Yutang Quotes

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.

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

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

No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.

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

When Small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set.

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

The busy man is never wise and the wise man is never busy.

The wise man reads both books and life itself.

Anyone who reads a book with a sense of obligation does not understand the art of reading.

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.

I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because its leaves are a little yellow, its tone mellower, its colours richer, and it is tinged a little with sorrow and a premonition of death. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor of the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and is content. From a knowledge of those limitations and its richness of experience emerges a symphony of colours, richer than all, its green speaking of life and strength, its orange speaking of golden content and its purple of resignation and death

There is so much to love and to admire in this life that it is an act of ingratitude not to be happy and content in this existence.

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.

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

I regard the discovery of one’s favorite author as the most critical event in one’s intellectual development.

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

If man be sensible and one fine morning, while he is lying in bed, counts at the tips of his fingers how many things in this life truly will give him enjoyment, invariably he will find food is the first one.

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

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

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

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

The moment a student gives up his right of personal judgment, he is in for accepting all the humbugs of life

Happiness for me is largely a matter of digestion.

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

The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.” —Lin Yutang

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.

When one's thoughts and experience have not reached a certain point for reading a masterpiece, the masterpiece will leave only a bad flavor on his palate.

Anyone who wishes to learn to enjoy life must find friends of the same type of temperament, and take as much trouble to gain and keep their friendship as wives take to keep their husbands.

For a Westerner, it is usually sufficient for a proposition to be logically sound. For a Chinese it is not sufficient that a proposition be logically correct, but it must be at the same time in accord with human nature.

Nobody is right and nobody is wrong. Only one thing is right, and that is the Truth, but nobody knows what it is. It is a thing that changes all the time, and then comes back to the same thing. -Old Yao

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.

Much as I like reasonable persons, I hate completely rational beings. For that reason, I am always scared and ill at ease when I enter a house in which there are no ash trays.

A good traveler is one who who does not know where he is going to , and a perfect traveler does not know where he came from.

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it, and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.

The passion fades, the remorse is eternal.

Who are we? That is the first question. It is a question almost impossible to answer. But we all agree that the busy self occupied in our daily activities is not quite the real self. We are quite sure we have lost something in the mere pursuit of living.

After all, 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. Seriousness, after all, is only a sign of effort, and effort is a sign of imperfect mastery,

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

Make No Distinctions

So long as man is man, variety will still be the flavor of life.

It is against the will of God to eat delicate food hastily, to pass gorgeous views hurriedly, to express deep sentiments superficially, to pass a beautiful day steeped in food and drinks, and to enjoy your wealth steeped in luxuries.

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.

There is a certain proper and luxurious way of lying in bed. Confucius, that great artist of life, "never lay straight" in bed, "like a corpse", but always curled up on one side. I believe one of the greatest pleasures of life is to curl up one's legs in bed. The posture of the arms is also very important, in order to reach the greatest degree of aesthetic pleasure and mental power. I believe the best posture is not lying flat on the bed, but being upholstered with big soft pillows at an angle of thirty degrees with either one arm or both arms placed behind the back of one's head.

Lin Yutang also believed that reading is an art. One chapter of the Importance of Living is devoted to "the Art of Reading." Lin writes that, "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 neighborhood.

Scholars who are worth anything at all never know what is call "a hard grind" or what "bitter study" means.

Peace of mind is that mental condition in which you have accepted the worst.

I can see no other reason for the existence of art and poetry and religion except as they tend to restore in us a freshness of vision and more emotional glamour and more vital sense of life.

Nothing matters to a man who says nothing matters,

Now it must be taken for granted that simplicity of life and thought is the highest and sanest ideal for civilization and culture, that when a civilization loses simplicity and the sophisticated do not return to unsophistication, civilization becomes increasingly full of troubles and degenerates. Man then becomes the slave of the ideas, thoughts, ambitions and social systems that are his own product.

As Walt Whitman says, “I am sufficient as I am.” It is sufficient that I live—and am probably going to live for another few decades—and that human life exists. Viewed that way, the problem becomes amazingly simple and admits of no two answers. What can be the end of human life except the enjoyment of it?

Philosophy not only begins with the individual, but also ends with the individual. For an individual is the final fact of life. He is an end in himself, and not a means to other creations of the human mind. The

Confucius said, “When young, beware of fighting; when strong, beware of sex; and when old, beware of possession,” which simply means that a boy loves fighting, a young man loves women, and an old man loves money.

Всички придобиват в годните на своето израстване по нещичко от особеностите на града и средата, в която живеят.

Every man must find his own philosophy, his attitude towards life.

