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
The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials.
-- Lin Yutang
...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...
-- Lin Yutang
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
...it is not when he is working in his office but when he is lying idly on the sand that his soul utters, 'Life is beautiful.'
-- Lin Yutang
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.
-- Lin Yutang
Such religion as there can be in modern life, every individual will have to salvage from the churches for himself.
-- Lin Yutang
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
If you spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.
-- Lin Yutang
...by association with natures enormities, a man's heart may truly grow big also. There is a way of looking upon a landscape as a moving picture and being satisfied with nothing less big as a moving picture, a way of looking upon tropic clouds over the horizon as the backdrop of a stage and being satisfied with nothing less big as a backdrop, a way of looking upon the mountain forests as a private garden and being satisfied with nothing less as a private garden, a way of listening to the roaring waves as a concert and being satisfied with nothing less as a concert, and a way of looking upon the mountain breeze as an air-cooling system and being satisfied with nothing less as an air-cooling system. So do we become big, even as the earth and firmaments are big. Like the 'Big Man' described by Yuan Tsi (A.D. 210-263), one of China's first romanticists, we 'live in heaven and earth as our house.
-- Lin Yutang
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
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
What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child?
-- Lin Yutang
...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
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
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
One can learn such a lot and enjoy such a lot in seventy years, and three generations is a long, long time to see human follies and acquire human wisdom. Anyone who is wise and has lived long enough to witness the changes of fashion and morals and politics through the rise and fall of three generations should be perfectly satisfied to rise from his seat and go away saying, 'It was a good show,' when the curtain falls.
-- Lin Yutang
A reasonable naturalist then settles down to this life with a sort of animal satisfaction. As Chinese illiterate women put it, 'Others gave birth to us and we give birth to others. What else are we to do?'....Life becomes a biological procession and the very question of immortality is sidetracked. For that is the exact feeling of a Chinese grandfather holding his grandchild by the hand and going to the shops to buy some candy, with the thought that in five or ten years he will be returning to his grave or to his ancestors. The best that we can hope for in this life is that we shall not have sons and grandsons of whom we need to be ashamed.
-- Lin Yutang
Technorati Tags: Quotations
Post new comment