Top 139 Quotes & Sayings by Lin Yutang - Page 2

There is no proper time and place for reading. When the mood for reading comes, one can read anywhere

The question that faces every man born into this world is not what should be his purpose, which he should set about to achieve, but just what to do with life? The answer, that he should order his life so that he can find the greatest happiness in it, is more a practical question, similar to that of how a man should spend his weekend, then a metaphysical proposition as to what is the mystic purpose of his life in the scheme of the universe.

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.

What threatens civilization today is not war, but the changing conception of life values entailed by certain political doctrines. Only by recapturing the dream of human freedom and restoring the importance of the common man's liberties can that undermining threat to modern civilization be averted

Of all the rights of women, the greatest is to be a mother

Since the invention of the flush toilet and the vacuum carpet cleaner, the modern man seems to judge a man's moral standards by his cleanliness, and thinks a dog the more highly civilized for having a weekly bath and a winter wrapper round his belly.

What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child?

The more we justify our beliefs, the more narrow-minded we become.

Simplicity is the outward sign and symbol of depth of thought.

Probably the difference between man and the monkeys is that the monkeys are merely bored, while man has boredom plus imagination.

Everything that we think God has in his mind necessarily proceeds from our own mind; it is what we imagine to be in God's mind, and it is really difficult for human intelligence to guess at a divine intelligence. What we usually end up with by this sort of reasoning is to make God the color-sergeant of our army and to make Him as chauvinistic as ourselves.

All human happiness is sensuous happiness.

Art is both creation and recreation. Of the two ideas, I think art as recreation or as sheer play of the human spirit is more important.

Few men who have liberated themselves from the fear of God and the fear of death are yet able to liberate themselves from the fear of man.

Now it is characteristic of play that one plays without reason and there must be no reason for it. Play is its own good reason.

Creative work carries with it a form of intense love.

True peace of mind comes from accepting the worst. Psychologically, I think it means a release of energy.

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.

The fonder you are of your ideals, the greater your heartbreaks.

My faith in human dignity consists in the belief that man is the greatest scamp on earth. Human dignity must be associated with the idea of a scamp and not with that of an obedient, disciplined and regimented soldier.

Why should man bother himself so much about salvation, unless he has a feeling of being doomed?

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.

The greater success a man has made, the more he fears a climb down.

No child is born with a really cold heart, and it is only in proportion as we lose that youthful heart that we lose the inner warmth in ourselves.

The only part of Christian teachings which will be truly accepted by the Chinese people is Christ's injunction to be "harmless as doves" but "wise as serpents.

However vague they are, dreams have a way of concealing themselves and leave us no peace until they are translated into reality, like seeds germinating underground, sure to sprout in their search for the sunlight.

All human beings are like travelers floating down the eternal river of time, embarking at a certain point and disembarking again at another point in order to make room for others waiting below the river to come aboard.

The purpose of a short story is ... that the reader shall come away with the satisfactory feeling that a particular insight into human character has been gained, or that his (or her) knowledge of life has been deepened, or that pity, love or sympathy for a human being is awakened.

An educated man is one who has the loves and hatreds together.

I rather despise claims to objectivity in philosophy; the point of view is the thing.

It is not dirt but the fear of dirt which is the sign of man's degeneration, and it is dangerous to judge a man's physical and moral sanity by outside standards.

There are no books in this world that everybody must read, but only books that a person must read at a certain time in a given place under given circumstances and at a given period of his life.

Neckties strangle clear thinking.

Happiness for me is largely a matter of digestion.

In contrast to logic, there is common sense, or still better, the Spirit of Reasonableness.

Men resort to talking only when they haven't the power to enforce their convictions upon others.

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.

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.

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.

I have a hankering to go back to the Orient and discard my necktie. Neckties strangle clear thinking.

I am put on my best behavior, which means the same thing as the most uncomfortable behavior.

All men and women have passions, natural desires and noble ambitions, and also a conscience; they have sex, hunger, fear, anger, and are subject to sickness, pain, suffering and death. Culture consists of bringing about the expression of these passions and desires in harmony.

Alas, our rulers are not gods, but puny, fallible men, like the kings who constantly forget their parts, and we common men should be their prompters.

There is more hope in a heather rose than in all the tons of Teutonic philosophy.

Nobody is ever misunderstood at a fireside; he may only be disagreed with.

No man is inherently respectable, but all women are by nature.

Sometimes there are more tears than laughter, and sometimes there is more laughter than tears, and sometimes you feel so choked you can neither weep nor laugh. For tears and laughter there will always be so long as there is human life. When our tear wells have run dry and the voice of laughter is silenced, the world will be truly dead.

The only test of a soul's salvation is its inward happiness.

Let him cry whoever feels like crying, for we were animals before we became reasoning beings, and the shedding of a tear, whether of forgiveness or of pity or of sheer delight at beauty, will do him a lot of good.

A cocktail party is a place where you talk with a person you do not know about a subject you have no interest in.

After all the allowances are made for the necessity of having a few supermen in our midst - explorers, conquerors, great inventors, great presidents, heroes who change the course of history - the happiest man is still the man of the middle class who has earned a slight means of economic independence, who has done a little, but just a little, for mankind and who is slightly distinguished in his community, but not too distinguished.

When we demand liberty of a person as a constitutional right, we are taking away from the officials their liberty to chop off people's heads.

A tendency to fly too straight at a goal, instead of circling around it, often carries one too far.

And if the reader has no taste for what he reads, all the time is wasted

O wise humanity, terribly wise humanity! How inscrutable is the civilization where men toil and work and worry their hair gray to get a living and forget to play!

I feel, like all modern Americans, no consciousness of sin and simply do not believe in it. All I know is that if God loves me only half as much as my mother does, he will not send me to Hell. That is a final fact of my inner consciousness, and for no religion could I deny its truth.

We (the Chinese) eat food for its texture, the elastic or crisp effect it has on our teeth, as well as for fragrance, flavor and color.

Any good practical philosophy must start out with the recognition of our having a body.

As for international understanding, I feel that macaroni has done more for our appreciation of Italy than Mussolini.

Art is both creation and recreation.