .

Interesował się również mechaniką, dzięki czemu wynalazł chińską maszynę do pisania, a także kilka gadżetów, m.in. szczoteczkę do zębów z dozownikiem pasty. Po 1928 r. żył głównie w USA, gdzie cieszył się popularnością dzięki swoim tłumaczeniom chińskiej klasyki. Jego książki do przykład budowania mostów między Wschodem i Zachodem. Lin był regularnie wymieniany wśród kandydatów do Literackiej Nagrody Nobla.

Międzynarodową sławę przyniosły mu już dwie pierwsze książki Mój kraj i mój naród oraz Sztuka życia . Napisane po angielsku błyskotliwym, przystępnym stylem objaśniały one ludziom Zachodu zawiłości chińskiej tradycji i kultury. Jego inne prace obejmują: Between Tears and Laughter , The Importance of Understanding , The Chinese Theory of Art . Był również autorem powieści Moment in Peking oraz The Vermillion Gate , a także słownika chińsko-angielskiego .

Jego żona Lin Tsuifeng była autorką książek kucharskich, które przyczyniły się do popularyzacji kuchni chińskiej w USA. Lin Yutang napisał do jednej z tych książek przedmowę.

Dr Lin Yutang został pochowany w swoim domu w Yangmingshan w Tajpej na Tajwanie. Mieści się tam obecnie muzeum prowadzone przez Soochow University. Wikipedia  

✵ 10. Październik 1895 – 26. Marzec 1976
Lin Yutang Fotografia
Lin Yutang: 67   Cytatów 0   Polubień

Lin Yutang: Cytaty po angielsku

“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.”

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Lin Yutang książka The Importance of Living

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

“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.”

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Lin Yutang

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

“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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Lin Yutang książka The Importance of Living

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

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

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Lin Yutang książka The Importance of Living

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

“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.”

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Lin Yutang książka The Importance of Living

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

“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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Lin Yutang

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

“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.”

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Lin Yutang

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

“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.”

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Lin Yutang książka The Importance of Living

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

“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.”

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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.

“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.”

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Lin Yutang książka The Importance of Living

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

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

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Lin Yutang

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

“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.”

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Lin Yutang

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

“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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Lin Yutang książka The Importance of Living

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

“Human life can be lived like a poem.”

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Lin Yutang książka The Importance of Living

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

“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.”

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Lin Yutang książka The Importance of Living

Źródło: 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.”

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Lin Yutang książka The Importance of Living

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

“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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Lin Yutang książka The Importance of Living

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

“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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Lin Yutang

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

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

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Lin Yutang książka The Importance of Living

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

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

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Lin Yutang książka The Importance of Living

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

“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.”

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Lin Yutang

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

“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.”

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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)

“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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Lin Yutang książka The Importance of Living

Źródło: 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.”

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Lin Yutang książka The Importance of Living

Źródło: The Importance of Living (1937), Ch. I : The Awakening, p. 12
Kontekst: 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.

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

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Lin Yutang książka The Importance of Living

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

“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.”

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Lin Yutang książka The Importance of Living

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

“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.”

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Lin Yutang książka The Importance of Living

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

“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.”

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Lin Yutang

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

“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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Lin Yutang książka The Importance of Living

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

“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.”

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Lin Yutang książka The Importance of Living

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