The Importance of Living by Lin Yutang: Quotations
The Importance of Living by Lin Yutang: Quotations
"First read The Importance of Living and then read The Importance of Understanding. And I’m sure you will see your life from a different perspective. "
What touches the human heart in one country touches all.
High-mindedness . . . enables one to go through life . . . and escape the temptations of fame and wealth and achievement . . . And from this detachment arise also his sense of freedom, his love of vagabondage and his pride.
The necessity for such common cries as "Wake up and live" is to me a good sign.
It 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".
Where there is a national mind so racially different and historically isolated from the Western cultural world [as the Chinese], we have the right to expect new answers to the problems of life.
I distrust all dead and mechanical formulas for expressing anything connected with human affairs.
A vague, uncritical idealism . . . 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.
I regard the Chinese as most closely allied to the French in their sense of humor and sensitivity.
