Lin Yutang Quotes

True peace of mind comes from accepting the worst.

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

By association with nature's enormities, a man's heart may truly grow big also. There is a way of looking upon a landscape as a moving picture and being satisfied with nothing less big as a moving picture, a way of looking upon tropic clouds over the horizon as the backdrop of a stage and being satisfied with nothing less big as a backdrop, a way of looking upon the mountain forests as a private garden and being satisfied with nothing less as a private garden, a way of listening to the roaring waves as a concert and being satisfied with nothing less as a concert, and a way of looking upon the mountain breeze as an air-cooling system and being satisfied with nothing less as an air-cooling system. So do we become big, even as the earth and firmaments are big. Like the "Big Man" described by Yuan Tsi (A.D. 210-263), one of China's first romanticists, we "live in heaven and earth as our house."

Beside the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone.

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.

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."

Make No Distinctions

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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