The outstanding characteristic of Western scholarship is its specialization and cutting up of knowledge into different departments. The over-development of logical thinking and specialization, with its technical phraseology, has brought about the curious fact of modern civilization, that philosophy has been so far relegated to the background, far behind politics and economics, that the average man can pass it by without a twinge of conscience. The feeling of the average man, even of the educated person, is that philosophy is a "subject" which he can best afford to go without. This is certainly a strange anomaly of modern culture, for philosophy, which should lie closest to men's bosom and business, has become most remote from life. It was not so in the classical civilization of the Greeks and Romans, and it was not so in China, where the study of wisdom of life formed the scholars' chief occupation. Either the modern man is not interested in the problems of living, which are the proper subject of philosophy, or we have gone a long way from the original conception of philosophy.

The critical mind is too thin and cold, thinking itself will help little and reason will be of small avail; only the spirit of reasonableness, a sort of warm, glowing, emotional and intuitive thinking, joined with compassion, will insure us against a reversion to our ancestral type. Only the development of our life to bring it into harmony with our instincts can save us. I consider the education of our senses and our emotions rather more important than the education of our ideas.

The best social philosophies do not claim any greater objective than that the individual human beings living under such a regime shall have happy individual lives. If there are social philosophies which deny the happiness of the individual life as the final goal and aim of civilization, those philosophies are the product of a sick and unbalanced mind.

One dies without regret if there is one in the whole world a "bosom friend," or one who "knows his heart.

This I conceive to be the chemical function of humor: to change the character of our thought. —Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living

With the predominance of economic problems and economic thinking, which is overshadowing all other forms of human thinking, we remain completely ignorant of, and indifferent to, a more humanized knowledge and a more humanized philosophy, a philosophy that deals with the problems of the individual life.

It is difficult to imagine this kind of a new world because our present world is so different. On the whole, our life is too complex, our scholarship too serious, our philosophy too somber, and our thoughts too involved. This seriousness and this involved complexity of our thought and scholarship make the present world such an unhappy one today.

A good cook was like a good educator; his duty was solely to bring out the talent of the chicken and show it to best advantage, as a good teacher brings out the talent inherent in a young man. Granted that the original talent was there in the chicken, too much coaxing, stuffing, imposing, and spicing would merely distract from its simple beauty and virtue.

Love of one’s fellowmen should not be a doctrine, an article of faith, a matter of intellectual conviction, or a thesis supported by arguments. The love of mankind which requires reasons is no true love. This love should be perfectly natural, as natural for man as for the birds to flap their wings. It should be a direct feeling, springing naturally from a healthy soul, living in touch with Nature.

And did not the degeneration of religion begin with reason itself? As Santayana says, the process of degeneration of religion was due to too much reasoning: “This religion unhappily long ago ceased to be wisdom expressed in fancy in order to become superstition overlaid with reasoning.” The decay of religion is due to the pedantic spirit, in the invention of creeds, formulas, articles of faith, doctrines and apologies. We become increasingly less pious as we increasingly justify and rationalize our beliefs and become so sure that we are right.

man’s dignity consists in the following facts which distinguish man from animals. First, that he has a playful curiosity and a natural genius for exploring knowledge; second, that he has dreams and a lofty idealism (often vague, or confused, or cocky, it is true, but nevertheless worthwhile); third, and still more important, that he is able to correct his dreams by a sense of humor, and thus restrain his idealism by a more robust and healthy realism; and finally, that he does not react to surroundings mechanically and uniformly as animals do, but possesses the ability and the freedom to determine his own reactions and to change surroundings at his will.

La mitad de la belleza depende del paisaje y la otra mitad de quien mira.

Reality + Dreams + Humor = Wisdom   So

that it is not when he is working in the office but when he is lying idly on the sand that his soul utters, “Life is beautiful

Reality—Dreams = Animal Being Reality + Dreams = A Heart-Ache (usually called Idealism) Reality + Humor = Realism (also called Conservatism) Dreams—Humor = Fanaticism Dreams + Humor = Fantasy Reality + Dreams + Humor = Wisdom

when after a perfect dinner I lounge in an armchair, when there is no one I hate to look at in the company and conversation rambles off at a light pace to an unknown destination, and I am spiritually and physically at peace with the world;

Nations have their dreams and the memories of such dreams persist through generations and centuries. Some of these are noble dreams, and others wicked and ignoble. The dreams of conquest and of being bigger and stronger than all the others are always bad dreams, and such nations always have more to worry about than others who have more peaceful dreams. But there are other and better dreams, dreams of a better world, dreams of peace and of nations living at peace with one another, and dreams of less cruelty, injustice, and poverty and suffering.

