Lin Yutang Quotes - Page 3

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• To me personally the only function of philosophy is to teach us to take life more lightly and gayly than the average businessman does, for no businessman who does not retire at fifty, if he can, is in my eyes a philosopher.

  Lin Yutang

  Philosophy, Eye, Average

  Lin Yutang (1937). “The Importance of Living”

  4 Copy quote

• 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 well as in philosophy, and that she inspired Boccaccio, Goethe, Herder, Schopenhauer, Emerson, and probably also old Aesop.

  Lin Yutang

  Teacher, Philosophy, Animal

  "The wisdom of China and India". Book by Lin Yutang, p. 3-4, 1942.

  13 Copy quote

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

  Lin Yutang

  Blessing, Men, Differences

  Lin Yutang (1937). “The Importance of Living”

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  Lin Yutang

  Country, Struggle, Age

  1945 In the Ladies Home Journal.

  8 Copy quote

• 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 a fish without immediately thinking of how it tastes in the mouth and wanting to eat it. The reason I don't trust Chinese surgeons is that I am afraid that when a Chinese surgeon cuts up my liver in search of a gall-stone, he may forget about the stone and put my liver in a frying pan.

  Lin Yutang

  Believe, Cutting, Thinking

  Lin Yutang (1937). “The Importance of Living”

  4 Copy quote

• Love is an immortal wound that cannot be closed up. A person loses something, a part of her soul, when she loves someone. And she goes about looking for that lost part of her soul, for she knows that otherwise she is incomplete and cannot be at rest. It is only when she is with the person she loves that she becomes complete again in herself; but the moment he leaves, she loses that part which he has taken with him and knows no rest till she has found him once more.

  Lin Yutang

  Love, Taken, Soul

  29 Copy quote

• Life is too short to make an over-serious business out of it.

  Lin Yutang

  Life, Serious Business, Too Short

  Yutang Lin (1936). “The Little critic: essays, satires and sketches on China (first series: 1930-1932)”

  8 Copy quote

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

  Lin Yutang

  Tea, World, Quiet

  Lin Yutang (1937). “The Importance of Living”

  24 Copy quote

• Happiness has always seemed like a bluebird, and consists of moments.

  Lin Yutang

  Moments, Bluebird

  Yutang Lin (1950). “On the Wisdom of America”

  61 Copy quote

• Happiness for me is largely a matter of digestion.

  Lin Yutang

  Ayurveda, Matter, Digestion

  Lin Yutang (1937). “The Importance of Living”

  18 Copy quote

• 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

  Biblical, Views, Monkeys

  Lin Yutang (1937). “The Importance of Living”

  26 Copy quote

• 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 is not to be trusted. He is apt to be always sober and he cannot make a single mistake. His habits are likely to be regular, his existence more mechanical and his head always maintains its supremacy over his heart. Much as I like reasonable persons, I hate completely rational beings.

  Lin Yutang

  Mistake, Hate, Heart

  Lin Yutang (1937). “The Importance of Living”

  14 Copy quote

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

  Lin Yutang

  Men, Hatred, Together

  4 Copy quote

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

  Lin Yutang

  Mean, Thinking, Perception

  Lin Yutang (1937). “The Importance of Living”

  11 Copy quote

• I do not think that any civilization can be called complete until it has progressed from sophistication to unsophistication, and made a conscious return to simplicity of thinking and living.

  Lin Yutang

  Thinking, Civilization, Simplicity

  Lin Yutang (1937). “The Importance of Living”

  16 Copy quote

• There is a great probability that our loss of capacity for enjoying the positive joys of life is largely due to the decreased sensibility of our senses and our lack of full use of them. All human happiness is sensuous happiness.

  Lin Yutang

  Philosophy, Loss, Medicine

  Lin Yutang (2013). “Lin Yutang - The Importance Of Living”, p.73, Read Books Ltd

  28 Copy quote

• Even in despair, man must laugh.

  Lin Yutang

  Laughter, Men, Laughing

  Lin Yutang, (2013). “Between Tears and Laughter”, p.10, Read Books Ltd

  7 Copy quote

• This I conceive to be the chemical function of humor: to change the character of our thought.

  Lin Yutang

  Change, Humor, Character

  Lin Yutang (1937). “The Importance of Living”

  12 Copy quote

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

  Lin Yutang

  Goal, Tendencies, Carrie

  Lin Yutang (1937). “The Importance of Living”

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Lin Yutang

  Death, Order, Rivers

  Lin Yutang (1937). “The Importance of Living”

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Lin Yutang

  Dog, Winter, Men

  Yutang Lin (1939). “My country and my people”

  6 Copy quote

• The most bewildering thing about man is his idea of work and the amount of work he imposes upon himself, or civilization has imposed upon him. All nature loafs, while man alone works for a living.

  Lin Yutang

  Men, Civilization, Ideas

  Lin Yutang (1937). “The Importance of Living”

  6 Copy quote

• 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 them.

  Lin Yutang

  Light, Ideas, Masters

  Lin Yutang (1937). “The Importance of Living”

  12 Copy quote

• The world I believe is far too serious, and being far too serious ... it has need of a wise and merry philosophy.

  Lin Yutang

  Wise, Philosophy, Believe

  Lin Yutang (1937). “The Importance of Living”

  14 Copy quote

• 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.

  Lin Yutang

  Men, Ideas, Soldier

  Lin Yutang (1937). “The Importance of Living”

  7 Copy quote

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