Lin Yutang

I like to think of criticism as the highest intellectual effort that mankind is capable of, and above all, I like to think of self-criticism as the most difficult attainment of an educated man.

— Lin Yutang

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

Human history is not the product of the wise direction of human reason, but is shaped by the forces of emotion—our dreams, our pride, our greed, our fears, and our desire for revenge.

— Lin Yutang

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

— Lin Yutang

The Chinese believe that when there are too many policemen, there can be no individual liberty, when there are too many lawyers, there can be no justice, and when there are too many soldiers, there can be no peace.

— Lin Yutang

If compelled to indicate my religion on an immigration blank, I might be tempted to put down the word "Taoist," to the amazement of the customs officer who probably never heard of it.

— Lin Yutang

Our task is not so much discovery as re-discovery. What one needs is not so much thinking as remembering. Sometimes it suffices to sit quietly and listen well, when venerable men have thought before us. Constant forgettings of truths once perceived are the very charm of the human mind; the history of human thought is nothing more than the story of these forgettings and rememberings and forgettings again.

— Lin Yutang

If life is all subjective, why not be subjectively happy rather than subjectively sad?

— Lin Yutang

There are two kinds of animals on earth. One kind minds his own business, the other minds other people's business. The former are vegetarians, like cows, sheep and thinking men. The latter are carnivorous, like hawks, tigers and men of action.

— Lin Yutang

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.

— Lin Yutang

These influences of my young childhood were greatest: 1, the mountain landscape, 2, my father the impossible idealist, and 3, the upringing of a closely-knit Christian home.

— Lin Yutang

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.

— Lin Yutang

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

— Lin Yutang

A mellow understanding of life and of human nature is, and always has been, the Chinese ideal of character, and from that understanding other qualities are derived, such as pacifism, contentment, calm and strength of endurance which distinguish the Chinese character.

— Lin Yutang

To the West, it seems hardly imaginable that the relationship between man and man (which is morality) could be maintained without reference to a Supreme Being, while to the Chinese it is equally amazing that men should not, or could not, behave toward one another as decent beings without thinking of their indirect relationship through a third party.

— Lin Yutang

This is a personal testimony, a testimony of my own experience of thought and life. It is not intended to be objective and makes no claim to establish eternal truths. In fact I rather despise claims to objectivity in philosophy; the point of view is the thing. I should have liked to call it "A Lyrical Philosophy," using the word "lyrical" in the sense of being a highly personal and individual outlook...

— Lin Yutang

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."

— Lin Yutang

While in the West, the insane are so many that they are put in an asylum, in China the insane are so unusual that we worship them, as anybody who has a knowledge of Chinese literature will testify.

— Lin Yutang

A vague uncritical idealism always lends itself to ridicule and too much of it might be a danger to mankind, leading it round in a futile wild-goose chase for imaginary ideals.

— Lin Yutang

It is important that man dreams, but it is perhaps equally important that he can laugh at his own dreams.

— Lin Yutang

I distrust all dead and mechanical formulas for expressing anything connected with human affairs and human personalities. Putting human affairs in exact formulas shows in itself a lack of the sense of humor and therefore a lack of wisdom.

— Lin Yutang

It is not so much what you believe in that matters, as the way in which you believe it and proceed to translate that belief into action.

— Lin Yutang

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

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

— Lin Yutang

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

All men and women have passions, natural desires and noble ambitions, and also a conscience; they have sex, hunger, fear, anger, and are subject to sickness, pain, suffering and death. Culture consists in bringing about the expression of these passions and desires in harmony.

— Lin Yutang

One can learn such a lot and enjoy such a lot in seventy years, and three generations is a long, long time to see human follies and acquire human wisdom. Anyone who is wise and has lived long enough to witness the changes of fashion and morals and politics through the rise and fall of three generations should be perfectly satisfied to rise from his seat and go away saying, "It was a good show," when the curtain falls.

— Lin Yutang

Human life can be lived like a poem.

— Lin Yutang

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

A man may own a thousand acres of land, and yet he still sleeps upon a bed of five feet.

— 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

He who perceives death perceives a sense of the human comedy, and quickly becomes a poet.

— Lin Yutang

What is patriotism but love of the good things we ate in our childhood? I have said elsewhere that the loyalty to Uncle Sam is the loyalty to doughnuts and ham and sweet potatoes and the loyalty to the German Vaterland is the loyalty to Pfannkuchen and Christmas Stollen. As for international understanding, I feel that macaroni has done more for our appreciation of Italy than Mussolini... in food, as in death, we feel the essential brotherhood of mankind.

— Lin Yutang

How many of us are able to distinguish between the odors of noon and midnight, or of winter and summer, or of a windy spell and a still one? If man is so generally less happy in the cities than in the country, it is because all these variations and nuances of sight and smell and sound are less clearly marked and lost in the general monotony of gray walls and cement pavements.

— Lin Yutang

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

— Lin Yutang

On the whole, the enjoyment of leisure is something which decidedly costs less than the enjoyment of luxury. All it requires is an artistic temperament which is bent on seeking a perfectly useless afternoon spent in a perfectly useless manner.

— Lin Yutang

No, the enjoyment of an idle life doesn't cost any money. The capacity for true enjoyment of idleness is lost in the moneyed class and can be found only among people who have a supreme contempt for wealth. It must come from an inner richness of the soul in a man who loves the simple ways of life and who is somewhat impatient with the business of making money.

— Lin Yutang

True peace of mind comes from accepting the worst.

— Lin Yutang

The three great American vices seem to be efficiency, punctuality, and the desire for achievement and success. They are the things that make the Americans so unhappy and so nervous.

— Lin Yutang

A man who has to be punctually at a certain place at five o'clock has the whole afternoon from one to five ruined for him already.

— Lin Yutang

If the early Chinese people had any chivalry, it was manifested not toward women and children, but toward old people. That feeling of chivalry found clear expression in Mencius in some such saying as, "The people with gray hair should not be seen carrying burdens on the street," which was expressed as the final goal of good government.

— Lin Yutang

Life after all is made up of eating and sleeping, of meeting and saying good-by to friends, of reunions and farewell parties, of tears and laughter, of having a haircut once in two weeks, of watering a potted flower and watching one’s neighbor fall off his roof.

— Lin Yutang

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

— Lin Yutang

The greatest ideal that man can aspire to is not to be a show-case of virtue, but just to be a genial, likable and reasonable human being.

— Lin Yutang

The Chinese do not draw any distinction between food and medicine.

— Lin Yutang

When the mirror meets with an ugly woman, when a rare ink-stone finds a vulgar owner, and when a good sword is in the hands of a common general, there is utterly nothing to be done about it.

— Lin Yutang

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

— Lin Yutang

The wise man reads both books and life itself.

— Lin Yutang

Such religion as there can be in modern life, every individual will have to salvage from the churches for himself.

— Lin Yutang

I feel, like all modern Americans, no consciousness of sin and simply do not believe in it. All I know is that if God loves me only half as much as my mother does, he will not send me to Hell. That is a final fact of my inner consciousness, and for no religion could I deny its truth.

— Lin Yutang

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.

— Lin Yutang

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

— Lin Yutang

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

— Lin Yutang