Познаваше точно качествата, които могат да направят някого висш чиновник – качества, напълно различни от тези, които могат да направят някого човек. Така, както вървяха работите по онова време, един добър човек не можеше да стане чиновник; деен човек не можеше да стане чиновник; нетърпелив човек не можеше да стане чиновник; честен човек не можеше да бъде чиновник; учен човек не можеше да стане чиновник; много умен човек не можеше да бъде чиновник; чувствителен или съвестен човек не можеше да бъде чиновник; много смел човек не можеше да бъде чиновник.

Il n'y a pas de livres en ce monde que chacun devrait lire, il n'y a que des livres qu'une personne devrait lire à un certain moment, dans un certain endroit, dans des circonstances données et à une certaine époque de sa vie. Je crois que la lecture, comme le mariage, est déterminée par le destin.

There was a man who was in Hell and about to be re-incarnated, and he said to the King of Re-incarnation, “If you want me to return to the earth as a human being, I will go only on my own conditions.” “And what are they?” asked the King. The man replied, “I must be born the son of a cabinet minister and father of a future ‘Literary Wrangler’ (the scholar who comes out first at the national examinations). I must have ten thousand acres of land surrounding my home and fish ponds and fruits of every kind and a beautiful wife and pretty concubines, all good and loving to me, and rooms stocked to the ceiling with gold and pearls and cellars stocked full of grain and trunks chockful of money, and I myself must be a Grand Councilor or a Duke of the First Rank and enjoy honor and prosperity and live until I am a hundred years old,” And the King of Re-incarnation replied, “If there was such a lot on earth, I would go and be re-incarnated myself, and not give it to you!

The Genesis story of the reason why Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden of Eden was not that they had tasted of the Tree of Knowledge, as is popularly conceived, but the fear lest they should disobey a second time and eat of the Tree of Life and live forever: And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one. of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

Como la tormenta no podía soplar en todas partes a la vez, siempre había algún rincón donde quedaban unas hojas, un rincón donde brillaba el sol y donde temporalmente había un refugio de paz. La historia de la Guerra de China, como la historia de todos los grandes movimientos, está escrita en las mentes y los corazones de su generación. Dentro de cincuenta o cien años, en las charlas caseras y los relatos de las viejas, se contarán las historias de miles de esas hojas barridas por la tormenta. Cada hoja en la tormenta es un individuo con un corazón y sentimientos y aspiraciones y deseos.

Tal vez lleguemos incluso a la conclusión de que el progreso general de la historia no se orienta a hacer nuestra vida más llevadera, sino a hacer cada vez más difícil ganársela. Tal como comentó el filósofo chino Lin Yutang, desde la perspectiva de la civilización regida por la ética protestante, "la civilización consiste sobre todo en buscar comida, mientras que el progreso es aquel avance que hace más y más difícil conseguir qué comer".

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.” LIN YUTANG, Chinese writer and inventor

The wise man reads both books and life itself. - Lin Yutang

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.” — Lin Yutang

THE WISDOM OF LIFE CONSISTS IN THE ELIMINATION OF NON-ESSENTIALS. —Lin Yutang

The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.

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

How to Say “No” When It Matters Most “The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.” —Lin Yutang “Discipline equals freedom.” —Jocko Willink (page 412)

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

The result is a constant, unintelligent elaboration of the Chinaman as a stage fiction, which is as childish as it is untrue and with which the West is so familiar, and a continuation of the early Portuguese sailors' tradition minus the sailors' obscenity of language, but with essentially the same sailors' obscenity of mind.

We have lost the courage to hope.

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

You have no idea how quickly a girl grows up.

knew as well as any American that America was shipping oil and scrap iron to Tokyo to bomb Chinese women and children.

nothing the western nations can do can stop her or keep her down.

Chinese have always been a proud people,

humour is an essential part of Chinese nature,

Americans worried about China and unnecessarily alarmed about the government

If the liberty of thought is the highest activity of the human mind, then the suppression of that liberty must be the most degrading to us as human beings. Euripides

Totisesti on olemassa hetkiä, jolloin elämä on meille liian suurta, jolloin kaikki tyynni on liitossa meitä vastaan pettääkseen ja tuhotakseen toiveemme; silloin ihminen on kuin kulkija, joka on metsässä kadottanut suuntamerkit tai joutunut maanalaiseen luolaan, missä törmää kivimuuriin, kääntyipä minne hyvänsä.

my formula for the Chinese national mind is: R4D1H3S3 There

THE WISDOM OF LIFE CONSISTS IN THE ELIMINATION OF NON-ESSENTIALS. —Lin Yutang

it is while prone that ideas come. “A writer could get more ideas for his articles or his novels in this posture than he could by sitting doggedly before his desk morning and afternoon,” writes Lin Yutang in his essay “On Lying in Bed.