Lin Yutang
The end of living is the true enjoyment of it.Collection: Life
If there is anything we are serious about, it is neither religion nor learning, but food.Collection: Food
After all the allowances are made for the necessity of having a few supermen in our midst - explorers, conquerors, great inventors, great presidents, heroes who change the course of history - the happiest man is still the man of the middle class who has earned a slight means of economic independence, who has done a little, but just a little, for mankind and who is slightly distinguished in his community, but not too distinguished.Collection: Hero
Art is both creation and recreation.Collection: Art
Nobody is ever misunderstood at a fireside; he may only be disagreed with.Collection: Misunderstood
It is that unoccupied space which makes a room habitable, as it is our leisure hours which make life endurable.Collection: Space
A vague uncritical idealism always 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.Collection: Wild Geese
Why should man bother himself so much about salvation, unless he has a feeling of being doomed?Collection: Men
It is not so much what you believe in that matters, as the way in which you believe it and proceed to translate that belief into action.Collection: Believe
The greater success a man has made, the more he fears a climb down.Collection: Men
How many of us are able to distinguish between the odors of noon and midnight, or of winter and summer, or of a windy spell and a still one? If man is so generally less happy in the cities than in the country, it is because all these variations and nuances of sight and smell and sound are less clearly marked and lost in the general monotony of gray walls and cement pavements.Collection: Summer
It is not dirt but the fear of dirt which is the sign of man's degeneration, and it is dangerous to judge a man's physical and moral sanity by outside standards.Collection: Men
Happiness for me is largely a matter of digestion.Collection: Ayurveda
What is patriotism but love of the good things we ate in our childhood? I have said elsewhere that the loyalty to Uncle Sam is the loyalty to doughnuts and ham and sweet potatoes and the loyalty to the German Vaterland is the loyalty to Pfannkuchen and Christmas Stollen. As for international understanding, I feel that macaroni has done more for our appreciation of Italy than Mussolini... in food, as in death, we feel the essential brotherhood of mankind.Collection: Loyalty
The question that faces every man born into this world is not what should be his purpose, which he should set about to achieve, but just what to do with life? The answer, that he should order his life so that he can find the greatest happiness in it, is more a practical question, similar to that of how a man should spend his weekend, then a metaphysical proposition as to what is the mystic purpose of his life in the scheme of the universe.Collection: Men
There is no proper time and place for reading. When the mood for reading comes, one can read anywhereCollection: Reading
My faith in human dignity consists in the belief that man is the greatest scamp on earth. Human dignity must be associated with the idea of a scamp and not with that of an obedient, disciplined and regimented soldier.Collection: Men
No child is born with a really cold heart, and it is only in proportion as we lose that youthful heart that we lose the inner warmth in ourselves.Collection: Children
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.Collection: Book
Let him cry whoever feels like crying, for we were animals before we became reasoning beings, and the shedding of a tear, whether of forgiveness or of pity or of sheer delight at beauty, will do him a lot of good.Collection: Animal
What threatens civilization today is not war, but the changing conception of life values entailed by certain political doctrines. Only by recapturing the dream of human freedom and restoring the importance of the common man's liberties can that undermining threat to modern civilization be avertedCollection: Dream
Men resort to talking only when they haven't the power to enforce their convictions upon others.Collection: Men
The fonder you are of your ideals, the greater your heartbreaks.Collection: Ideals
A cocktail party is a place where you talk with a person you do not know about a subject you have no interest in.Collection: Party
The best that we can hope for in this life is that we shall not have sons and grandsons of whom we need to be ashamed.Collection: Son
And if the reader has no taste for what he reads, all the time is wastedCollection: Taste
I feel, like all modern Americans, no consciousness of sin and simply do not believe in it. All I know is that if God loves me only half as much as my mother does, he will not send me to Hell. That is a final fact of my inner consciousness, and for no religion could I deny its truth.Collection: Mother
As for international understanding, I feel that macaroni has done more for our appreciation of Italy than Mussolini.Collection: Appreciation
I am willing to allow that smoking is a moral weakness, but on the other hand, we must beware of the man without weaknesses. He is not to be trusted. He is apt to be always sober and he cannot make a single mistake. His habits are likely to be regular, his existence more mechanical and his head always maintains its supremacy over his heart. Much as I like reasonable persons, I hate completely rational beings.Collection: Mistake
The most bewildering thing about man is his idea of work and the amount of work he imposes upon himself, or civilization has imposed upon him. All nature loafs, while man alone works for a living.Collection: Men
Only he who handles his ideas lightly is master of his ideas, and only he who is master of his ideas is not enslaved by them.Collection: Light
Sometimes there are more tears than laughter, and sometimes there is more laughter than tears, and sometimes you feel so choked you can neither weep nor laugh. For tears and laughter there will always be so long as there is human life. When our tear wells have run dry and the voice of laughter is silenced, the world will be truly dead.Collection: Running
Business men who are busy the whole day and immediately go to bed after supper, snoring like cows, are not likely to contribute anything to culture.Collection: Men
Any good practical philosophy must start out with the recognition of our having a body.Collection: Philosophy
There is a great probability that our loss of capacity for enjoying the positive joys of life is largely due to the decreased sensibility of our senses and our lack of full use of them. All human happiness is sensuous happiness.Collection: Philosophy
The world I believe is far too serious, and being far too serious ... it has need of a wise and merry philosophy.Collection: Wise
However vague they are, dreams have a way of concealing themselves and leave us no peace until they are translated into reality, like seeds germinating underground, sure to sprout in their search for the sunlight.Collection: Dream
Neckties strangle clear thinking.Collection: Thinking
A man who has to be punctually at a certain place at five o'clock has the whole afternoon ruined for him already.Collection: Men
Even in despair, man must laugh.Collection: Laughter
An educated man is one who has the loves and hatreds together.Collection: Men
Everything that we think God has in his mind necessarily proceeds from our own mind; it is what we imagine to be in God's mind, and it is really difficult for human intelligence to guess at a divine intelligence. What we usually end up with by this sort of reasoning is to make God the color-sergeant of our army and to make Him as chauvinistic as ourselves.Collection: Army
Probably the difference between man and the monkeys is that the monkeys are merely bored, while man has boredom plus imagination.Collection: Blessing
Of all the unhappy people in the world, the unhappiest are those who have not found something they want to do.Collection: People
What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child?Collection: Children
Few men who have liberated themselves from the fear of God and the fear of death are yet able to liberate themselves from the fear of man.Collection: Men
Nothing matters to a man who says nothing matters.Collection: Men
Of all the rights of women, the greatest is to be a motherCollection: Mothers Day
The only test of a soul's salvation is its inward happiness.Collection: Soul