Lin Yutang

Author

1895-10-10

Quotes by Lin Yutang

• If one's bowels move, one is happy, and if they don't move, one is unhappy. That is all there is to it.

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

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• The man who has not the habit of reading is imprisoned in his immediate world, in respect to time and space. His life falls into a set routine; he is limited to contact and conversation with a few friends and acquaintances, and he sees only what happens in his immediate neighbourhood. From this prison there is no escape. But the moment he takes up a book, he immediately enters a different world, and if it is a good book, he is immediately put in touch with one of the best talkers of the world. This talker leads him on and carries him into a different country or a different age, or unburdens to him some of his personal regrets, or discusses with him some special line or aspect of life that the reader knows nothing about. An ancient author puts him in communion with a dead spirit of long ago, and as he reads along, he begins to imagine what the ancient author looked like and what type of person he was.

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• If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live

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• The man who has not the habit of reading is imprisoned in his immediate world, in respect to time and space. His life falls into a set routine; he is limited to contact and conversation with a few friends and acquaintances, and he sees only what happens in his immediate neighbourhood. From this prison there is no escape. But the moment he takes up a book, he immediately enters a different world, and if it is a good book, he is immediately put in touch with one of the best talkers of the world. This talker leads him on and carries him into a different country or a different age, or unburdens to him some of his personal regrets, or discusses with him some special line or aspect of life that the reader knows nothing about. An ancient author puts him in communion with a dead spirit of long ago, and as he reads along, he begins to imagine what the ancient author looked like and what type of person he was.

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• If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live

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• If one's bowels move, one is happy, and if they don't move, one is unhappy. That is all there is to it.

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

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• Where there are too many policemen, there is no liberty. Where there are too many soldiers, there is no peace. Where there are too many lawyers, there is no justice.

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• 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.

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• Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.

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• Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do, than what one can

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• I like best of all autumn, because its tone is mellower, its colors are richer, and it is tinged with a little sorrow. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and it is content.

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• Best behavior means the same thing as the most uncomfortable behavior.

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• ... neckties strangle clear thinking.

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• The secret of contentment is knowing how to enjoy what you have, and to be able to lose all desire for things beyond your reach.

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• Business men who are busy the whole day and immediately go to bed after supper, snoring like cows, are not likely to contribute anything to culture.

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• 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.

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• Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do than what one can do.

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• Our lives are not in the lap of the gods, but in the lap of our cooks.

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