Lin Yutang

"Besides, the seven desires of man continue to burn him up and the pleasures of the flesh pare him down; he is sometimes too much disappointed and sometimes too much elated, and usually too much worried." - Lin Yutang

"By that fiction of “willpower,” I had “won,” but I knew only that I was unhappy." - Lin Yutang

"Are we going to strive and endeavor in heaven, as I am quite sure the believers in progress and endeavor must assume? But how can we strive and make progress when we are already perfect? Or are we going merely to loaf and do nothing and not worry?" - Lin Yutang

"But actually he seldom rises six feet above the ground. I should have liked also to write the entire book in the form of a dialogue like Plato’s." - Lin Yutang

"you speak like children from impulse; Nature speaks through you; but with us it is ripe knowledge. The seasons do not revolve for us; we sing their lullaby.” So they chant, eternal, at the roots of the grass." - Lin Yutang

"There was also another scholar, by the name of Chou Wenfu, who prepared and drank tea six times daily at definite hours from dawn to evening, and who loved his pot so much that he had it buried with him when he died." - Lin Yutang

"As often as they’re plucked, still more grow in their stead. Why not stop plucking, then, and let the white alone? Who has the time to fight against the silvery thread? The whole thing is unnatural and unfair." - Lin Yutang

"It simply can’t be done, and if the controllers of thought go too far in running against human nature itself, they are thereby sowing the seeds of their downfall." - Lin Yutang

"How often the Abbot has to correct and chastise the mischievous Monkey and the sensuous Pig, forever led by their sadly imperfect minds and their lower passions into all sorts of scrapes!" - Lin Yutang

"On the other hand, the modern man needs this refreshing wind of cynicism which cannot but do him some good." - Lin Yutang

"A similar difference may be noted between business correspondence and the letters of literary friends. We can speak or discuss business with almost any person, but there are very few people with whom we can truly hold a night’s conversation." - Lin Yutang

"I get as much pleasure out of listening to a friend playing a sonatina of an evening in an indifferent manner as out of listening to a firstclass professional concert." - Lin Yutang

"For that reason, I am always scared and ill at ease when I enter a house in which there are no ash trays. The room is apt to be too clean and orderly, the cushions are apt to be in their right places, and the people are apt to be correct and unemotional." - Lin Yutang

"No, I distrust sainthood. Am I anti-intellectualistic? Perhaps yes; perhaps no. I am merely in love with life, and being in love with life, I distrust the intellect profoundly." - Lin Yutang

"We have come to the real point about the concepdon of a wine party, for this alone gives a satisfactory explanadon of the length of a Chinese feast, its number of courses and its method of service." - Lin Yutang

"All such extraneous considerations should be brushed aside, for the acquisition of knowledge is nobody else’s business but one’s own." - Lin Yutang

"The philosophy of the Chinese art of living can certainly be called the “gay science,” if anything can be called by that phrase used by Nietzsche." - Lin Yutang

"International conferences, in the midst of discussion of the most absorbing and most critical political situations, have to break up for the noon meal. Parliaments have to adjust their schedule of sessions to meal hours." - Lin Yutang

"This sort of thing is undoubtedly brought about by business life, for I have no doubt there must be more respect for old age in the home than in the office." - Lin Yutang

"I am quite sure that amidst the hustle and busde of American life, there is a great deal of wistfulness, of the divine desire to lie on a plot of grass under tall beautiful trees of an idle afternoon and just do nothing." - Lin Yutang