110+ Lin Yutang Quotes (Witty, Insightful And Humorous)

Lin Yutang was a Chinese author, scholar, and inventor. He was a prolific writer, best known for his humorous essays and novels written in English. He was an advocate for the use of the Chinese language in modern literature and was a pioneer of modern Chinese culture.

Top 10 Lin Yutang Quotes

1. No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.
2. 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.
3. A man who has to be punctually at a certain place at five o'clock has the whole afternoon ruined for him already.
4. Happiness has always seemed like a bluebird, and consists of moments.
5. When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set.
6. 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.
7. Neckties strangle clear thinking.
8. 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.
9. I have a hankering to go back to the Orient and discard my necktie. Neckties strangle clear thinking.
10. The Chinese do not draw any distinction between food and medicine.

Lin Yutang Short Quotes

• I have done my best. That is about all the philosophy of living one needs.
• The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.
• There is nothing more beautiful in this world than a healthy, wise old man.
• There is something in the nature of tea that leads us into a world of quiet contemplation of life.
• Our lives are not in the lap of the gods, but in the lap of our cooks.
• Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do, than what one can do.
• We should not expect people to be good, but should make it impossible for them to be bad.
• The busy man is never wise and the wise man is never busy.
• Peace of mind is that mental condition in which you have accepted the worst.
• Happiness for me is largely a matter of digestion.

Lin Yutang Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

The history omankind seems like kite flying; sometimes, when the wind is favorable, we let go the string a little and the kite soars a little higher; sometimes the wind is too rough and we have to lower it a little, and sometimes it gets caught among the tree branches; but to reach the upper strata of pure bliss-ah, perhaps never. — Lin Yutang

There is a great probability that our loss of capacity for enjoying the positive joys of life is largely due to the decreased sensibility of our senses and our lack of full use of them. All human happiness is sensuous happiness. — 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

Where there are too many policemen, there is no liberty. Where there are too many soldiers, there is no peace. Where there are too many lawyers, there is no justice. — Lin Yutang

I do not think that any civilization can be called complete until it has progressed from sophistication to unsophistication, and made a conscious return to simplicity of thinking and living. — Lin Yutang

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

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

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

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

Alas, our rulers are not gods, but puny, fallible men, like the kings who constantly forget their parts, and we common men should be their prompters. — Lin Yutang

I rather despise claims to objectivity in philosophy; the point of view is the thing. — Lin Yutang

India was China's teacher in religion and imaginative literature, and the world's teacher in trignometry, quandratic equations, grammar, phonetics, Arabian Nights, animal fables, chess, as well as in philosophy, and that she inspired Boccaccio, Goethe, Herder, Schopenhauer, Emerson, and probably also old Aesop. — 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

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

True peace of mind comes from accepting the worst. Psychologically, I think it means a release of energy. — 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

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

Nothing matters to a man who says nothing matters. — Lin Yutang

Only friendship which can stand occasional plain speaking is worth having. — Lin Yutang

The best that we can hope for in this life is that we shall not have sons and grandsons of whom we need to be ashamed. — Lin Yutang

No child is born with a really cold heart, and it is only in proportion as we lose that youthful heart that we lose the inner warmth in ourselves. — Lin Yutang

Of all the unhappy people in the world, the unhappiest are those who have not found something they want to do. — Lin Yutang

Since the invention of the flush toilet and the vacuum carpet cleaner, the modern man seems to judge a man's moral standards by his cleanliness, and thinks a dog the more highly civilized for having a weekly bath and a winter wrapper round his belly. — Lin Yutang

All I know is that if God loves me only half as much as my mother does, he will not send me to Hell. — Lin Yutang

Today we are afraid of simple words like goodness and mercy and kindness. We don't believe in the good old words because we don't believe in good old values anymore. And that's why the world is sick. — Lin Yutang

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

We all have obligations and duties toward our fellow men. But it does seem curious enough that in modern neurotic society, men's energies are consumed in making a living and rarely in living itself. It takes a lot of courage for a man to declare, with clarity and simplicity, that the purpose of life is to enjoy it. — Lin Yutang

Life is too short to make an over-serious business out of it. — Lin Yutang

No man is inherently respectable, but all women are by nature. — Lin Yutang

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 — Lin Yutang

O wise humanity, terribly wise humanity! How inscrutable is the civilization where men toil and work and worry their hair gray to get a living and forget to play! — Lin Yutang

Of all the rights of women, the greatest is to be a mother. — Lin Yutang

Art is both creation and recreation. — 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

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

To glorify the past and paint the future is easy, to survey the present and emerge with some light and understanding is difficult. — Lin Yutang

It is not dirt but the fear of dirt which is the sign of man's degeneration, and it is dangerous to judge a man's physical and moral sanity by outside standards. — Lin Yutang

The humour of the Chinese people in inventing gunpowder and finding its best use in making firecrackers for their grandfathers' birthdays is merely symbolical of their inventiveness along merely pacific lines. — 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

Society can exist only on the basis that there is some amount of polished lying and that no one says exactly what he thinks. — Lin Yutang

Simplicity is the outward sign and symbol of depth of thought. — Lin Yutang

Not until we see the richness of the Hindu mind and its essential spirituality can we understand India — Lin Yutang

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. — Lin Yutang

Business men who are busy the whole day and immediately go to bed after supper, snoring like cows, are not likely to contribute anything to culture. — Lin Yutang

