Yu The Great Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Yu The Great. Here they are! All 32 of them:

They’d lost the plot somewhere along the way, their once great romance spun into a period piece, into an immigrant family story, and then into a story about two people trying to get by.
Charles Yu (Interior Chinatown)
As the shock was too great, the muscles in my left foot suddenly lost their strength. This led to it bending at the wrong angle and kicking into the muscle at the back of my lower right leg, which in turn caused the angle of my right knee to be incorrect and rendered it unable to direct my thigh to move in such a way as for me to take a step forward... Although it all sounds terribly complicated, simply put, this situation can be summarized as— I tripped.
Yu Wo (騎士基本理論 (吾命騎士, #1))
But there are two types of people,” Inspector Yu added, his voice quiet. “Those that retreat and huddle together like frightened birds, overwhelmed by the darkness of this kingdom, and those that grasp their freedom to struggle on the behalf of others, their eyes fixed on a great light that will always shine for those who seek it.
June Hur (The Forest of Stolen Girls)
You live like this long enough, a life without chances, you lose your bearings. A life without danger. A life without the risk of Now. In any event, what do I need with Now? Now, I think, is overrated. Now hasn’t been working out so great for me. Now never has.
Charles Yu (How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe)
When you are thirteen, you spend all your time imagining what it would be like to live in a world where you could pay a robot for sex. And that sex would cost a dollar. And the only obstacle to getting that sex would be making sure you had four quarters. Then you grow up and it turns out you do live in that kind of world. A world with coin-operated sexbots. And it's not really as great as you thought it would be.
Charles Yu (How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe)
17.  According as circumstances are favorable, one should modify one’s plans. [Sun Tzu, as a practical soldier, will have none of the “bookish theoric.” He cautions us here not to pin our faith to abstract principles; “for,” as Chang Yu puts it, “while the main laws of strategy can be stated clearly enough for the benefit of all and sundry, you must be guided by the actions of the enemy in attempting to secure a favorable position in actual warfare.” On the eve of the battle of Waterloo, Lord Uxbridge, commanding the cavalry, went to the Duke of Wellington in order to learn what his plans and calculations were for the morrow, because, as he explained, he might suddenly find himself Commander-in-chief and would be unable to frame new plans in a critical moment. The Duke listened quietly and then said: “Who will attack the first tomorrow—I or Bonaparte?” “Bonaparte,” replied Lord Uxbridge. “Well,” continued the Duke, “Bonaparte has not given me any idea of his projects; and as my plans will depend upon his, how can you expect me to tell you what mine are?”75] 18.  All warfare is based on deception. [The truth of this pithy and profound saying will be admitted by every soldier. Col. Henderson tells us that Wellington, great in so many military qualities, was especially distinguished by “the extraordinary skill with which he concealed his movements and deceived both friend and foe.”] 19. 
Sun Tzu (The Art of War)
He thinks that, even if you have a great idea, there have to be trials and tribulations, errors and failures, a dark night of the soul, a slog, a time in the desert, a fallow period, a period of quiet, a period of silent and earnest and frustrated toiling before emerging, victorious, into the sunshine and acclaim.
Charles Yu (How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe)
Every time I read one of the great books, I feel myself transported to another place, and like a timid child I hug them close and mimic their steps, slowly tracing the long river of time in a journey where warmth and emotion fuse. They carry me off with them, then let me make my own way back, and it's only on my return that I realize they will always be a part of me.
Yu Hua (China in Ten Words)
The reality being that they’d lost the plot somewhere along the way, their once great romance spun into a period piece, into an immigrant family story, and then into a story about two people trying to get by. And it was just that: getting by. Barely, and no more. Because they’d also, in the way old people often do, slipped gently into poverty. Also without anyone noticing.
