Lin Yutang

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

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“The passion fades, the remorse is eternal.”

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

“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.”

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

“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 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.”

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

“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.”

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

“Happiness for me is largely a matter of digestion.”

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

“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. ”

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

“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. ”

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

“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 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. ”

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

“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. ”

“The wise man reads both books and life itself.”

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

“Make No Distinctions”

“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 willgive him enjoyment, invariably he will find food is the first one.”

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

“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.”