Yutang Lin > Quotes

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

“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.”
― Yutang Lin, The Importance of Living

“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”
― Yutang Lin

“No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow. ”
― Yutang Lin

“There is something in the nature of tea that leads us into a world of quiet contemplation of life.”
― Yutang Lin, The Importance of Living

“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.”
― Yutang Lin

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

“The busy man is never wise and the wise man is never busy.”
― Yutang Lin

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

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

“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.”
― Yutang Lin

“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. ”
― Yutang Lin, Pleasures of a Nonconformist

“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. ”
― Yutang Lin

“Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is a nobler art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials.”
― Yutang Lin

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

“Make No Distinctions”
― Yutang Lin

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

“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. ”
― Yutang Lin