Charles Yu (Interior Chinatown)
The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy, so that he cannot fathom our real intent.’” To put it perhaps a little more clearly: any attack or other operation is CHENG, on which the enemy has had his attention fixed; whereas that is CH’I,” which takes him by surprise or comes from an unexpected quarter. If the enemy perceives a movement which is meant to be CH’I,” it immediately becomes CHENG.”] 4.    That the impact of your army may be like a grindstone dashed against an egg— this is effected by the science of weak points and strong. 5.    In all fighting, the direct method may be used for joining battle, but indirect methods will be needed in order to secure victory. [Chang Yu says: “Steadily develop indirect tactics, either by pounding the enemy’s flanks or falling on his rear.” A brilliant example of “indirect tactics” which decided the fortunes of a campaign was Lord Roberts’ night march round the Peiwar Kotal in the second Afghan war.76 6.    Indirect tactics, efficiently applied, are inexhausible as Heaven and Earth, unending as the flow of rivers and streams; like the sun and moon, they end but to begin anew; like the four seasons, they pass away to return once more. [Tu Yu and Chang Yu understand this of the permutations of CH’I and CHENG.” But at present Sun Tzu is not speaking of CHENG at all, unless, indeed, we suppose with Cheng Yu-hsien that a clause relating to it has fallen out of the text. Of course, as has already been pointed out, the two are so inextricably interwoven in all military operations, that they cannot really be considered apart. Here we simply have an expression, in figurative language, of the almost infinite resource of a great leader.] 7.    There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard. 8.    There are not more than five primary colors (blue, yellow, red, white, and black), yet in combination they produce more hues than can ever been seen. 9.    There are
Sun Tzu (The Art of War)
When asked if he had a special feeling for books, critic-turned-filmmaker Francois Truffaut answered, "No. I love them and films equally, but how I love them!" As an example, Truffaut gave the example that his feeling of love for "Citizen Kane" (USA, 1941) "is expressed in that scene in 'The 400 Blows' where Antoine lights a candle before the picture of Balzac.' My book lights candles for m any of the great authors of this world: Chinua Achebe (Nigeria), Angela Carter (UK), Saratchandra Chattopadhyay (India), Janet Frame (New Zealand), Yu Hua (China), Stieg Larsson (Sweden), Clarice Lispector (Brazil), Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru), Naguib Mifouz (Egypt), Murasaki Shikibu (Japan), and Alice Walker (USA) - to name but a few. Furthermore, graphic novels, manga, musicals, television, webisodes and even amusement park rides like 'Pirates of the Caribbean' can inspire work in adaptation. Let's be open to learning from them all. ("Great Adaptations: Screenwriting and Global Storytelling," 2)
Alexis Krasilovsky (Great Adaptations: Screenwriting and Global Storytelling)
The two girls descended the slope of the little mountain. A few steps round a turn in the pathway which skirted the foot of it took them to the pavilion. Near the water's edge, linking it with Lotus Pavilion farther along the shore, was a bamboo railing. The two old women who were on night watch in it, little imagining that an overspill from the hilltop party would come their way, had long since put their light out and gone to sleep. Dai-yu and Xiang-yun laughed when they saw that the pavilion was in darkness. "They've gone to sleep. Never mind. All the better. Let's sit outside here on the covered verandah and look at the moonlight on the water." They found a couple of drum shaped bamboo stools to sit down on. A great white moon in the water reflected the great white moon above, competing with it in brightness. The girls felt like mermaids sitting in a shining crystal palace beneath the sea. A little wind that brushed over the surface of the water making tiny ripples seemed to cleanse their souls and fill them with buoyant lightness.
Cao Xueqin (The Story of the Stone, or The Dream of the Red Chamber, Vol. 3: The Warning Voice)
This man is someone for whom the world isn’t a mystery. The world is a boulder, but it has levers and he knows when and where and how to apply just the right amount of force, and it moves for him, while my father and I, pushing up against it, don’t have any angle, any torque, no grip or traction or leverage. My father thinks success must be in direct proportion to effort exerted. He doesn’t know where or how to exert the least amount for the most gain, doesn’t know where the secret buttons are, the hidden doors, the golden keys. He thinks that, even if you have a great idea, there have to be trials and tribulations, errors and failures, a dark night of the soul, a slog, a time in the desert, a fallow period, a period of quiet, a period of silent and earnest and frustrated toiling before emerging, victorious, into the sunshine and acclaim. My father makes to-do lists, makes plans, makes business plans. This is how he starts, always with a blank sheet of graph paper. We make bullet points. We identify the key areas we need to research further. We try to figure out how to research those areas. We work in a vacuum. We work in his study. We ponder. We stare at our feet. We stare at the ceiling. We talk to each other, create a world, create a tiny, artificial, formal space, on a blank sheet of paper, where we can imagine rules and principles and categories and ideas, all of which have absolutely nothing to do with the actual world out there.
