Quotes from Lu Xun

Hope cannot be said to exist, nor can it be said not to exist. It is just like roads across the earth. For actually the earth had no roads to begin with, but when many men pass one way, a road is made.

If men refuse to be kindled, sparks can only burn themselves out, just as paper images and carriages burn out on the street during funerals.

When a great man has become petrified, and everyone begins to proclaim his greatness, he has already turned into a puppet.

The most horrible thing is not a government that stages public executions, but a government that secretly disposes of its victims.

Hope is like a path in the countryside. Originally, there is nothing - but as people walk this way again and again, a path appears.

But if a few awake, you can't say there is no hope of destroying the iron house.

Hope is a path on the mountainside. At first there is no path. But then there are people passing that way. And there is a path.

Despair is as hollow and deceptive as hope!

You have to reform yourself before reforming society and the world.

The most painful thing in life is to wake up from a dream and find no way out. Dreamers are fortunate people. If no way out can be seen, the important thing is not to awaken the sleepers.

A woman has so many parts to her body, life is very hard indeed.

To be suspicious is not a fault. To be suspicious all the time without coming to a conclusion is the defect.

The most important thing... was to change their spirit; and since at that time I felt that literature was the best means to this end, I decided to promote literary movement.

Trust only him who doubts.

Though love is instinctive, it cannot develop without a certain stimulus and use.

It is in the nature of things that some people should be unlucky enough to get their heads chopped off.

Women have a mother-nature and a daughter-nature; there are no women with a wife-nature. The quality of wife is an acquired character; it is a combination of mother and daughter.

Men who have not known the horror of death are not likely to be awed by it.

If we want to work out a policy for the present, we must examine the past and prepare for the future, discard the material and elevate the spirit, rely on the individual and exclude the mass.

I could not blot out hope, for hope belongs to the future.