Quotes from Lin Yutang

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

There is something in the nature of tea that leads us into a world of quiet contemplation of life.

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

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

When Small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set.

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

The wise man reads both books and life itself.

The busy man is never wise and the wise man is never busy.

Anyone who reads a book with a sense of obligation does not understand the art of reading.

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.

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.

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.

If one's bowels move, one is happy, and if they don't move, one is unhappy. That is all there is to it.

I regard the discovery of one's favorite author as the most critical event in one's intellectual development.

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

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

Of all the rights of woman, the greatest is to be a mother

Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do, than what one can do.

And if the reader has no taste for what he reads, all the time is wasted

The moment a student gives up his right of personal judgment, he is in for accepting all the humbugs of life

Happiness for me is largely a matter of digestion.

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.

For a Westerner, it is usually sufficient for a proposition to be logically sound. For a Chinese it is not sufficient that a proposition be logically correct, but it must be at the same time in accord with human nature.

Creative work carries with it a form of intense love.