Charles Yu (How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe)
A striking example from the history of writing is the origin of the syllabary devised in Arkansas around 1820 by a Cherokee Indian named Sequoyah, for writing the Cherokee language. Sequoyah observed that white people made marks on paper, and that they derived great advantage by using those marks to record and repeat lengthy speeches. However, the detailed operations of those marks remained a mystery to him, since (like most Cherokees before 1820) Sequoyah was illiterate and could neither speak nor read English. Because he was a blacksmith, Sequoyah began by devising an accounting system to help him keep track of his customers’ debts. He drew a picture of each customer; then he drew circles and lines of various sizes to represent the amount of money owed. Around 1810, Sequoyah decided to go on to design a system for writing the Cherokee language. He again began by drawing pictures, but gave them up as too complicated and too artistically demanding. He next started to invent separate signs for each word, and again became dissatisfied when he had coined thousands of signs and still needed more. Finally, Sequoyah realized that words were made up of modest numbers of different sound bites that recurred in many different words—what we would call syllables. He initially devised 200 syllabic signs and gradually reduced them to 85, most of them for combinations of one consonant and one vowel. As one source of the signs themselves, Sequoyah practiced copying the letters from an English spelling book given to him by a schoolteacher. About two dozen of his Cherokee syllabic signs were taken directly from those letters, though of course with completely changed meanings, since Sequoyah did not know the English meanings. For example, he chose the shapes D, R, b, h to represent the Cherokee syllables a, e, si, and ni, respectively, while the shape of the numeral 4 was borrowed for the syllable se. He coined other signs by modifying English letters, such as designing the signs , , and to represent the syllables yu, sa, and na, respectively. Still other signs were entirely of his creation, such as , , and for ho, li, and nu, respectively. Sequoyah’s syllabary is widely admired by professional linguists for its good fit to Cherokee sounds, and for the ease with which it can be learned. Within a short time, the Cherokees achieved almost 100 percent literacy in the syllabary, bought a printing press, had Sequoyah’s signs cast as type, and began printing books and newspapers. Cherokee writing remains one of the best-attested examples of a script that arose through idea diffusion. We know that Sequoyah received paper and other writing materials, the idea of a writing system, the idea of using separate marks, and the forms of several dozen marks. Since, however, he could neither read nor write English, he acquired no details or even principles from the existing scripts around him. Surrounded by alphabets he could not understand, he instead independently reinvented a syllabary, unaware that the Minoans of Crete had already invented another syllabary 3,500 years previously.
Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel)
Because it’s nice to think that there’s something that would just make us normal. That would make all our problems go away, that would mean that we were definitely going to be happy in the end and that that something is as great as finding someone you honestly, really could be in love with.
Jennifer Yu
Chiga-Chiga Sputnik-kid, Captain Elvis in neon skin-hugger and power-wheels, rides the high wires in the wee wee dawn hours when the cablecars sleep in their barns, when four A.M. TAOS gurls call the Scorpios from the high and the low places; silver-maned, forgotten samurai in a world with honor without swords; out on blue six through the vastnesses of Great Yu.
Ian McDonald (Out on Blue Six)
(Deep down under the rain and the clouds, down in the sleep-pod in the heart of the great city of Yu, Courtney Hall felt two large salt tears trace down her face.)
Ian McDonald (Out on Blue Six)
every possible Euclidean and non-Euclidean permutation of lights; ten thousand lights, ten million lights, the ten billion lights of Great Yu, each one a voice calling, “I is what I am! Notice me! Notice me!
Ian McDonald (Out on Blue Six)
Probably the most expensive piece of equipment is the Bloomberg terminal, a desktop computer that brings financial types a wealth of up-to-date facts and figures. People swear by it and thanks to their cost (thousands of dollars a month!) they make great status symbols.
Jonathan Stanford Yu (From Zero to Sixty on Hedge Funds and Private Equity 2.0: What They Do, How They Do It, and Why They Do The Mysterious Things They Do)
Self-centeredness became both poetry’s greatness and its weakness. Great because the whole world became the self, a landscape across which the poet capered at will. Weak because even the breeze became an enemy, the turning of the seasons a cause for fear. The falling of a flower became unbearable, birdsong and wilting grass a torment.
Yu Qiuyu
Why did Du Fu write so many poems expressing his fondness for Li Bai, while Li wrote so few? Some have explained it by saying that many of Li Bai’s poems have been lost, and the lost works must have included many about Du Fu. This is a charitable interpretation, and it might even be true, but there is little point in us trying to impose equality on their friendship from our vantage point, centuries later. They were two very different personalities. Despite this, they were both great friends, models for generations to come. When a roc and a swan goose come together, their wing beats shred the air, and all creation looks up in wonder, but when they separate, the swan goose sings on and on of their encounter, while the roc has long since disappeared over the southern reaches or the northern oceans. It knows no bonds; it knows no obstacles. They are very different, these two, but they are both masters of the air, glories of the world.
Yu Qiuyu
The sun has set. Mountain, tree, rock, river— All the grand buildings are buried in shadows. People light their lamps with great interest, Delighting in all they can see, Hoping to find what they wish.
XU YU NUO ZHU (Xu Yunuo Compilation poems (Set 2 Volumes))
As he turned, he happened to catch sight of Dai-yu, who was sitting behind Bao-chai, smiling mockingly and stroking her cheek with her finger – which in sign-language means, ‘You are a great big liar and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.
