“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

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Lin Yutang photo
Lin Yutang 67
Chinese writer 1895–1976

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“It is a queer and fantastic world. Why can't people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has got the wrong thing. Perhaps you can make head or tail of it; it is beyond me.”

Part Four, Ch. V (pp. 237-238)
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Context: It is a queer and fantastic world. Why can't people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has got the wrong thing. Perhaps you can make head or tail of it; it is beyond me.
Is there any terrestrial paradise where, amidst the whispering of the olive-leaves, people can be with whom they like and have what they like and take their ease in shadows and in coolness? Or are all men's lives like the lives of us good people — like the lives of the Ashburnhams, of the Dowells, of the Ruffords — broken, tumultuous, agonized, and unromantic lives, periods punctuated by screams, by imbecilities, by deaths, by agonies? Who the devil knows?

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