Few men who have liberated themselves from the fear of God and the fear of death are yet able to liberate themselves from the fear of man. — Lin Yutang

The more we justify our beliefs, the more narrow-minded we become. — Lin Yutang

A cocktail party is a place where you talk with a person you do not know about a subject you have no interest in. — Lin Yutang

It is that unoccupied space which makes a room habitable, as it is our leisure hours which make life endurable. — Lin Yutang

The age calls for simple statements and restatements of simple truths. The prophets of doom are involved, those who would bring light must be clear. — Lin Yutang

The greater success a man has made, the more he fears a climb down. — Lin Yutang

The man who has not the habit of reading is imprisoned in his immediate world. — Lin Yutang

All human beings are like travelers floating down the eternal river of time, embarking at a certain point and disembarking again at another point in order to make room for others waiting below the river to come aboard. — Lin Yutang

All women's dresses are merely variations on the eternal struggle between the admitted desire to dress and the unadmitted desire to undress. — Lin Yutang

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. — Lin Yutang

Such is human psychology that if we don't express our joy, we soon cease to feel it. — Lin Yutang

So much of unhappiness, it seems to me, is due to nerves; and bad nerves are the result of having nothing to do, or doing a thing badly, unsuccessfully or incompetently. Of all the unhappy people in the world, the unhappiest are those who have not found something they want to do. True happiness comes to those who do their work well, followed by a refreshing period of rest. True happiness comes from the right amount of work for the day. — 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

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

The end of living is the true enjoyment of it. — Lin Yutang

Everything has its place and time. We men of the nineteen-forties can smile at the mistakes of the nineteen-thirties, and, in turn, the men of the nineteen-fifties will laugh at the mistakes of the nineteen-forties. It is this historical perspective that shall save us. — 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

Sometimes there are more tears than laughter, and sometimes there is more laughter than tears, and sometimes you feel so choked you can neither weep nor laugh. For tears and laughter there will always be so long as there is human life. When our tear wells have run dry and the voice of laughter is silenced, the world will be truly dead. — Lin Yutang

If there is anything we are serious about, it is neither religion nor learning, but food. — Lin Yutang

Nobody is ever misunderstood at a fireside; he may only be disagreed with. — 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

Creative work carries with it a form of intense love. — Lin Yutang

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. — Lin Yutang

The most bewildering thing about man is his idea of work and the amount of work he imposes upon himself, or civilization has imposed upon him. All nature loafs, while man alone works for a living. — Lin Yutang

A tendency to fly too straight at a goal, instead of circling around it, often carries one too far. — Lin Yutang

He who is afraid to use an "I" in his writing will never make a good writer. — Lin Yutang

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

Even in despair, man must laugh. — Lin Yutang

There is more hope in a heather rose than in all the tons of Teutonic philosophy. — Lin Yutang

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. — 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

The only test of a soul's salvation is its inward happiness. — Lin Yutang

Of the many rights of ladies, the best should be to be considered a mother. — Lin Yutang

Once [China] had a destiny. Once she was a conqueror. Now her greatest destiny seems to be merely to exist, to survive. — Lin Yutang

The human mind is a curious thing. It can take just so much and no more. — Lin Yutang

When we demand liberty of a person as a constitutional right, we are taking away from the officials their liberty to chop off people's heads. — Lin Yutang

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 tone is mellower, its colours are richer, and it is tinged with a little sorrow. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and its content. — Lin Yutang

The question that faces every man born into this world is not what should be his purpose, which he should set about to achieve, but just what to do with life? The answer, that he should order his life so that he can find the greatest happiness in it, is more a practical question, similar to that of how a man should spend his weekend, then a metaphysical proposition as to what is the mystic purpose of his life in the scheme of the universe. — Lin Yutang

The only part of Christian teachings which will be truly accepted by the Chinese people is Christ's injunction to be "harmless as doves" but "wise as serpents. — Lin Yutang

Once Confucius was walking on the mountains and he came across a woman weeping by a grave. He asked the woman what here sorrow was, and she replied, We are a family of hunters. My father was eaten by a tiger. My husband was bitten by a tiger and died. And now my only son! Why don't you move down and live in the valley? Why do you continue to live up here? asked Confucius. And the woman replied, But sir, there are no tax collectors here! Confucius added to his disciples, You see, a bad government is more to be feared than tigers. — Lin Yutang

I am willing to allow that smoking is a moral weakness, but on the other hand, we must beware of the man without weaknesses. He is not to be trusted. He is apt to be always sober and he cannot make a single mistake. His habits are likely to be regular, his existence more mechanical and his head always maintains its supremacy over his heart. Much as I like reasonable persons, I hate completely rational beings. — Lin Yutang

We (the Chinese) eat food for its texture, the elastic or crisp effect it has on our teeth, as well as for fragrance, flavor and color. — Lin Yutang

By association with nature's enormities, a man's heart may truly grow big also. — Lin Yutang

The dog which remembers only to bark and not to bite, and is led through the streets as a lady's pet, is only a degenerate wolf. — Lin Yutang

Life Lessons by Lin Yutang

1. Lin Yutang encourages us to appreciate the beauty of life and to live in harmony with nature. He also emphasizes the importance of having a positive attitude and cultivating inner peace.
2. He reminds us to savor the little moments of joy and to find contentment in the simple things. He also encourages us to take time to appreciate the beauty of nature and to be mindful of our actions.
3. He teaches us to live in the present and to be grateful for what we have. He also encourages us to be kind to others and to be humble in our successes.