Lin Yutang Quotes

83 quotes in 1194 categories

• I have done my best. That is about all the philosophy of living one needs.
• The history omankind seems like kite flying; sometimes, when the wind is favorable, we let go the string a little and the kite soars a…
• 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…
• Only he who handles his ideas lightly is master of his ideas, and only he who is master of his ideas is not enslaved by…
• 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…
• Of all the unhappy people in the world, the unhappiest are those who have not found something they want to do.
• It is important that man dreams, but it is perhaps equally important that he can laugh at his own dreams.
• Not until we see the richness of the Hindu mind and its essential spirituality can we understand India
• I am willing to allow that smoking is a moral weakness, but on the other hand, we must beware of the man without weaknesses. He…
• Art is both creation and recreation.
• Probably the difference between man and the monkeys is that the monkeys are merely bored, while man has boredom plus imagination.
• Today we are afraid of simple words like goodness and mercy and kindness. We don't believe in the good old words because we don't believe…
• Anyone who reads a book with a sense of obligation does not understand the art of reading.
• If one's bowels move, one is happy, and if they don't move, one is unhappy. That is all there is to it.
• 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…
• In fact,I believe the reason why the Chinese failed to develop botany and zoology is that the Chinese scholar cannot stare coldly and unemotionally at…
• And if the reader has no taste for what he reads, all the time is wasted
• There is no proper time and place for reading. When the mood for reading comes, one can read anywhere
• A good traveller is one who does not know where he is going to, and a perfect traveller does not know where he came from.
• India was China's teacher in religion and imaginative literature, and the world's teacher in trignometry, quandratic equations, grammar, phonetics, Arabian Nights, animal fables, chess, as…

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