Cao Xueqin (The Crab-Flower Club (The Story of the Stone #2))
Returning to the One' is for the heart to be in the One. It is cutting off and breaking away from attachment to external things, so that the self's seeking, loving, knowledge, and discernment are cut off and broken away from all that is sought after, all that is loved, all that is known, and all that is discerned (other than the One). (Then) there will only be an awareness of the Lord, and this awareness of the Lord is non-awareness.
Liu Chih (Chinese Gleams of Sufi Light: Wang Tai-yu's Great Learning of the Pure and Real and Liu Chih's Displaying the Concealment of the Real Realm)
WONG 107 words SHUI-KUEN WONG, age 107, beloved mother of the late Kwok Ki Yu. Survived by grandson and granddaughter-in-law, Shan and Huong Yu, grandson Wai Keung (Joe) Yu, granddaughters and grandsons-in-law Patricia and Gabriel Tovanche, Sau Mei (Carol) and Scott Mann and adopted grandson and granddaughter-in-law Quang Truong and Quyen Do. Also survived by great-grandchildren, Kristy Do, Kevin Yu; Lorenzo, Alonzo and Lorena Tovanche; Mei-Li Mann; Nguyen Minh Nhut and Nguyen Minh Thu Do. The family will receive friends at GOLUB FUNERAL HOME, 4703 SUPERIOR AVE., CLEVELAND, THURSDAY, NOV. 20, FROM 5-8 P.M. Funeral service FRIDAY, Nov. 21 at the funeral home at 9 A.M. Interment West Park Cemetery. ==========
Anonymous
There is a Yu’adir word for wisdom, chokhmah. Scripture tells us that chokhmah is the unspotted mirror of the power of God, the image of his goodness. Fear of the Lord is the foundation of understanding. We must always seek chokhmah, even at a great cost to ourselves.
Allison Saft (A Far Wilder Magic)
The great shame of your life that you can’t speak his language, not really, not fluently.
Charles Yu (Interior Chinatown)
He says something you don't quite follow. You hear it, you catch most of the individual words, and yet somehow--you don't understand. This gap, always there. Somehow unbridgeable, whether it's across a wide Pacific gulf of language and culture, or just a simple sentence, father to son, always distance. The texture of everyday actions, simple movements and gestures, is harder than it looks. The great shame of your life that you can't speak his language, not really, not fluently.
Charles Yu (Interior Chinatown)
Learn Chinese in 5 Minutes  1) That’s not right = Sum Ting Wong  2) Are you harbouring a fugitive = Hu Yu Hai Ding  3) See me ASAP = Kum Hia  4) Stupid Man = Dum Fuk  5) Small Horse = Tai Ni Po Ni  6) Did you go to the beach = Wai Yu So Tan  7) I bumped the coffee table = Ai Bang Mai Fa Kin Ni  8) I think you need a face lift = Chin Tu Fat  9) It’s Very dark in here = Wai So Dim  10) I Thought you were on a diet = Wai Yu Mun Ching  11) This is a tow away zone = No Pah King  12) Our meeting is scheduled for next week = Wai Yu Kum Nao  13) Staying out of sight = Lei Ying Lo  14) He’s cleaning his automobile = Wa Shing Ka  15) Your body odor is offensive = Yu Stin Ki Pu  16) Great = Fa Kin Su Pah
Adam Smith (Funny Jokes: 300+ Jokes & Riddles, Anecdotes and Short Funny stories (Comedy Central))
As Courtney Hall passed through the streets of Great Yu, it was repeated at every tram halt, every public breakfast stall, every Food Corps costermonger’s barrow, anger and confusion and shouting voices, a ball of confusion gathering a thousand, ten thousand, a million, ten million souls into itself as it rolled behind Courtney Hall through the boulevards of Yu.
Ian McDonald (Out on Blue Six)
know, Will. I know. I wish it didn’t have to be like this, but you know how it is. You’re an Asian Man. Your story was great, while it lasted, but now it’s done. I hope our paths cross again. Maybe somewhere else.
Charles Yu (Interior Chinatown)
This is incredibly frustrating for those who have creative ideas which may positively impact the status quo, especially when their ideas are immediately shot down or the approval process is dragged out indefinitely. It is a sad scenario - as companies grow larger and more bureaucratic, they become less agile, less adaptive to changing business conditions. As a result, younger and more nimble companies adapt to changing business models more swiftly than their cumbersome counterparts and quickly take advantage of new opportunities. All too often many great companies from the past century eventually fall into extinction.
Yu-kai Chou (Actionable Gamification: Beyond Points, Badges, and Leaderboards)