Quotes from book
The Importance of Living

Name: The Importance of Living
Author: Lin Yutang

Lin Yutang

“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

“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

“On the whole, the enjoyment of leisure is something which decidedly costs less than the enjoyment of luxury. All it requires is an artistic temperament which is bent on seeking a perfectly useless afternoon spent in a perfectly useless manner.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 153. Often quoted as: "If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live."

“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.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 332

“This is a personal testimony, a testimony of my own experience of thought and life. It is not intended to be objective and makes no claim to establish eternal truths. In fact I rather despise claims to objectivity in philosophy; the point of view is the thing.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Preface
The Importance of Living (1937)
Context: This is a personal testimony, a testimony of my own experience of thought and life. It is not intended to be objective and makes no claim to establish eternal truths. In fact I rather despise claims to objectivity in philosophy; the point of view is the thing. I should have liked to call it "A Lyrical Philosophy," using the word "lyrical" in the sense of being a highly personal and individual outlook...

“Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: As quoted in Pearls of Wisdom: A Harvest of Quotations From All Ages (1987) by Jerome Agel and Walter D. Glanze, p. 46. From The Importance of Living: "besides the noble art of getting things done, there is a nobler art of leaving things undone" (p. 162), "the wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials" (p. 10).

“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

“Those who are wise won't be busy, and those who are too busy can't be wise.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 150

“The wise man reads both books and life itself.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 388

“There is something in the nature of tea that leads us into a world of quiet contemplation of life.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 224