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Lin Yutang Quotes (1895-1976)
Writer
About Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang (Traditional Chinese: ζθͺε ; Simplified Chinese: ζθ―ε ; pinyin: LΓn YΗtΓ‘ng) (10 October 1895 β 26 March 1976) was a Chinese writer and translator.
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Explore our curated collection of the most famous and impactful Lin Yutang quotes.
βThe Chinese do not draw any distinction between food and medicine.β
βThose who are wise won't be busy, and those who are too busy can't be wise.β
βIf life is all subjective, why not be subjectively happy rather than subjectively sad?β
βA man may own a thousand acres of land, and yet he still sleeps upon a bed of five feet.β
βHe who perceives death perceives a sense of the human comedy, and quickly becomes a poet.β
βThere is something in the nature of tea that leads us into a world of quiet contemplation of life.β
βA good traveler is one who does not know where he is going to, and a perfect traveler does not know where he came from.β
βIt 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."β
βNo one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.β
βThe world I believe is far too serious, and being far too serious, is it has need of a wise and merry philosophy.β
βThe 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.β
βThe secret of contentment is knowing how to enjoy what you have, and to be able to lose all desire for things beyond your reach.β
βA 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.β
βIt 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.β
βThese 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.β
βA 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.β
βThe 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.β
Lin Yutang Quotes by Topic
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Lin Yutang on Dream of the Red Chamber 7 quotes
βThe easiest way to find out a Chinaman's temperament is to ask him whether he likes TaiyΓΌ more or Paots'a more. If he prefers TaiyΓΌ, he is an idealist, and if he prefers Paots'a, he is a realist.β
Lin Yutang on Journey to the West 6 quotes
βSo then, 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.β
Lin Yutang on Religion 3 quotes
βSuch religion as there can be in modern life, every individual will have to salvage from the churches for himself.β
Lin Yutang on Trickster 2 quotes
βMy 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.β
Lin Yutang on Genesis 2 quotes
βThe 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.β
Lin Yutang on Insults
βNothing matters to a man who says nothing matters.β
Lin Yutang on The Story of the Western Wing
βA masterpiece of the first order in Chinese literature.β
Lin Yutang on Patriotism
βWhat is patriotism but love of the good things we ate in our childhood?β
Lin Yutang on Economics
βPutting human affairs in exact formulas shows in itself a lack of the sense of humor and therefore a lack of wisdom.β
Lin Yutang on Wisdom
βPutting human affairs in exact formulas shows in itself a lack of the sense of humor and therefore a lack of wisdom.β
Lin Yutang on Watermelons
What Lin Yutang Said About Others
Discover personal opinions Lin Yutang shared regarding contemporaries.
Lin Yutang on Su Shi 2 quotes
βThere had to be one Su Tungpo, but there could not be two.β
Lin Yutang on Tao Yuanming 2 quotes
βThe greatest poet and most harmonious product of Chinese culture.β
Lin Yutang on Laozi 2 quotes
βLaotse packs his oracular wisdom into five thousand words of concentrated brilliance. No thinker ever wrote fewer words to embody a whole philosophy and had as much influence upon the thought of a nation.β
Lin Yutang on Wang Wei
βProbably China's greatest descriptive poet.β
Lin Yutang on George Bernard Shaw
βYou can't make a man a Christian unless you first make him believe he is a sinner.β
Lin Yutang on Jin Shengtan
βChin Shengt'an regards reading a banned book behind closed doors on a snowy night as one of the greatest pleasures of life.β
Lin Yutang on Li Qingzhao
βLi Yi-an was the greatest poetess of China. Once her husband asked one of his friends to pick out the best lines that he liked from a number of his poems, having, however, concealed in them some pieces by his wife. The friend picked out, to his dismay, only lines from her pen.β
Lin Yutang on Confucius
βConfucianism stood for a rationalized social order through the ethical approach, based on personal cultivation. It aimed at political order by laying the basis for it in a moral order, and it sought political harmony by trying to achieve the moral harmony in man himself. Thus its most curious characteristic was the abolition of the distinction between politics and ethics.β
Lin Yutang on Jesus
βThe world of Jesus is the world of sunlight by comparison with that of all the sages and philosophers and the schoolmen of any country. Like the Jungfrau which stands above the glaciers in the world of snow and seems to touch heaven itself, Jesus' teachings have that immediacy and clarity and simplicity which puts to shame all other efforts of men's minds to know God or to inquire after God.β
Lin Yutang on Qu Yuan
βCh'u YΓΌan (B.C. 343βc. 290) ranks undoubtedly as one of the three or four greatest poets of China characterized by his intensity of feeling, his rich mythological details, and his somber imagination. The Songs of Ch'u belong in an entirely different category from either the poems of Confucian China, or from the later T'ang poems. His poems are at the same time among those most difficult to read in Chinese.β
Lin Yutang on Gu Hongming
βHe was a crank but not a bore, for his was a first-class mind and he had, above all, insight and depth, as no man in my generation had. No man in China wrote English the way he did, because of his challenging ideas and because of his masterly style, a style reminiscent of Matthew Arnold's poised and orderly evolution of ideas and repetition of certain phrases, plus the dramatic bombast of Thomas Carlyle and the witticisms of Heine.β
Lin Yutang on David H. C. Read
βWith the best will in the world, I could not bear a second-rate sermon. [...] Now I have found a church where I do not squirm in my seat, but listen in rapt attention from beginning to end. After having heard the first sermon by Dr. David Read, I went Sunday after Sunday, because I was richly rewarded every time. What a feeling of relief to be allowed to come near to God and worship as I always wanted to worship! [...] It therefore became a pleasure to go to church because to be in church was to be near the true spirit of Jesus Christ.β
Quotes About Lin Yutang
Gain deeper perspective through quotes about Lin Yutang from others.
Pearl S. Buck on Lin Yutang
β[My Country and My People] is, I think, the truest, the most profound, the most complete, the most important book yet written about China. And, best of all, it is written by a Chinese, a modern, whose roots are firmly in the past, but whose rich flowering is in the present.β
Misattributed Quotes
Quotes mistakenly credited to Lin Yutang
About Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang (Traditional Chinese: ζθͺε ; Simplified Chinese: ζθ―ε ; pinyin: LΓn YΗtΓ‘ng) (10 October 1895 β 26 March 1976) was a Chinese writer and translator.